Public Opinion Cost and Benefit of International Shaming and Abstention

Abstract

Governments often use public shaming of other countries’ human rights records as a low-cost diplomatic tool to project moral authority and bolster domestic support for their foreign policy. This paper examines the conditional domestic effects of shaming: which groups respond, when, and how the identity of the target matters. I argue that shaming serves as a policy cue, shaping public expectations about what the government should—or will—do next. These effects depend on individuals’ foreign policy predispositions and the message’s framing. Using an online survey experiment with over 3,600 U.S. adults, I find that internationalists, compared to isolationists, are more likely to respond to symbolic statements about human rights. Shaming increases their approval of the government’s foreign policy but has limited effects on support for coercive follow-up actions, such as targeted sanctions. In contrast, strategic silence in the face of abuse reduces internationalists’ support for such measures, suggesting that silence, rather than shaming, carries stronger implications for policy expectations. Moreover, the positive effects of shaming weaken when the target is framed as a geopolitically important country. By identifying when and for whom shaming fails to persuade, this study contributes to research on the strategic use of human rights diplomacy and the domestic mechanisms through which international statements shape opinion. It also offers a microfoundation for understanding why governments are less likely to shame their allies.