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Naming, Shaming, and International Sporting Events: Does the Host Nation Play Fair?
Abstract
Recently, the Winter Olympic Games in Russia and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Brazil have drawn attention as much for politics as the excitement of the competitions. Russia’s pursuance of discriminatory homosexual policies made it the target of international rights groups; Brazil’s exploitation of the poor for the sake of hosting the World Cup led to several high-profile protests ahead of the event. These large-scale international sporting competitions provide a ready-made platform for naming and shaming states that may have dubious human rights records. The question remains as to whether or not the shaming of these host states by international groups effectively changes a state’s behavior. This paper argues that states facing increased global media attention while hosting an event are likely to substitute repression of physical integrity rights with repression of civil and political rights in an effort to maintain favorable appearances internationally. However, I find support for both physical and expressive rights improving in states when shaming is conditioned on the selection to host an international sporting event.
... The findings contribute to several research streams. First, we offer new insights into the nexus between politics and sports (e.g., Alrababa'h et al. 2021;Bertoli 2017;Bowersox 2018;Brancati and Wohlforth 2021;Miguel, Saiegh, and Satyanath 2011;Orttung and Zhemukhov 2017). Second, the study adds to our understanding of how authoritarian regimes maintain political stability (e.g., Dukalskis 2021;Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2018;Gerschewski 2013;Svolik 2012). ...
... Second, the successful organization of an international sports event may also boost the government's legitimacy both at home and abroad (Bowersox 2018). Domestically, victories of national sports teams can have a positive effect on people's evaluation of their government (Busby, Druckman, and Fredendall 2017;Healy, Malhotra, and Mo 2010). ...
... Second, repressive adjustments may be influenced by ongoing advancements in media and communication technologies. Digitization and an ever-growing media landscape have prolonged cycles of international media attention around major events (Bowersox 2018). Current hosts might therefore come under scrutiny earlier than did the Argentine junta. ...
How do international sports events shape repression in authoritarian host countries? International tournaments promise unique gains in political prestige through global media attention. However, autocrats must fear that foreign journalists will unmask their wrongdoings. We argue that autocracies solve this dilemma by strategically adjusting repression according to the spatial-temporal presence of international media. Using original, highly disaggregated data on the 1978 World Cup, we demonstrate that the Argentine host government largely refrained from repression during the tournament but preemptively cleared the streets beforehand. These adjustments specifically occurred around hotels reserved for foreign journalists. Additional tests demonstrate that (1) before the tournament, repression turned increasingly covert, (2) during the tournament, targeting patterns mirrored the working shifts of foreign journalists, (3) after the tournament, regime violence again spiked in locations where international media had been present. Together, the article highlights the human costs of megaevents, contradicting the common whitewashing rhetoric of functionaries.
... This has led to states' reluctance to actually host sports mega-events as far back as the 1960s. But despite an ongoing discussion of the economic effects of SME in the public and political sphere, the possibility that mega-events can have political implications has garnered little attention (Bowersox 2016). ...
... Finally coming to research specifically examining the political effects of hosting SMEs, Bowersox (2016) provides the most up-to-date study on the systematic relationship between hosting duties and their domestic impact. Looking at the Olympics and the World Cup, the author finds that hosting an event positively affects a state's repression of its citizens. ...
... Much of the literature agrees that executives hope for SMEs to enhance national unity and patriotism, bridge social cleavages, and foster national cohesion. Sports events can provide a 'rally 'round the flag' effect (Chapman and Reiter 2004), which should directly benefit the executive that won the right to host the event (Bowersox 2016;Black 2007Black , 2008Cornelissen 2008;Schimmel 2006). While the paper thus is generally agnostic about the direction of executive effects, for the sake of a clear hypothesis I predict that host executives can expect rallying effects to bolster their support immediately following SMEs. ...
What are the effects of international sports mega-events (SMEs) in their host countries? There is a significant body of research exploring the economic fallout of hosting a mega-event such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup, and the motivating factors behind states' decisions to take on hosting duties in the first place. Yet international relations scholarship has rarely investigated if there is a systematic relationship between the hosting of an SME and subsequent changes in political variables. Anecdotal evidence from past tournaments has shown SMEs to both be a political boon (resulting in reputational gains, media exposure, or increased national pride) and a burden (producing in mismanagement, social unrest, or international scrutiny). Based on an original dataset of the host nations of nine different, recurring mega-events in the last 100 years, the paper quantitatively investigates the relationship between hosting an event and changes in key political variables. Do nations benefit or suffer from their hosting duties, or do sporting events have no effect at all?
... Major cultural and sports events provide host nations with a unique opportunity to present themselves in front of the world and shape how a global audience perceives them. While political leaders might be motivated by domestic reasons as well [1][2][3], authoritarian regimes have seized such opportunities in the past aiming to improve their international reputation. Most infamously, the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 were a massive propaganda event in which the Nazis not only displayed their capacity to organize such big events but also propagated their vision of racial supremacy. ...
