Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- 1. Military Bias and Offensive Strategy -- 2. France: Offensive Strategy as an Institutional Defense -- 3. France: Du Picq, Dreyfus, and the Errors of Plan 17 -- 4. Germany: The Elusive Formula for Decisive Victory -- 5. Germany: The "Necessary" Is Possible -- 6. Russia: Bureaucratic Politics and Strategic Priorities -- 7. Russia: The Politics and Psychology of Overcommitment -- 8. The Determinants of Military Strategy -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index

Abstract
Mainstream human rights activists typically attribute the signature successes of their movement (e.g., antislavery, Gandhi, Martin Luther King) to their uncompromisingly principled stance on behalf of the weak and the exploited. Naming and shaming and ending impunity loom large in their lore. This attitude works well to recruit idealistic activists, but their moralism, legalism, and secular universalism miss the central role of the self-interest of the majority in powering the progress of human rights. A core of idealists has defined aspirational goals, but progress has depended on support from majority mass movements and reform parties that gained power through expedient compromise. The human rights enterprise is now facing fierce pushback from illiberal strongmen and populists who counter-shame the liberal order as decadent, degenerate, and threatening to deeply rooted values. Too often, contemporary rights rhetoric plays into the hands of these illiberal critics. Human Rights for Pragmatists explains how rights-based societies can recover a more accurate narrative of their past pragmatic successes, repair their tactical flaws, and withstand illiberal challenges.

The most prominent approach to promoting human rights features the naming and shaming of perpetrators of abuses and those who abet them, including the tactic of ranking non-compliant states relative to their peers to undermine their international status. Neither activists nor the scholars who study them have paid much attention to the emotional dynamics of the targeted group, and in particular to the emotions of shame and shaming, nor to the sociological mechanisms that underpin the politics of status and status competition. This article draws upon relatively ignored, yet mainstream theoretical literatures in psychology, social psychology, and sociology in arguing that naming and shaming tactics often lead to backlash by those who are targeted. Transnational human rights advocacy commonly appeals to the norms of exporting society. On the recipient side, this external outrage plays into the hands of elites in a traditional power structure, drawing energy from outrage at loss of status in a way that motivates widespread popular backlash. The backlash narrative alters public discourse, reinvigorates and reshapes traditional institutions, and in these ways locks in and perpetuates patterns that leave the progressive namers and shamers farther from their goals. Beyond arguing that this is a common pattern, I will also investigate the conditions and tactics that are less likely to spur counterproductive backlash.

AbstractHuman rights advocates continue to use shaming as a central tool despite recognizing its declining effectiveness. Shame is indeed a potent motivator, but its effects are often counterproductive for this purpose. Especially when wielded by cultural outsiders in ways that appear to condemn local social practices, shaming is likely to produce anger, resistance, backlash, and deviance from outgroup norms, or denial and evasion. Shaming can easily be interpreted as a show of contempt, which risks triggering fears for the autonomy and security of the group. In these circumstances, established religious and elite networks can employ traditional normative counter-narratives to recruit a popular base for resistance. If this counter-mobilization becomes entrenched in mass social movements, popular ideology, and enduring institutions, the unintended consequences of shaming may leave human rights advocates farther from their goal.

Whether economic interdependence is a cause of war or peace constitutes a central debate in international politics. Two major approaches advance diametrically opposed claims: liberal theory holds that interdependence between states promotes peace by increasing the costs of war; realist theory argues that interdependence is just another word for vulnerability, a condition that states may try to escape by seizing the resources and markets they need for self-sufficiency. Considerable evidence supports both of these claims. In Economic Interdependence and War, Dale Copeland proposes to resolve this stalemate by showing that interdependence promotes peace when states expect mutually beneficial trade to continue, but creates incentives for war when at least one of the states expects that trade trends will leave it dangerously vulnerable. Notwithstanding this book's major theoretical contributions and its impressive historical research, it leaves open several important questions about how to move forward with its agenda of theoretical development and testing.