Why does the Spiral Model of Change in Human Rights fail

to explain Venezuela’s backslide in compliance of human

rights norms?

Abstract

Under the Spiral Model of Change in Human Rights (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink; 1999,
2013) Venezuela meets many of the criteria described that would make it an ideal
target for the transnational networks that push for compliance of human rights norms.
This research aims to explore the characteristics of the Venezuelan case and the
nature of its contestation strategy to argue for the need to incorporate a broader
approach to compliance that includes the recognition of the role of transnational
counter-networks that challenge the effects desired under the Spiral Model.

Index

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................2

MODES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION ...........................................................................7

Coercion................................................................................................................................ 7

Incentives.............................................................................................................................. 8

Persuasion and Discourse ............................................................................................... 10

VENEZUELA’S CONTESTATION STRATEGY .........................................................16

THE SPIRAL MODEL AND VENEZUELA ..................................................................21

CONCLUSIONS ...........................................................................................................26

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................28
 INTRODUCTION

The Spiral Model of Change in Human Rights (Risse, Ropp & Sikkink, 1999, 2013)
has been called by several authors who have applied it in their research as a reliable
and consistent theoretical framework for the understanding of the socialization process
of human rights norms and the push for greater commitment and compliance with
those norms. Within a society of States, understood as a group of States that “conceive
themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another,
and share in the working of common institutions” (Bull, 1977, p. 13), norms and ideas
play a key role in the organizing of interstate relations and in the determination of State
behavior.
The Spiral Model nurtures itself from the content of these ideas by relying on the
existence of a consolidated international human rights regime which is expressed
through international law, global institutions, rhetoric, and symbolisms that prove the
acceptance of human rights globally. It is in this context that the model allows the spiral
to move forward and push for changes in the behavior of States, as different actors
within the global society mobilize to bring a State to comply with global norms.
In this research, I will explore the case of Venezuela and its declining human rights
situation. It represents an interesting case since it possesses several factors that
would make it a vulnerable target for the mobilizations that the Spiral Model theorizes,
and even after years of intense international pressure and transnational advocacy, the
situation continues to deteriorate. After presenting the case and its current standing in
the Spiral Model, I will describe the modes of social interaction that have been pushing
for compliance in Venezuela. I will then analyze the contestation mechanisms that the
government has implemented to counteract the pressure of the advocacy networks,
and finally I will introduce the concept of counter-networks and explain why it is
important to observe the challenges to the socialization of human rights norms looking
beyond the actions of the target country, and to incorporate a more structural vision of
contestation.
The Spiral is comprised by five key stages: 1) Repression, understood as the
repressive phase of authoritarian regimes that operated in a vacuum of information
regarding human rights violations, which resulted in ineffective transnational activism.
2) Denial, the initial phase of the advocacy process where lobbying by international
activists is the main mode of social interaction, which is faced by a refusal from the

2
regime to recognize human rights norms. 3) Tactical Concessions, consists of a
regime that attempts to reduce the intensity of international pressure through small
gestures of increased tolerance for more liberal practices. 4) Prescriptive Status is
reached when States accept human rights norms, particularly through treaty
ratifications, and by incorporating elements of human rights to its domestic policy and
rhetoric. And 5) Rule-consistent behavior, which consists of sustained compliance and
substantial changes in behavior. It is through multiple socialization mechanisms that
a network of domestic activists, transnational civil society, international organizations,
and norm-complying States act to push, persuade, or incentivize a rule-breaking
government to recognize, adopt and follow human rights principles and prescriptions.
Since the model was theorized in 1999, several case studies across different regions,
regime-types and rights categories have shown the strengths and limitations of the
spiral model, with an overall trend that seems to demonstrate its general effectiveness
to explain change in human rights and to inform policy and strategy decisions by key
actors.
However, the case of Venezuela offers a challenging scenario for the mechanisms
of the spiral. As it will be explained in the following section, the toolkit that the Spiral
Model recognizes has been in effect at a growing level for decades. The Venezuelan
NGO, PROVEA described in its annual human rights report for the period 1997-1998
that while civil and political rights were still far from being fully respected in the country,
that they were documenting an improvement in the behavior of the State thanks to the
domestic and international pressure put on the government1, suggesting that
Venezuela was susceptible to the pressures of the socialization mechanisms
described in the Spiral Model. However, that trend was reversed after the election of
former president Hugo Chávez, the constitutional reform process of 1999 and the
attempted coup d’état against President Chavez in 2002. While PROVEA recognized
that the new Constitution was far more advanced when it came to the protection of a
wide range of human rights, the new administration had already shown a disregard for
the rule of law, a hostile attitude towards the political opposition and freedom of
expression2.