Non-democratic regimes have increasingly been hosting major sports events to boost their visibility and image abroad, which sparked debates about the potential for “sportswashing”. Using the case of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar we examine how the framing of the tournament influenced opinions about Qatar abroad. Our pre-registered survey experiment with more than 14,000 respondents in eight European countries conducted before the tournament shows that framing it in light of human rights issues in Qatar leads to more negative attitudes towards the host of the World Cup. In contrast, frames emphasizing Qatar’s organizational capacity improve respondents’ attitudes. The heterogeneity of effects across countries highlights the relevance of the national information environment for the effects of major sports events on public opinion. These findings suggest that critical media coverage could potentially mitigate sportswashing efforts while uncritical coverage can increase the legitimacy of autocracies.
... This engagement creates for a state a form of internal soft power by fostering national pride, promoting values, enhancing social cohesion, and establishing domestic legitimacy. For this reason, sports diplomacy can also backfire and draw negative attention to domestic acts of repression, discrimination, and human rights abuses (Black & Bezanson, 2004;Bowersox, 2016). ...
Drawing from an analysis of international newswires’ media coverage of the Olympics from 2012 to 2022, the study posits that international media outfits tend to underreport the performance of non-democratic states despite considerable medal success, and overreport the sporting activities of democracies even if they underperform. We argue that this is due to the international media’s normative bias toward a world order that privileges liberal democracy and its adjacent values. Our findings indicate strong support for our hypothesis that the media is not a level playing field in the coverage of sporting events, and that it pays to be a democracy when it comes to soft power gains. Overall, the study contributes to the growing body of literature examining sports as an arena of political contestation.
... Table 2). Amusa et al., 2013;Baklouti & Namsi, 2013;Black & Bezanson, 2004;Bonde, 2009;Bowersox, 2016b;Boykoff, 2011;Brannagan & Giulianotti, 2014;Bredikhina, 2019;Brownell, 2012Brownell, , 2013Burchell, 2015;Burchell et al., 2015;Byrne & Lee Ludvigsen, 2022;Casaglia, 2018;Chappelet, 2022;Coaffee, 2015;Corrarino, 2014;Corthorn, 2013;Cox, 1998;Daanen, 2022;Edwards, 1984;Fruh et al., 2022;Gauthier, 2014;Grell, 2018;Grix & Lee, 2013;Heerdt, 2018;Hellmann et al., 2018;Hess & Bishara, 2019;Horne, 2018;Horton, 2008Horton, , 2010Hwang, 2010;Ishida & Wada, 2017;Jayawardhana, 2016;Jiménez Botta, 2017;Keys, 2018;Kidd, 2010;Kirschner, 2019;Lai, 2010;Liu, 2007;MacAloon, 2016;Martín & Hernández, 2021;Mastrocola, 1995;McGillivray et al., 2019;McGillivray et al., 2022;Müller, 2015Müller, , 2017Naess, 2019Naess, , 2020Naidoo & Grevemberg, 2022;O'Rourke & Theodoraki, 2022;Park et al., 2021;Patsantaras, 2013;Roche, 2002;Schwab, 2018;Terret, 2008;Tulli, 2016 Workers or migrant workers 8.2 Al Thani, 2022;Dorsey, 2014;Duval, 2021;Engle, 2014;Erfani, 2015;Ganji, 2016;Millward, 2016;Onarheim et al., 2021;Regueiro, 2020;Shantz, 2011;Nogueira, 2019, andTimms, 2012 considered workers (not necessarily migrants) ...
This scoping review integrates literature from diverse perspectives to better understand when and how management of major sport events promotes or harms human rights. The authors critically review 130 peer-reviewed English language articles to identify conceptual contributions to research and practice. The findings reveal that politics and political reform, legal frameworks and organizational actions are crucial influences in when and how management of events promotes or harms human rights. The most frequently considered rights in the literature are: equality, human trafficking-related, sport as a human right, worker rights and freedom of residence. Activism for human rights stimulates change within relevant stakeholders via collaboration, naming and shaming, in-public debates and media coverage. The committed, transparent and inclusive consideration of human rights in all stages of managing sport events (from bid preparation, bidding, planning and hosting to post-event leverage) may increase the likelihood that the event has social benefits.
... The symbolic impact of FIFA as an international institution governing sports relates to wider literature on soft power and the role of sports and culture in international politics. This literature addresses the impact of sports on foreign policy (Reiche 2015), their symbolic importance to national identity construction (Ismer 2011;Scheve et al. 2014), and the political significance of cultural megaevents for the host country, including the host's vulnerability to naming and shaming campaigns (Alekseyeva 2014;Black 2007;Bowersox 2016;Cornelissen 2008;Giulianotti et al. 2015;Gorokhov 2015;Jaskulowski and Majewski 2016;Press-Barnathan and Lutz 2020). ...
This article focuses on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement's utilization of ‘fluidity,’ conceptualized as the ability to adapt campaign tactics to multiple arenas and political opportunity structures simultaneously. Framing BDS as both a social movement and a transnational advocacy network, it demonstrates the movement's fluidity in the context of three campaigns: the campaign at the 65th FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) congress in 2015, which illustrates an ‘outsider’ strategy aimed at intergovernmental institutions; the 2014 Olive Declaration of municipalities endorsing BDS, which illustrates how local ‘insider’ campaigns can combine to create a translocal campaign; and the ‘Ferguson-Gaza moment’ in 2014, which illustrates how movements can engage at the level of civil society and embed themselves in the broader global justice movement.
