Elite attitudes towards naming and shaming in world politics

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• the Robert Schuman Centre Seminar Series

Join Carlotta Minnella as she presents her co-authored research in the Robert Schuman Seminar Series

Are state national security bureaucracies receptive to naming and shaming strategies? Under what conditions do they experience shame as a result of their actions or of their association with the country they represent? This seminar presents the results of a survey experiment of US national security elites and introduces a theory of the micro-foundations of group-based shame for US foreign policy.

Carlotta Minnella and her co-author, Angela Andreella (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) argue that elites experience the emotion of shame at both personal and group levels. It empirically examines elite responses to the case of a hypothetical violation of the Convention against Torture. The paper finds that while affective responses differ, officials feel shame as a result of violating an international norm, whilst naming and shaming campaigns are counterproductive in eliciting the desired effect (reparative action and/or pro-social behaviour).