1 PROVEA, “Balance de la Situación de Derechos Humanos”, October 1998.

2
Op cit

3
 Another key factor that impacts the efficacy of the Spiral Model and the mechanisms
for socialization is whether a country has ratified, and therefore accepted, the human
rights instruments that enshrine the norms that they are expected to comply with
(Clark, 2013). It is noteworthy that Venezuela has been committed to these norms for
decades since it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1978 and the
Convention against Torture in 19933. At the Inter American level, it ratified the Inter
American Covenant of Human Rights (also known as Covenant of San José de Costa
Rica) in 1977 and it also participated in the adoption of the Inter American Democratic
Charter in 2001. We could argue then that Venezuela, before 2014, would very much
fit in phase 4 of the Spiral Model, as it had not only committed to human rights norms
and democratic principles through the acceptance of international treaties and
compliance mechanisms, but since It had enshrined those principles and norms in its
own national constitution and incorporated the language of human rights, making them
a part of political life and government affairs.
However, after the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, with a delicate political situation
caused by the sudden disappearance of Venezuela’s strongman and a very slim
electoral victory of Nicolás Maduro in an election that was followed by accusations of
fraud and widespread protests, together with already deepening social and economic
problems, the new administration became even more repressive. It is arguable that
the first wave of protests against the government in 2014 was the first severe breaking
point of the rule of law in the country after almost a decade and a half of gradual
deterioration, where cases of arbitrary detention and persecution of political opponents
had already been denounced and recognized by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention and the Inter American Commission of Human Rights. The aftermath of the
protests left more than 3300 protestors arrested and 42 dead in the context of
overwhelmingly peaceful activities, which were faced by the militarization of cities,
excessive use of force by security forces and the mobilization of paramilitary groups
loyal to the government.4
The sudden worsening of the situation of civil and political rights in 2014 was
reflected in the reporting of several NGOs, including Freedom House which reduced

3
OHCHR, “UN Treaty Bodies Database”, website consulted on 12th August, 2021.
4Observatorio Venezolano de la Conflictividad Social, “Conflictividad Social en Venezuela 2014”, 19th
January, 2015.

4
Venezuela’s score in Freedom in the World 2015 “due to the government’s repressive
response to antigovernment demonstrations, including violence by security forces, the
politicized arrests of opposition supporters, and the legal system’s failure to protect
basic due process rights for all detained Venezuelans.” (Freedom House, 2015, p. 13).
Since then, the status of civil and political rights as well as the humanitarian situation
continued to worsen. “Following a strong performance by the opposition in 2015
legislative elections, the legislature’s powers were curtailed by a politicized judiciary,
and in 2017 the body was supplanted by a new National Constituent Assembly that
serves the executive’s interests.” (Freedom House, 2018). This has been
accompanied by a sustained harassment campaign against independent media
outlets which were forced to close while many journalists left the country due to threats.
Online journalism has also become more challenging over the years due to cyber-
attacks and judicial persecution.5
Venezuela has been downgraded by The Economist’s Democracy Index from a
Hybrid Regime (with a score of 5.42 in 2006 and 5.00 in 2015) to an Authoritarian
Regime (with a score of 3.87 in 2017 and 2.76 in 2020). Other organizations have
shown similar trends in their indexes, including Freedom House, which demoted
Venezuela to a “Partly Free” country in 1999, and then to “Not Free” in 2017; and the
Bertelsmann Transformation Index which gave Venezuela a Democracy Status Score
of 5.2 in 2006, 4.0 in 2016 and 3.1 in 2020.6
While the government has not abandoned the language of human rights, it has
adopted strong contestation strategies which will be explored further in this paper,
which include the denunciation of aggression by domestic and foreign actors which
justify repressive measures, the use of the principles of “National Sovereignty” and
“Non-Intervention in Internal Affairs” to deflect international criticism and scrutiny, and
the promotion of alternative frameworks of human rights through an active participation
in international forums, especially the UN Human Rights Council. It is note-worthy that
after being the target of criticism and after a series of unfavorable decisions by the
mechanisms of the Inter American Covenant of Human Rights, Venezuela pulled itself