... The same holds for expected beneficial long-term legacies, such as (new) sports and transport facilities and infrastructural, social, and environmental surplus (Gratton & Preuss, 2008;Pereira, 2018;Preuss, 2019). One of the most fundamental predicted benefits is destination promotion (Bowersox, 2016;Kaplanidou et al., 2016). ...
Understanding residents' preferences for mega-sports events is a hot topic in tourism and event research. Thus far, most studies have assumed homogeneous preferences, and linear utility additivity of all event attributes when measuring residents' support. This study uses an adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis combined with hierarchical Bayesian estimation. In contrast to previous research, the method considers the entire spectrum of residents' preferences at the individual level and identifies non-substitutable dominant preferences (must-haves and unacceptables). A survey with 687 residents was conducted in Tyrol, an Austrian state with a remarkable Olympic tradition. The findings of this study extend the current literature by showing that the usually applied assumptions (homogeneous and linear additive substitutable preferences) are violated with substantial consequences. A simulation allows transforming the survey results into hypothetical referendum support rates for different feasible concepts of the Olympic Games.
One year ago, the Qatar World Cup was in full swing, and Qatar was omnipresent in our public and private spheres. For many, the Qatar 2022 World Cup will forever be intimately connected with the plight of migrant workers. This Article dives into the confluence of spectacle, counter-marketing, international—labor and human rights—law, and local reforms, which came together in the long decade which followed FIFA’s fateful decision in December 2010 to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. It starts by situating the FIFA World Cup 2022 within Qatar’s drive for soft power and nation branding, before turning to re-counting how the 2022 World Cup was “ambushed” in the name of Qatar’s migrant workers and their rights, putting the issue on the global agenda and triggering the involvement of the ILO. Thereafter, the Article discusses the effects of this ambush counter-marketing by engaging with the labor reforms introduced by the Qatari government, while highlighting their limits in terms of scope and implementation. The Article concludes with a general discussion on the blind spots and shortcomings of the turn to counter-marketing as a strategy to vindicate international human rights or labor rights.
This study aims to conduct a systematic review on human rights as related to mega-events (MEs) to locate possible key areas and gaps for further research in the field. A systematic literature review has been undertaken utilizing the databases of Scopus, Web of Sciences, and Google Scholar. A final sample of 127 articles was used for this review exercise. Findings resulted in past research studies classified into six groups and 18 topics for recommending for future research. The findings contribute to theory by identifying and underlining the key areas and research gaps for orientating further studies such as discovering some new phenomena which may elicit relevant research interests. The findings also contribute practically by urging the relevant policy and practice actors to actively seek out the stakeholders entailed in a mega event to minimize its possible adverse effects on the stakeholders.
This study evaluates the efficacy of international organizations’ naming and shaming strategies to address alleged human rights violations in the People’s Republic of China. It examines publicly accessible human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations’ Human Rights Council over a thirty-year span (1991 to 2021). The findings indicate that the Human Rights Council, an inter-governmental body, has been more effective in influencing China’s human rights practices through naming and shaming. This is followed by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. This effectiveness is largely attributed to the Human Rights Council and Human Rights Watch’s comprehensive approach to human rights, which includes civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights, whereas Amnesty International primarily focuses on civil and political rights. Since its inception, China has placed greater prioritization on economic, cultural and social rights, providing a more conducive environment for the Human Rights Council and Human Rights Watch to employ a naming and shaming strategy.
Off-Field Competition at Major Sport Events. Case Study of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™
Over the past twenty years sponsorship has outperformed all other marketing communication tools in terms of growth. With their massive audiences, major sport events create great opportunity for global companies to showcase their brands and products. Due to rapidly rising costs for securing sponsorship rights, ambush marketing has emerged as a growing option for different kind of companies.
The aim of ambush marketing is to obtain more of the gains associated with an official event sponsorship but without incurring the same extent of its costs. "Ambushers" are becoming increasingly astute at developing ways to circumvent legal attempts to control non-sponsor marketing strategies.
Therefore, the aim of the paper is to introduce and categorize various ambush marketing methods and counter-ambushing strategies. As ambush marketing has shifted over time from broadcast sponsorship campaigns and venue surrounding advertising to more off-site venue marketing, it is also important to analyze how the organizers of major sport event prevent the event itself, the sponsorship rights and how they deal with ambush marketing issue. The case of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa has been studied.
The use of mega sporting events to achieve social goals for socially excluded groups is heavily contested. Comparative evidence regarding the effects of the Olympic Games for these groups is scarce, and there is an even greater dearth of studies focusing on non-infrastructural programmes (such as sport participation initiatives, volunteering opportunities, training and employment schemes). This study identifies planning principles that allow for the development of such non-infrastructural benefits for socially excluded groups in host cities, and reviews their application in recent Olympic Games.This study examines data from 7 Olympic cities (Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens, Turin and Beijing). It shows that the Olympic Games generally bring few benefits for socially excluded groups, although these benefits are often important justifications in the bidding stage. The study highlights the growing importance placed by the International Olympic Committee on environmental sustainability, and proposes a similar emphasis on social sustainability.
