Turn Up the Volume: The Amplification of Shame (abstract)

One important strategy that HROs, and other actors, employ to call attention to human rights abuses around the world is “naming and shaming.” By calling attention to governments for their human rights violations, HROs hope to galvanize world public opinion and increase pressure on these states to halt abuses. While some HROs, like Amnesty International, communicate directly with their large membership bases, the vast majority of HROs rely on the international media to communicate their message to the international community. Issuing reports and press releases is a major part of their strategy the international community aware of abuses The more media coverage an HRO\u27s reports and press releases receive, the more their message is “amplified.” This paper discusses the development of the first measure of amplification of HRO messages in the international media. Using this new data, this paper develops a theory and then tests hypotheses about how certain characteristics of HROs (their budget, their network connections to each other and to intergovernmental organizations, their membership bases, and their usual targets) matter for amplification

Rainbows for Rights: The Role of LGBT Activism in Gay Rights Promotion

Are advocacy efforts successful in improving the de jure rights of sexual minorities? In this paper, we argue that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights NGO movement has been a powerful force in the struggle against sexual discrimination. However, the work of LGBT organizations is much harder in areas of the world where pre-existing public attitudes are not supportive of the rights in question. By focusing on the issue of sexual minority rights, we are able to see how underlying public attitude divergence on a human rights issue can influence advocacy success. We test the implications of our argument cross-nationally using new data on over 4,000 organizations from 1990 to 2011

Rainbows for Rights: The Role of LGBT Activism in Gay Rights Promotion

Are advocacy efforts successful in improving the de jure rights of sexual minorities? In this paper, we argue that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights NGO movement has been a powerful force in the struggle against sexual discrimination. However, the work of LGBT organizations is much harder in areas of the world where pre-existing public attitudes are not supportive of the rights in question. By focusing on the issue of sexual minority rights, we are able to see how underlying public attitude divergence on a human rights issue can influence advocacy success. We test the implications of our argument cross-nationally using new data on over 4,000 organizations from 1990 to 2011

Taking the fight to them: neighborhood human rights organizations and domestic protest

This article examines how human rights international non-governmental organizations (hereafter HROs) can increase the level of political protest in neighboring states. Previous research suggests local activities of HROs help to generate mobilization for protests against governments. This article shows that the presence of HROs in neighboring states can be a substitute for domestic HROs; if domestic HROs are already flourishing, there will be less of a ‘neighbor’ effect. At sufficiently high levels of domestic HRO prevalence within a state, neighboring HROs help domestic HROs use institutionalized substitutes for protest mobilization strategies. Spatial econometric methods are used to test the implications of this theory. These results illuminate the role that non-governmental organizations play in these domestic political processes, and demonstrate the transnational nature of their activities

Human Rights Shaming Through INGOs and Foreign Aid Delivery

Does the ``shaming" of human rights violations influence foreign aid delivery decisions across OECD donor countries? We examine the effect of shaming, defined as targeted negative attention by human rights international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), on donor decisions about how to deliver bilateral aid. We argue that INGO shaming of recipient countries leads donor governments, on average, to ``bypass" the recipient government in favor of non-state aid delivery channels, including international and local NGOs and international organizations (IOs). However, we expect this relationship to be conditional on a donor country's position in the international system. Minor power countries have limited influence in global affairs and are therefore more able to centrally promote human rights in their foreign policy. Major power countries, on the other hand, shape world politics and often confront ``realpolitik" concerns that may require government-to-government aid relations in the presence of INGO shaming. We expect aid officials of minor donor countries to be more likely to condition aid delivery decisions on human rights shaming than their counterparts of major donor countries. Using compositional data analysis, we test our argument using originally collected data on human rights shaming events in a time-series cross-sectional framework from 2004 to 2010. We find support for our hypotheses: On average, OECD donor governments increase the proportion of bypass when INGOs shame the recipient government. When differentiating between donor types we find that this finding holds for minor but not for major powers. These results add to both our understanding of the influences of aid allocation decision-making and our understanding of the role of INGOs on foreign-policy

The effects of problem-oriented policing on crime and disorder

Problem-oriented Policing (POP) was first introduced by Herman Goldstein in 1979. The approach was one of a series of responses to a crisis in effectiveness and legitimacy in policing that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Goldstein argued that police were not being effective in preventing and controlling crime because they had become too focused on the “means” of policing and had neglected the “goals” of preventing and controlling crime and other community problems. Goldstein argued that the unit of analysis in policing must become the “problem” rather than calls or crime incidents as was the case during that period. POP has had tremendous impact on American policing, and is now one of the most widely implemented policing strategies in the US. To synthesize the extant problem-oriented policing evaluation literature and assess the effects of problem-oriented policing on crime and disorder Eligible studies had to meet three criteria: (1) the SARA model was used for a problemoriented policing intervention; (2) a comparison group was included; (3) at least one crime or disorder outcome was reported with sufficient data to generate an effect size. The unit of analysis could be people or places. Several strategies were used to perform an exhaustive search for literature fitting the eligibility criteria. First, a keyword search was performed on an array of online abstract databases. Second, we reviewed the bibliographies of past reviews of problem-oriented policing. Third, we performed forward searches for works that have cited seminal problem-oriented policing studies. Fourth, we performed hand searches of leading journals in the field. Fifth, we searched the publications of several research and professional agencies. Sixth, after finishing the above searches we e-mailed the list of studies meeting our eligibility criteria to leading policing scholars knowledgeable in the area of problem-oriented policing to ensure we had not missed any relevant studies. For our ten eligible studies, we provide both a narrative review of effectiveness and a meta-analysis. For the meta-analysis, we coded all primary outcomes of the eligible studies and we report the mean effect size (for studies with more than one primary outcome, we averaged effects to create a mean), the largest effect, and the smallest effect. Because of the heterogeneity of our studies, we used a random effects model. Based on our meta-analysis, overall problem-oriented policing has a modest but statistically significant impact on reducing crime and disorder. Our results are consistent when examining both experimental and quasi-experimental studies. Conclusions: We conclude that problem-oriented policing is effective in reducing crime and disorder, although the effect is fairly modest. We urge caution in interpreting these results because of the small number of methodologically rigorous studies on POP and the diversity of problems and responses used in our eligible studies

Why Target the "Good Guys"? The Determinants of Terrorism Against NGOs

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