5 Reporters Without Borders, “Venezuela”, website consulted on 14th August, 2021.

6 Bertelsmann Sitftung, “Transformation Atlas”, website consulted on 14TH August 2021.

5
out of the jurisdiction of the Inter American Court of Human Rights 7, but it is still a party
to the Rome Statue and the International Criminal Court.
While Venezuela is in theory positioned in a in the Prescriptive Status phase of the
spiral due to its multiple ratifications of key human rights instruments and the
recognition of human rights norms and language, it has shown a sustained backslide
away from Rule-Consistent Behavior through extensive contestation strategies,
documented high levels of repression of human rights violations and alleged crimes
against humanity.8
At the same time, the sporadic releases of small groups of political prisoners and
the lifting of the proscription of the Mesa de Unidad Democrática ahead of a new round
of negotiations between the government and the opposition in August 2021 appear to
be examples of Tactical Concessions. But many of these gestures were followed by
further repressive measures and have not led to tangible improvements in the situation
of human rights in the country. Therefore, these instances appear to be mere attempts
to appease international pressure through concessions under certain circumstances,
but overall the government remains committed to its repressive policies, at least ahead
of the negotiations taking place now.
The purpose of this research is then to explore why the Spiral Model falls short to
explain why, in the active presence of multiple modes of social interaction, in a case
that would be deemed susceptible to those mechanisms under the revised version of
the theory (Risse & Ropp, 2013); the country continued to slide backwards on the
spiral. The research consisted of a review of a wide range of human rights reports
from NGOs and international organizations, journalistic publications, resolutions and
voting records of Venezuela and other relevant states in forums such as the OAS
Permanent Council and the UN Human Rights Council, and an analysis of rhetorical
and symbolic elements used by Venezuela in its contestation strategies.
To provide further insights into the operation of the transnational advocacy
networks, three interviews were conducted with Monika Le Roy, Senior Adviser to the
Secretary-General of the OAS; María Alejandra Aristeguieta, Venezuelan activist and
former Ambassador of the Interim Government of Venezuela to Switzerland; and

7 International Justice Resource Center, “Venezuela Denounces American Convention On Human Rights As
IACHR Faces Reform”, 19th September, 2019.
8 OHCHR; “A/HRC/45/33 Report of the independent international fact-finding mission on the Bolivarian

Republic of Venezuela”, 16th September, 2020.

6
Martha Grecia Tineo, General Coordinator of the Venezuelan NGO Justicia,
Encuentro y Perdón.

MODES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION

Coercion

As the authors of the Spiral Model point out, “State and non-state actors can be
coerced to comply with costly rules. Coercion does not leave them much choice but to
abide by the norms· (Risse & Ropp, 2013, p. 13). In the case of Venezuela, until 2013,
the main source of external enforcement of international human rights norms were the
rullings of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, which, as was mentioned before,
was denounced by President Chávez in 2012 as a biased and imprecise institution,
even amid the push from several members of the OAS at the time to reform the Court
(López Hualde, 2013).
Since then, the only institution with the power to make binding rulings based on
Venezuela’s international commitments is the International Criminal Court. While no
coercive action has been taken, there’s an ongoing preliminary examination called
“Venezuela I”. “In 2020, the Office [of the prosecution] concluded that there is a
reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity, particularly in the context of
detention, have been committed in Venezuela since at least April 2017”9 This means
that coercion is increasingly adding pressure, and it is becoming part of the global
strategy to push for compliance by the government. It is noteworthy that this case was
referred by a group of member-States of the OAS with the collaboration of the staff of
the institution, and that Venezuela has also referred a case, called “Venezuela II”,
which denounced the effects of unilateral coercive measures, demonstrating
Venezuela’s recognition of the jurisdiction and relevance of the ICC, despite its
dismissal10 of the statement of former ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, who stated in
10th August, 2021 that there is a basis to launch an investigation into alleged crimes
against humanity committed by Venezuelan officials since 201711.