A principal agent model is used to test the hypothesis that when proposed uses of force attract the support of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the rally in support of the American president increases significantly. Regression analysis is applied to rallies during all militarized interstate disputes from 1945 to 2001. Results show that UN Security Council support significantly increases the rally behind the president (by as many as 9 points in presidential approval), even after including an array of control variables. This finding is generally robust across most model specifications. This effect is unique among international institutions because other actions by the UN or regional security organizations do not significantly affect rallies. These findings provide new insight into how international institutions can matter and influence the foreign policies of states by affecting public opinion.
While it is universally recognized that states are responsible for human rights conditions in their jurisdictions, it is less often noticed that this responsibility has two dimensions, one normative and one empirical. Normatively, most people agree that states ought to prevent human rights abuses. Empirically, however, states may not always be able to do so. In weak and failing states, agency loss and the inability to police effectively can lead to abuses by private individuals and rogue agents of the state. Thus, on balance, weak states typically have worse human rights records than strong ones. This is demonstrated by a global time-series cross-section analysis showing that indicators of state weakness — low tax revenues, corruption, and lack of law and order — all have a negative impact on human rights to personal security. The effect differs for different kinds of rights. Extrajudicial killings are highly sensitive to state capacity, while political imprisonment is more sensitive to democracy. Overall, however, it appears that the totalitarian model of human rights abuse by excessively strong states applies to a restricted set of cases. The more common problem is states that cannot effectively protect human rights. We must take state failure seriously when thinking about the causes of — and remedies for — human rights abuse.
This article examines the numerous impacts of hallmark events on the destination area which has generated the event. These effects include not only the economic results but also the physical, socio-cultural, psychological, and political impacts such events have.
Travel research is a field which is maturing rapidly into a systematic and cumulative body of knowledge. An important part of the maturing process for any science is the development or adaptation of consistent and well-tested measurement techniques and methodologies which are well-suited to the types of problems encountered in practice. This article attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the problems encountered in travel research with a view to improving theory and practice in the field. After giving a brief overview of the nature of behavioral and economic research in general, five types of factors which often create difficulties in travel research are identified. The discussion attempts to clarify the nature of the measurement problem related to each factor. The latter part of the paper suggests possible means of overcoming certain of the difficulties with which the author has had direct experience. A number of research priorities are identified for studying those remaining problem areas which appear to be less well understood.
This paper provides an empirical insight into the perception and use of ambush marketing on the People's Republic of China public television network CCTV5 (the official Olympic broadcaster), by examining the commercials used by various corporations during its coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. A five-point categorization is presented to distinguish between various methods of ambushing. Despite the efforts of the Beijing government to fight ambush marketing ahead of its Olympic Games in 2008, the results demonstrate that concerns about the practice of ambush marketing in China must be taken seriously. An analysis of 40 commercial spots was carried out, based on China's 2002 Olympic Symbol Protection Law, as well as a comparison of ambush marketing on Chinese CCTV5 with nine other nations. This paper concludes with some theoretical considerations concerning general protection of Olympic sponsors and reflects on particular cultural backgrounds in China that may relate to ambush marketing.
The authors examine the impact of the international human rights regime on governments' human rights practices. They propose an explanation that highlights a "paradox of empty promises." Their core arguments are that the global institutionalization of human rights has created an international context in which (1) governments often ratify human rights treaties as a matter of window dressing, radically decoupling policy from practice and at times exacerbating negative human rights practices, but (2) the emergent global legit-imacy of human rights exerts independent global civil society effects that improve states' actual human rights practices. The authors' statistical analyses on a comprehensive sample of government re-pression from 1976 to 1999 find support for their argument.
State repression includes harassment, surveillance/spying, bans, arrests, torture, and mass killing by government agents and/or affiliates within their territorial jurisdiction. Over the past 40 years, the systematic study of state repression has grown considerably. The development of this work, however, has been uneven. Though unified in their focus on the problem of order (i.e., trying to ascertain how political authorities wield coercive power amid potential and actual domestic challengers), different scholars tend to emphasize distinct aspects of the topic. Consequently, a great deal of progress has been made in specific areas but others have lagged behind. In this review, I attempt to identify the dominant traditions in the repression literature, the core empirical findings, and some persisting puzzles.
What shapes the transnational activist agenda? Do non-governmental organizations with a global mandate focus on the world's most pressing problems, or is their reporting also affected by additional considerations? To address these questions, we study the determinants of country reporting by an exemplary transnational actor, Amnesty International, during 1986–2000. We find that while human rights conditions are associated with the volume of their country reporting, other factors also matter, including previous reporting efforts, state power, U.S. military assistance, and a country's media profile. Drawing on interviews with Amnesty and Human Rights Watch staff, we interpret our findings as evidence of Amnesty International's social movement-style “information politics.” The group produces more written work on some countries than others to maximize advocacy opportunities, shape international standards, promote greater awareness, and raise its profile. This approach has both strengths and weaknesses, which we consider after extending our analysis to other transnational sectors.
