Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SWP (Shaming States: Social Sanction and State Behaviour In World Politics)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-01-15 do 2022-01-14
In social psychology, shame is defined as a painful feeling of self-reproach that arises when people notice a discrepancy between their thoughts, feelings, or behavior on the one hand, and important norms and expectations on the other hand. Psychologists have found that shame is associated with a negative judgment of the self and that this sentiment is often related to the presence of an audience, real or imagined. In world politics, shaming recalcitrant states into alignment with international norms has long been a tool various actors employ in pursuit of their goals. States participating in international regimes are routinely asked to submit reports, take part in mutual evaluation exercises, and confess to poor performance in international fora. Rather than mere window dressing, practices relying on social incentives to policy commitment may result in obligations that impose significant material and non-material costs and bind state national security behavior in unexpected ways.
Extant literature in International Relations (IR) and Political Science struggles to understand the micro-level mechanisms that trigger processes of compliance or resistance to international norms as a result of shaming. Most contributions on the effects of naming and shaming tend to focus on policy effectiveness or lack thereof, without understanding the causes that lead state officials to be affected by shame or resist it. Hence the question remains, do states feel 'ashamed' and can they be 'shamed' into action? No study exists in IR to date that seeks to explain this variation systematically, both within and across countries and levels of analysis.
In order to fill these gaps, this project develops an innovative theoretical framework to understand and test the influence of shame on state foreign policy behavior from a cross-country, multi-level perspective (individual and aggregated responses). The study's main objective is to answer the following core research questions: 1. What emotional states and action tendencies are triggered by shaming strategies? 2. Under what conditions do these strategies encourage decision-makers to align their preferences with international norms? 3. What actors are the targets of such strategies and how does their reaction affect their and their organization's decision-making process and outcome?
From a societal and policy perspective, this analysis can provide crucial insights into the topical issue of what power international institutions have to affect change in world politics. It helps to shed light on whether and how moral campaigns and international enforcement strategies employed in current global governance arrangements, of which the European Union is a key actor and promoter, can succeed in influencing policy decisions. Additionally, this study helps uncover to what extent state foreign and national security bureaucracies have internalized some key normative obligations and principles of international society.
Extant literature in International Relations (IR) and Political Science struggles to understand the micro-level mechanisms that trigger processes of compliance or resistance to international norms as a result of shaming. Most contributions on the effects of naming and shaming tend to focus on policy effectiveness or lack thereof, without understanding the causes that lead state officials to be affected by shame or resist it. Hence the question remains, do states feel 'ashamed' and can they be 'shamed' into action? No study exists in IR to date that seeks to explain this variation systematically, both within and across countries and levels of analysis.
In order to fill these gaps, this project develops an innovative theoretical framework to understand and test the influence of shame on state foreign policy behavior from a cross-country, multi-level perspective (individual and aggregated responses). The study's main objective is to answer the following core research questions: 1. What emotional states and action tendencies are triggered by shaming strategies? 2. Under what conditions do these strategies encourage decision-makers to align their preferences with international norms? 3. What actors are the targets of such strategies and how does their reaction affect their and their organization's decision-making process and outcome?
From a societal and policy perspective, this analysis can provide crucial insights into the topical issue of what power international institutions have to affect change in world politics. It helps to shed light on whether and how moral campaigns and international enforcement strategies employed in current global governance arrangements, of which the European Union is a key actor and promoter, can succeed in influencing policy decisions. Additionally, this study helps uncover to what extent state foreign and national security bureaucracies have internalized some key normative obligations and principles of international society.
In the course of this reporting period the researcher has:
1. Reviewed all IR and FPA literature on norm compliance and diffusion, naming and shaming campaigns, and international cooperation within IOs, especially in the field of human rights, where the use of naming and shaming as a tool for enforcement is widespread.
2. Received training in the fields of cognitive, social, and experimental psychology, as well as research methods in psychology, in addition to attending training in survey design and quantitative methods, as well as language courses in Hebrew.
3. Developed the main theoretical framework and hypotheses of the survey, as well as an innovative interviewing approach to analyze the presence/absence of shame within government bureaucracies.
4. Obtained access to data sources to field the surveys and conduct elite interviews (development of snowballing elite interview samples in the US and Isreal).
5. Conducted cognitive interviews with policy-makers for the pre-planning phase of the survey.
6. Designed two novel survey scenarios (which will be fielded in August/September 2022).
7. Adapted social and cognitive psychology scales to measure group-shame and tested them in cognitive interviews.
6. Conducted shame experience interviews with national security bureaucracies.
7. Presented at and attended conferences in her field.
8. Delivered guest lectures at the host institution.
9. Mentored PhD and M.A. students.
1. Reviewed all IR and FPA literature on norm compliance and diffusion, naming and shaming campaigns, and international cooperation within IOs, especially in the field of human rights, where the use of naming and shaming as a tool for enforcement is widespread.
2. Received training in the fields of cognitive, social, and experimental psychology, as well as research methods in psychology, in addition to attending training in survey design and quantitative methods, as well as language courses in Hebrew.
3. Developed the main theoretical framework and hypotheses of the survey, as well as an innovative interviewing approach to analyze the presence/absence of shame within government bureaucracies.
4. Obtained access to data sources to field the surveys and conduct elite interviews (development of snowballing elite interview samples in the US and Isreal).
5. Conducted cognitive interviews with policy-makers for the pre-planning phase of the survey.
6. Designed two novel survey scenarios (which will be fielded in August/September 2022).
7. Adapted social and cognitive psychology scales to measure group-shame and tested them in cognitive interviews.
6. Conducted shame experience interviews with national security bureaucracies.
7. Presented at and attended conferences in her field.
8. Delivered guest lectures at the host institution.
9. Mentored PhD and M.A. students.
Research for this project is leading to the production of a truly innovative study, based on never-before-seen original data. In this respect, in IR there currently are only three survey experiments fielded to the general population which seek to gauge whether naming and shaming has an effect on a population’s approval for government policies. To date, there is no study or survey experiment fielded to government elites that measures the presence/absence of shame, neither after a violation of an international norm occurs nor after naming and shaming by third parties has taken place. The unprecedented access that the researched has achieved will help address this glaring gap. Equally, there is no study that has adapted and applied the fine-grained tools of experimental psychology to assess shame in world politics. The researcher is adapting advanced shame scales and rankings to International Relations.The outcome of the study will shed light not only on the issue of shame in international affairs, but also on the discipline’s attempt to aggregate psychological research tools at the state level, and understand the mechanisms of norm internalization.