9 International Criminal Court, “Venezuela I”, Website consulted on 14th August, 2021.
10 Associated Press, “Rechazan documento de la Fiscalía de CPI sobre Venezuela”, 12th August, 2021.
11 Trillo, Manuel; “La Fiscalía de la CPI considera que hay crímenes contra la humanidad en Venezuela al

menos desde 2017”, ABC Internacional, 12th August, 2021

7
 It is possible to argue then that coercion as a social mechanism has not yet played
a central role in the promotion of compliance with human rights norms, not only
because of Venezuela’s denunciation and withdrawal from the one international
tribunal that was involved in the situation, but also due to the lack of independence
and transparency of the judiciary, which has been denounced and reported by NGOs
and by several UN experts, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights and
the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers12,13, which
hinders the potential for constructive implementation of international rulings on human
rights.

Incentives

While coercion is limited by the prior acknowledgement of the norm and the
authority (either formal or moral) of the source of the enforcement, Incentive structures
extend beyond preexisting normative frameworks and may reach all kinds of regime
types, regardless of their prescriptive status. According to the authors “incentive
structures play an even more important role in moving state and non-state actors from
commitment to compliance. Utility calculations can be changed by raising the costs of
non-compliance.” (Risse & Ropp, 2013, p. 14).
According to the detailed timeline drafted by PROVEA14, there have been two
distinctive strategies to develop incentive structures. Since 2008, the United States
became the main promoter of targeted sanctions against those perceived as being
guilty of money laundering, drug trafficking or financing terrorism, but it wasn’t until
2014 that the first targeted sanctions motivated by the increasing repression and
human rights violations in the country were enacted. Until June 2019, 80 high-ranking
officials had been targeted by sanctions from the United States. Starting in 2017, the
European Union and some members of the Lima Group joined the U.S. and enacted
targeted sanctions as well.

12 United Nations, ”Venezuela must ensure judicial independence as Governmental pressure on judges grows,
says UN expert”, 8th February, 2019.
13 United Nations, “Expertos de la ONU: otro golpe del Presidente Chávez a la independencia de los

magistrados y abogados en Venezuela”, 16th December, 2009

14 Sutherland, Manuel; “Impacto y naturaleza real de las sanciones económicas impuestas a Venezuela”,

PROVEA , 12th June, 2019

8
 However, in 2017, following the election of Donald Trump, the U.S. adopted a
broader and tougher sanctions strategy that initially targeted Venezuela’s Central
Bank, the oil company PDVSA (the main State-owned company and source of income
of the State) and Venezuela’s sources of credit. In 2018, the first direct economic
sanctions were introduced by the White House, by blocking anyone who had business
in the U.S. from engaging in transactions of gold or actives with the Venezuelan
government, and then moved on to sanction more State-owned banks and companies,
which overall led to financial isolation, challenges to fulfill foreign debt payments and
contributed to the already dire economic and social situation in the country.
The impact of the sanctions was heightened after the designation of Juan Guaidó
as interim President of Venezuela following the widely questioned presidential
elections of 2018. The Lima Group, the United States, the European Union, the United
Kingdom, the OAS, among others recognized Guaidó as the Constitutionally legitimate
head of State of Venezuela, which in turn translated the political isolation of the regime
into further economic hurdles, including the refusal by the IMF to release funds due to
the political instability and uncertainty in the country and the withholding of Venezuelan
gold deposited in the Bank of England, which remains frozen15.
In spite of the heavy burden of sanctions, so far they haven’t shown tangible
success. By 2017, Venezuela was already going through a humanitarian crisis caused
mostly by the mishandling of the economy and a rapidly increasing inflation rate.
Therefore, the Venezuelan government was already highly vulnerable and, according
to the model, sensitive to material incentive structures. However, countermeasures by
Venezuela’s allies (namely Turkey, Russia, Iran and most importantly China) have
mitigated the impact of the financial isolation and external economic pressure by
providing substantial relief.16 This may partly explain the inefficacy of sanctions to force
behavior changes. Only a few signs of a potential breakthrough may be seen in the
ongoing negotiations between the government and the opposition, as the U.S. and the
E.U. have already offered an easing of sanctions after an agreement is reached.17