Most studies posit and identify a linear and negative relationship between democracy and the violation of human rights. Some research challenges this finding, however, suggesting that nonlinear influences exist. Within this article, we examine the structure of the relationship between democracy and repression during the time period from 1976 to 1996. To conduct our analysis, we utilize diverse statistical approaches which are particularly flexible in identifying influences that take a variety of functional forms (specifically LOESS and binary decomposition). Across measures and methodological techniques, we found that below a certain level, democracy has no impact on human rights violations, but above this level democracy influences repression in a negative and roughly linear manner. The implications of this research are discussed within the conclusion.
is a popular strategy to enforce international human rights norms and laws. Nongovernmental organizations, news media, and international organizations publicize countries' violations and urge reform. Evidence that these spotlights are followed by improvements is anecdotal. This article analyzes the relationship between global naming and shaming efforts and governments' human rights practices for 145 countries from 1975 to 2000. The statistics show that governments put in the spotlight for abuses continue or even ramp up some violations afterward, while reducing others. One reason is that governments' capacities for human rights improvements vary across types of violations. Another is that governments are strategically using some violations to offset other improvements they make in response to international pressure to stop violations.
Organizations * Armies, Prisons, Schools * Organization Matters Operators * Circumstances * Beliefs * Interests * Culture Managers * Constraints * People * Compliance Executives * Turf * Strategies * Innovation Context * Congress * Presidents * Courts * National Differences Change * Problems * Rules * Markets * Bureaucracy and the Public Interest
Hall, C.M. 1992, Hallmark Tourist Events: Impacts, Management, and Planning, Belhaven Press, London. 215pp, ISBN 1 85293 147 7 (Hbk) (co-published in the Americas by Halsted Press, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York. ISBN 0 470 21929 7)
According to indicators of political repression currently used by scholars, human rights practices have not improved over the past 35 years, despite the spread of human rights norms, better monitoring, and the increasing prevalence of electoral democracy. I argue that this empirical pattern is not an indication of stagnating human rights practices. Instead, it reflects a systematic change in the way monitors, like Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, encounter and interpret information about abuses. The standard of accountability used to assess state behaviors becomes more stringent as monitors look harder for abuse, look in more places for abuse, and classify more acts as abuse. In this article, I present a new, theoretically informed measurement model, which generates unbiased estimates of repression using existing data. I then show that respect for human rights has improved over time and that the relationship between human rights respect and ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture is positive, which contradicts findings from existing research.
The awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil continues the trend of international sports mega-events being hosted in the global South and constructed and promoted as part of long-term development plans and policies. Rio 2016 also connects with the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) current commitment to international development and global humanitarianism. In this paper, we examine the proliferation of this agenda through official online Olympic communication and compare it against critical perspectives from activist bloggers concerned with development issues specific to Rio 2016. The results support the notions that the internet can be used both to serve and challenge processes of capitalist accumulation and that political debates and contestations, such as those regarding development policy, are increasingly 'amplified' online. We argue, therefore, that while the IOC and Olympic stakeholders use the internet in support of neoliberal and modernist notions of development, online communications also offer important avenues for disseminating current critiques of, and resistance to, Olympic hosting.
Hill, Daniel W., Will H. Moore, and Bumba Mukherjee. (2013) Information Politics Versus Organizational Incentives: When Are Amnesty International's ‘‘Naming and Shaming’’ Reports Biased? International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12022 © 2013 International Studies Association‘‘Information politics’’ INGOs such as Amnesty International have incentives to maintain their credibility by carefully vetting information about rights abuses committed by governments. But they are also strategic actors that may inflate allegations of abuse to fulfill organizational imperatives. This raises an intriguing question: When are INGOs more likely to exaggerate their allegations? In answer to this question, we argue that news media reporting pressures INGOs to comment for organizational reasons, even if the information available to them is poor. On the other hand, higher numbers of domestic human rights NGOs increase the quality of available information, and INGOs will find more credible information provided about states as the winning coalition to the selectorate rises. Yet, an incentive to exaggerate allegations under certain conditions does not imply that INGOs will always do so. Indeed, there exists significant observed variation in INGO reports about government abuse. To test our hypotheses, we employ a zero‐inflated ordered probit model with correlated errors that permits us to model an unobservable probability (the probability that the INGO exaggerates its allegations) and correct for potential bias. Results provide support for our hypotheses, and suggest that Amnesty International adheres to its credibility criterion, rarely succumbing to incentives to exaggerate abuse.
The 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul were a coming out party for South Korea - a culmination of its efforts to be recognized as an accomplished economic power and a serious international actor. The South Korean leadership undoubtedly looked for accelerated economic growth as well as heightened national consciousness (including awareness of sporting cultures). Yet, the run-up to and the actual hosting of the games also had a dramatic impact on both South Korea's domestic politics, as it became a factor in the struggle for democratization, and its external relations, most specifically with North Korea and its erstwhile allies. While there were economic benefits and a more subtle impact on South Korean society, national pride, collective memory and sporting culture, it is these political legacies that have been the most profound.
While research has addressed the effects of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) advocacy on human rights outcomes, less is known about how INGOs choose advocacy targets and tactics. We combine insights from political economy and constructivism to understand how INGOs come to choose targets and tactics through the concepts of information and leverage politics, first articulated by Keck and Sikkink (1998), and salience politics, or the need to select cases that energize organization members and donors. INGOs select potential targets for advocacy and choose their tactics based on considerations of leverage potential and political salience, both of which are a function of potential target states’ aid, trade, and security linkages with major Western powers. Using data on Amnesty International’s written advocacy efforts - background reports, press releases, and new data on Urgent Actions - we find robust evidence that Amnesty International accounts for these linkages with Western powers in choosing targets for its advocacy campaigns.
