The Theory Behind Naming and Shaming

Naming and shaming is the principle of publicly stating and shaming human rights violations in a country in order to improve compliance with the human rights treaties these countries have ratified. The question this thesis will try to answer is what the mechanism behind this principle is. In order to find this answer, a co-variational design, more specifically a cross-sectional comparison is used. Two cases are compared to see the influence of naming and shaming and the theories that make this work. The two cases that are compared are Bolivia and Colombia in the timeframe 2015-2019. The countries are similar as they are both named and shamed, they have ratified the Bill of Rights, and they have almost signed the same economic agreements to try and create more economic cooperation. To research the mechanism behind the principle, two theories will be investigated through a congruence analysis to see which one explains the workings of naming and shaming the best. The two theories are related to political legitimacy and domestic activism. By using annual reports from human rights organizations to show the naming and shaming and by using newspaper articles to show the situation in both countries, the two theories were analyzed. Bolivia proves to have relatively low levels of legitimacy over the last five years but high levels of activism, while Colombia starts with low levels of legitimacy but improves to higher levels and proves to have low levels of activism. In both countries, human rights compliance is proven to be relatively low; in Colombia more than in Bolivia. The theories state that countries with low legitimacy and countries with much activism would be more likely to comply with human rights. This would be the explanation for the naming and shaming principle. The analysis showed that, both Bolivia and Colombia, in times of low levels of legitimacy, would adapt their behavior and comply more with human rights. It can, thus, be concluded that legitimacy influences compliance. For domestic activism, however, the countries did not show that much activism leads to more compliance. Activism was used to make the government aware of the demands of citizens, but it did not increase human rights compliance.