15 Al Jazeera, “UK government backs Guaido in Venezuela gold dispute”, 20th July, 2021.
16 Rendon, Moisés; “The Fabulous Five: How Foreign Actors Prop up the Maduro Regime in Venezuela”, Center
for Strategic and International Studies, 19th October, 2020.
17 Spinetto, Juan Pablo; “US, EU Willing to Review Venezuela Sanctions on Conditions”, Bloomberg, 25th June,

2021.

9
 Persuasion and Discourse

As the authors recognize, the original Spiral Model relied heavily on the power of
persuasion, and based on the revised version, it still is the preferred tool for
socialization of norms: “If persuasion works, it has an advantage over either coercion
or the manipulation of incentive structures in that it induces actors into voluntary
compliance with costly rules. Persuasion is also more long-lasting as a socialization
mechanism than manipulating incentive structures, since the latter leave actors’
interests untouched.” (Risse & Ropp, 2013, p. 14). While they state that persuasion is
rarely enough on its own to work in the real world, it has already been established here
that the efforts to name and shame the regime took place alongside other strategies.
As it was described in the introduction, the efforts to highlight the increasingly
repressive nature of the Venezuelan government over the last two decades have
been, before 2014, pushed forward almost exclusively by the domestic and
international civil society and by the local political opposition. Reports like “A Decade
Under Chávez” from Human Rights Watch, which documented the initial repressive
tendencies of the Bolivarian government, PROVEA’s annual human rights reports and
Freedom House’s yearly “Freedom in the World” reports all point to similar
conclusions: The government under Hugo Chávez undermined the separation of
power and concentrate in the executive, adopted a hostile attitude towards the
opposition, harassed and persecuted critics and human rights defenders and curtailed
pluralism in the media.
Alongside civil society, the political opposition was already rallying behind a platform
that went beyond challenging the ruling party for its policies or its ideology and was
also denouncing the undermining of democracy and basic freedoms in the country.
The greatest examples of this are the revocatory referendum called by the opposition
to unseat Chavez in 2004, and the creation of the Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD)
in 2008, an alliance of opposition parties on a platform rooted on democratic and
human rights principles.
Before 2014, the discussion of human rights in Venezuela in multilateral
organizations or international institutions was limited to the activities of the Inter
American system with two reports by the Commission documenting the situation of
human rights in 2003 and 2009, which also share the findings of the civil society
organizations. However, as it was described earlier, the series of rulings that

10
demonstrated violations to human rights and the rule of law in the country led to
Venezuela abandoning the jurisdiction of the Court in 2013, although the Commission
kept reporting on the situation of human rights.
After the wave of protests of 2014, with Nicolás Maduro in power and amidst an
already decaying economic and social situation, the government became increasingly
repressive, something that was met with an increasingly tough response from the
international community and the activist networks.
Marta Grecia Tineo, general coordinator of the Venezuela-based NGO Justicia,
Encuentro y Perdón, has described the activity of the domestic civil society
organizations in a context in which, in her own words, “there’s a plan to silence the
work of human rights organizations and to criminalize out work”, the coordination and
communication between organizations and with international civil society persisted. In
fact, while the situation in the country represents a great challenge due the general
decay of its condition and the repressive environment, she emphasizes that
mobilization around human rights has survived, with the latest example being a
concerted effort to resist a new State policy that requires NGOs to provide sensitive
information under the pretext of combating money laundering and terrorism.
Civil society not only became increasingly vocal, but its activism was strengthened
and expanded by two main factors: First, the humanitarian collapse in the country led
to the second largest refugee and migrant crisis in the world, only after Syria. It is now
estimated that over 5.4 million18 people have left a country that had 30 million
inhabitants in 201519. This not only amplified the reactions due to the impact on the
international public opinion regarding the situation in the country, but also brought the
direct testimony of the fleeing Venezuelans to several countries, especially other Latin
American nations that had not taken any action on the matter. While the mere arrival
of this big waves of migrants made headlines all over the hemisphere, Venezuelans
across the continent started to organize themselves under umbrella organizations,
NGOs and even under political parties who now had a presence abroad. NGOs like
Un Mundo Sin Mordaza and parties like Primero Justicia or Vente now had
representatives that amplified the demands of the Venezuelan migrants who were
denouncing both, the humanitarian crisis, and the human rights violations, and that