Much scholarship concerning human rights international nongovernmental organizations (HR-INGOs) focuses on the central role they play within transnational advocacy networks. Despite this theoretical focus on networks, there has been scant empirical attention on the characteristics of the HR-INGO network or on whether the network characteristics of a HR-INGO matter for its advocacy output. Introducing a new relational dataset on 681 HR-INGOs, this article finds that the HR-INGO network is somewhat like a public good and that the organizations who utilize it benefit in terms of their international advocacy output. Other findings focus on how the structural characteristics of organizations can influence their propensity to connect to each other and how ‘free-riding’ can limit the benefits organizations receive from the network.
State competition for international status takes a variety of forms, but most are linked to states’ related pursuits of economic and/or military power. The Olympics offer a unique venue for states to compete with one another in a forum whose consequences do not directly spill over into either realm. Instead, states compete against one another for Olympic medals—a currency with no other international political value beyond the prestige that can be obtained with them. Leveraging a theoretical framework nested in Social Identity Theory, we develop a set of hypotheses to explain how states can be attributed international status as a result of their performance in the Olympic Games and via playing host to them. Using a linear hierarchical method of analysis, we evaluate the impact of participation in the Summer Olympics on the status attributed to members of the international system from 1960 to 2012. Our findings indicate that states whose performance exceeds expectations and smaller-sized countries that play host to the Olympic Games disproportionately gain status from their participation in the sporting regime.
What are the intended legacies of Beijing 2008 and what could be the consequences both intended and unintended? These are the questions that intrigue people both in China and around the world. This brief discussion, inter alia in a review, partially, but not exclusively, of the stated Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympics Games (BOCOG) policies, their implementation and their putative possibilities for Chinese and the global society, seeks to chart the potential social, economic and political impact on Beijing and China and, indeed, the world, of hosting the world's largest sports event, and to reflect upon some of the intangible and tangible legacies that Beijing 2008 could bequeath to the host city, the host nation and the international community.
List of contributors Preface 1. The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink 2. Transnational activism and political change in Kenya and Uganda Hans Peter Schmitz 3. The long and winding road: international norms and domestic political change in South Africa David Black 4. Changing discourse: transnational advocacy networks in Tunisia and Morocco Sieglinde Granzer 5. Linking the unlinkable? International norms and nationalism in Indonesia and the Philippines Anja Jetschke 6. International norms and domestic politics in Chile and Guatemala Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink 7. The Helsinki accords and political change in Eastern Europe Daniel C. Thomas 8. International human rights norms and domestic change: conclusions Thomas Risse and Stephen C. Ropp List of references Index.
This crossnational study seeks to explain variations in governmental repression of human rights to personal integrity (state terrorism) in a 153-country sample during the eighties. We outline theoretical perspectives on this topic and subject them to empirical tests using a technique appropriate for our pooled cross-sectional time-series design, namely, ordinary least squares with robust standard errors and a lagged dependent variable. We find democracy and participation in civil or international war to have substantively important and statistically significant effects on repression. The effects of economic development and population size are more modest. The hypothesis linking leftist regime types to abuse of personal integrity rights receives some support. We find no reliable evidence that population growth, British cultural influence, military control, or economic growth affect levels of repression. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for scholars and practitioners concerned with the prevention of personal integrity abuse.
Conventions represent a special form of tourism with a high degree of ecological differentiation from the host society. The encapsulation of conventioneers in highly planned convention activity creates an intrusion-reaction response from the host city - particularly when the convention reaches a size threshold that makes it a mega-event. Conventions can be analytically distinguished from conferences and the characteristics of conventions as mega-events can be identified. In place of the intrusion-reaction model, an interactive-opportunity model is proposed through the use of case studies. A sociological perspective demonstrates how interaction benefits (rather than merely economic benefits) can transform the convention-host city relationship.
Recent decades have seen an explosion of transnational networking and activism, but participation varies widely around the globe. Using negative binomial regression, we explore how national and global political and economic factors shape this "uneven geography" of participation in transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs). Contrary to assumptions in popular discourse, we find a continued importance of the state and limited importance of global economic integration in determining participation in transnational associations. But while ties to the global economy do not significantly impact participation, a country's links to global institutions enhance opportunities for transnational activism. Rich countries' citizens are more active transnationally, but low-income countries with strong ties to the global polity are also more tied to global activist networks. This suggests that TSMOs do not simply reproduce world-system stratification, but – aided by a supportive institutional environment – they help sow the seeds for its transformation.
The CIRI Human Rights Data Project provides information about government respect for a broad array of human rights in nearly every country in the world. Covering twenty-six years, fifteen separate human rights practices, and 195 countries, it is one of the largest human rights data sets in the world. This essay provides an overview of the CIRI project and our response to some critiques of the CIRI physical integrity rights index. Compared to the Political Terror Scale (PTS), the CIRI physical integrity rights index is focused on government human rights practices, can be disaggregated, is more transparent in its construction, and is more replicable because of the transparency of our coding rules. Furthermore, unlike the PTS, the unidimensionality of the CIRI index has been demonstrated empirically. For these reasons, the CIRI index is a more valid index of physical integrity rights.
