Suchergebnisse

In a backsliding democracy, antidemocratic politicians often vilify nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and impose restrictions that make it harder for them to form, advocate, or obtain funding. Do citizens consider NGOs as a threat? Do they support regulatory measures to restrict NGO activities? We focus on two factors that may influence citizens' attitudes toward NGOs: these groups' reliance on foreign funding and their ideological leaning. In a preregistered survey experiment in Israel, we find that citizens perceive foreign-funded NGOs as slightly more threatening, but they are not more likely to support restrictions on these groups than on groups relying on local funding. The ideological bent of the NGOs has a much stronger effect: People perceive NGOs on the other side of the political aisle as more threatening and support restrictions on their activity. Antidemocratic leaders might exploit this type of partisan-motivated reasoning to silence civil society.

This article enhances our understanding of international norms by developing a set of indicators to measure norm robustness at the domestic level. We apply these indicators to assess the robustness of the prohibition on the death penalty: a well-established international norm that terrorism-related cases have put to the test. In the United Kingdom, the government agreed to share information with the United States, possibly leading to the imposition of the death penalty on two ISIS foreign fighters of UK origin. France facilitated the trials of French ISIS fighters in Iraq, where they were sentenced to death. While the UK government, under public and judicial pressure, reversed its decision to cooperate with US authorities, the French government failed to acknowledge its violation of the death-penalty ban. We conclude that the anti-death penalty norm is more robust in the United Kingdom than in France. This case demonstrates how established democracies might break international human rights norms, and it reveals the nuances of the norm-decaying process.

Abstract
This article enhances our understanding of international norms by developing a set of indicators to measure norm robustness at the domestic level. We apply these indicators to assess the robustness of the prohibition on the death penalty: a well-established international norm that terrorism-related cases have put to the test. In the United Kingdom, the government agreed to share information with the United States, possibly leading to the imposition of the death penalty on two ISIS foreign fighters of UK origin. France facilitated the trials of French ISIS fighters in Iraq, where they were sentenced to death. While the UK government, under public and judicial pressure, reversed its decision to cooperate with US authorities, the French government failed to acknowledge its violation of the death-penalty ban. We conclude that the anti-death penalty norm is more robust in the United Kingdom than in France. This case demonstrates how established democracies might break international human rights norms, and it reveals the nuances of the norm-decaying process.