Mega-events are usually assessed in terms of the economic impact of the event itself with little attention given to the event as part of a broader process that can be investigated longitudinally. An adapted political economy model is proposed (because the mega-event is seen as essentially an economic initiative) that distinguishes three kinds of linkages. Forward linkages refer to the effects caused by the event itself. Backward linkages refer to the powerful background objectives which justify or rationalise the event. Parallel linkages are side-effects which are residual to the event itself and not directly under the control of event organisers. This longitudinal approach also distinguishes between pre-event, eventand post-eventimpacts so that unintended and unanticipated consequences can be identified. The model is applied to the issue of displacement as a parallel linkage and to other issues of housing and impacts on neighboring communities to the mega-event site.Itis concluded that impact assessment ought to be part of every mega-event plan,and thatimpact equity and a mitigation plan to control adverse affects ought to be in place.
Do the “shaming” activities of HROs (human rights international non-governmental organizations) have a direct influence on state behavior? We argue, consistent with existing scholarship, that states targeted or “shamed” by these organizations do improve their human rights practices. However, mere shaming is not enough. Improvements in human rights practices result from the interaction of shaming by HROs with (i) a domestic presence of HROs within the targeted state and/or (ii) pressure by third-party states, individuals, and organizations. Using a new data set of the shaming events of more than 400 HROs toward governments, we test these propositions quantitatively and find widespread support for the arguments. This research provides the first global quantitative evidence of the conditional importance of HRO shaming in transnational advocacy efforts.
Transnational networks of activists play an increasingly important role in international and regional politics, and have contributed to changing policies of multilateral organizations and states. Transnational advocacy networks represent a particular type of transnational activism, in which principles and values play an important role in motivating network actors. These are particularly visible in such contentious areas as human rights, the environment and women's rights. This essay examines the emergence, strategies and impact of networks of activists of different nationalities that organize around these issues. It concludes that the actions of such networks provide an important part of explanations for both normative and policy change in the international system.
States whose agents engage in torture in a given year have a 93 percent chance of continuing to torture in the following year. What leads governments to stop the use of torture? We focus on the principal–agent relationship between the executive and the individuals responsible for supervising and interrogating state prisoners. We argue that some liberal democratic institutions change the probability that leaders support the creation of institutions that discourage jailers and interrogators from engaging in torture, thus increasing the probability of a state terminating its use of torture. These relationships are strongly conditioned by the presence of violent dissent; states rarely terminate the use of torture when they face a threat. Once campaigns of violent dissent stop, however, states with popular suffrage and a free press are considerably more likely to terminate their use of torture. Also given the end of violent dissent, the greater the number of veto points in government, the lower the likelihood that a state terminates its use of torture.
This study explores the relationships between state violations of different human rights. Though most quantitative studies in international relations treat different types of repressive behavior as either independent or arising from the same underlying process, significant insights are gained by conceptualizing different human rights violations as separate but dependent processes. We present a theoretical framework for conceptualizing the mechanisms relating human rights practices and produce a novel measurement strategy based on network analysis for exploring these relationships. We illustrate high levels of complementarity between most human rights practices. Substitution effects, in contrast, are occasionally substantial but relatively rare. Finally, using empirically informed Monte Carlo analyses, we present predictions regarding likely sequences of rights violations resulting in extreme violations of different physical integrity rights.
Research on human rights consistently points to the importance of democracy in reducing the severity and incidence of personal integrity abuses. The prescriptive implications of this finding for policy makers interested in state building have been somewhat limited, however, by a reliance on multidimensional measures of democracy. Consequently, a policy maker emerges from this literature confident that “democracy matters” but unclear about which set(s) of reforms is likely to yield a greater human rights payoff. Using data from the Polity IV Project, we examine what aspects of democracy are most consequential in improving a state's human rights record. Analysis of democracy's dimensions elicits three findings. First, political participation at the level of multiparty competition appears more significant than other dimensions in reducing human rights abuses. Second, improvements in a state's level of democracy short of full democracy do not promote greater respect for integrity rights. Only those states with the highest levels of democracy, not simply those conventionally defined as democratic, are correlated with better human rights practices. Third, accountability appears to be the critical feature that makes full-fledged democracies respect human rights; limited accountability generally retards improvement in human rights.
Here we seek to build on our earlier research (Poe and Tate, 1994) by re-testing similar models on a data set covering a much longer time span; the period from 1976 to 1993. Several of our findings differ from those of our earlier work. Here we find statistical evidence that military regimes lead to somewhat greater human rights abuse, defined in terms of violations of personal integrity, once democracy and a host of other factors are controlled. Further, we find that countries that have experienced British colonial influence tend to have relatively fewer abuses of personal integrity rights than others. Finally, our results suggest that leftist countries are actually less repressive of these basic human rights than non-leftist countries. Consistent with the Poe and Tate (1994) study, however, we find that past levels of repression, democracy, population size, economic development, and international and civil wars exercise statistically significant and substantively important impacts on personal integrity abuse.
Economists are skeptical about the economic benefits of hosting "mega-events" such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup, since such activities have considerable cost and seem to yield few tangible benefits. These doubts are rarely shared by policy-makers and the population, who are typically quite enthusiastic about such spectacles. In this paper, we reconcile these positions by examining the economic impact of hosting mega-events like the Olympics; we focus on trade. Using a variety of trade models, we show that hosting a mega-event like the Olympics has a positive impact on national exports. This effect is statistically robust, permanent, and large; trade is around 30% higher for countries that have hosted the Olympics. Interestingly however, we also find that unsuccessful bids to host the Olympics have a similar positive impact on exports. We conclude that the Olympic effect on trade is attributable to the signal a country sends when bidding to host the games, rather than the act of actually holding a mega-event. We develop a political economy model that formalizes this idea, and derives the conditions under which a signal like this is used by countries wishing to liberalize.
How do a few Third World conflicts become international causes célèbres, while most remain isolated and unknown? Why, for instance, has there been so much recent attention to the Darfur crisis but so little to ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite vastly more casualties in the latter than in the former? "The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism" rejects the view that those who gain such support are simply the lucky winners in a "global humanitarian lottery." It also rejects the idea that there is a "meritocracy of suffering" in which the worst-off groups gain the most support. Instead, I argue that conflicts, and the insurgent groups involved in them, face a Darwinian struggle for scarce media attention, NGO activism, and international concern. In this competition, the lion's share of resources go to the savviest, not the neediest. The book presents a theory of how insurgent groups raise international awareness and match themselves to the interests and concerns of powerful international audiences. Key factors include interactions with the international media, framing, and leadership skills. The book covers numerous examples spanning conflicts in Tibet, Sudan, and elsewhere. In addition, the book tests and applies the theory through systematic comparative analysis of matched Mexican and Nigerian insurgencies - both successes and failures in the quest for international support. Published by Cambridge University Press, The Marketing of Rebellion won the 2006 International Studies Association Best Book Award and the Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association. It was also named a Top Book of 2006 by The Globalist.
At the global level, sport is ruled by a set of organizations including giants such as the IOC (Olympics), FIFA (soccer), and the IAAF (athletics) as well as sporting minnows such as the World Armsport Federation (armwrestling). Many of these bodies have been surrounded by controversy during their histories, after having to adjust to the realities of commercial sport. This important book analyzes the evolution of modern sport, examining the ways in which sporting organisations have adapted over the years to accommodate changing environments. Themes covered in this impressive volume include: Sources of sports revenue. Organising global sporting events such as the Rugby World Cup. Differences and similarities between global sporting organisations. Forster and Pope have created an important book, which seriously analyzes sports organizations from a political economy vantage point for the first time. Of interest to students and academics studying the economics of sport, the book is also written in a style that makes it accessible for those with a general interest as well as for global sporting bodies themselves.
Despite widespread recognition that aggregated summary statistics on international conflict and cooperation miss most of the complex interactions among nations, the vast majority of scholars continue to employ annual, quarterly, or (occasionally) monthly observations. Daily events data, coded from some of the huge volume of news stories produced by journalists, have not been used much for the past two decades. We offer some reason to change this practice, which we feel should lead to considerably increased use of these data. We address advances in event categorization schemes and software programs that automatically produce data by "reading" news stories without human coders. We design a method that makes it feasible, for the first time, to evaluate these programs when they are applied in areas with the particular characteristics of international conflict and cooperation data, namely event categories with highly unequal prevalences, and where rare events (such as highly conflictual actions) are of special interest. We use this rare events design to evaluate one existing program, and find it to be as good as trained human coders, but obviously far less expensive to use. For large-scale data collections, the program dominates human coding. Our new evaluative method should be of use in international relations, as well as more generally in the field of computational linguistics, for evaluating other automated information extraction tools. We believe that the data created by programs similar to the one we evaluated should see dramatically increased use in international relations research. To facilitate this process, we are releasing with this article data on 3.7 million international events, covering the entire world for the past decade.
Mega-events are short-term high-profile events like Olympics and World Fairs that always have a significant urban impact. They re-prioritize urban agendas, create post-event usage debates, often stimulate urban redevelopment, and are instruments of boosterist ideologies promoting economic growth. While mega-events have normally been the preserve of industrial/postindustrial cities, the bid for the 2004 Olympics by Cape Town, South Africa represented the first bid from Africa, and the most successful bid to date from a developing country. The unique theme of the Cape Town bid was human/urban development — a contradiction given the elitist and commercial nature of mega-events — and yet a direct response to problems created by the apartheid city. The developmental aspects of the Cape Town bid are assessed in their South African context in order to ascertain whether development was only a legitimation for business interests (or growth machines) or whether and how the mega-event would contribute to urban restructuring. It is concluded that the bid represented a form of urban/national boosterism that repositioned Cape Town and South African interests in the global economy — particularly relevant given its previous apartheid pariah status. As a pro-growth strategy advocated by political and economic elites, the Olympic bid was less important as a sporting event at the grassroots than as a symbol of expectations of economic betterment. Whether mega-events like the Olympics can carry such far-reaching objectives within their more specific mandates is a matter for further reflection.
J’accuse! Does Naming and Shaming Perpetrators Reduce the Severity of Genocides or Politicides?”
- Matthew Krain
- Dreher Axel
Globalization, Economic Freedom, and Human Rights
- Axel Dreher
- Gassebner
- Martin
- Lars-H R Siemers
China Refuses Comment on Rogge’s Olympics Human Rights Warning
- Agence France-Presse
FIFA’s Sepp Blatter Says U.S. Was Set to Host 2022 World Cup
- Chappell Bill
Olympic Committee Rethinks Copyright Infringement Claim on YouTube
- Condon Stephanie