18 UNHCR, “Venezuela Situation”, consulted on 14th August, 2021

19 World Bank, “Population Total, Venezuela”, consulted on 14th August, 2021

11
could engage local politicians directly, in coordination with the human rights
organizations of the host countries that had been calling for action.
Alongside civil society, States and multilateral organizations also started to engage
the situation meaningfully. The first institution to take political action was the General-
Secretariat of the Organization of American States. According to Monika Le Roy,
Senior Advisor to the Secretary-General, the institution has a mandate to act
considering the events that had taken place in the Venezuela:
“The OAS General Secretariat would consider the situation in Venezuela
a threat to international peace and security in the region for a host of reasons.
These include the largest migration crisis in the world, outside a conflict
situation (…) In addition, there has been a significant resurgence of guerrilla
and terrorist groups, and organized crime throughout the mining regions in
the South, as well as a number of senior government officials who've been
indicted on drug trafficking charges and the implications for that. We have
also seen increasing discussions about the presence of malign foreign
military actors in the country. In the context of the Inter-American Democratic
charter, which would have been the Organization’s first point of interaction
on the situation in Venezuela, [the Regime] has violated Articles three and
four of the Democratic charter, which is namely the elements and principles
of representative democracy.”

As Ms. Le Roy describes, this assessment triggered an increasingly strong

mobilization effort on behalf of the OAS officials. As the situation continued to
worsen, the rhetoric of Luis Almagro, the Secretary-General of the OAS also got
tougher.
Since 2016, the General-Secretariat published four reports about human rights
and democracy in Venezuela, including a report which looked into the alleged
perpetration of crimes against humanity by the government through gross and
systematic human rights violations, which was the basis for the referral to the
International Criminal Court. Mr. Almagro also started to use harsher terms to
refer to the situation and to the regimes, becoming one of the first high level
officials to describe the regime type of Venezuela as a dictatorship, and has since
then appeared on panels and events alongside opposition figures and human
rights activists that denounce President Maduro and the government in
Venezuela.
Ms. Le Roy explains that the efforts from the General Secretariat were initially
motivated that the idea that “by shining a light on the situation in the country and

12
helping to articulate for member states, by providing access to information about
what was actually, in fact, happening on the ground, would help encourage
member states to take action”. After overcoming what she describes as a
traditional stance in the organization to promote consensus and a hesitance from
member-States to address directly the internal situation of a neighbor “out of a
sense of solidarity”, the Permanent Council approved resolutions confirming that
the subject needed to be addressed by the political bodies of the organization.
On this, Ms. Le Roy is confident that “the OAS has been an important part of the
conversation and helped to get the international community engaged on the
crisis, drawing awareness to actually encourage countries, almost force the
international community to actually engage on and address in the conversation
about the situation in the country”.
Ms. Le Roy said that one of the key steps that the OAS took was the
recognition of the interim government led by Juan Guaidó, after Venezuela’s
National Assembly:
““Venezuela is currently represented at the OAS by a representative of
the Interim Government, and so they have a significant voice in activities of
the Permanent Council and any particular statements that are made. The
Permanent Council did not recognize the outcome of the last election. Which
is why the interim government has been recognized here; because the
current Maduro regime is not recognized as legitimate.”

This means that the OAS has been a key component of the transnational
network by coordinating NGOs, the domestic democratic opposition, multilateral
organizations, and States. The output of reports and resolutions, the referral to
the ICC and the recognition of the interim government show that the mobilization
campaign was, at least to certain extent, a success within the hemisphere.
However, it is possible to ask if these results would have been possible without
the series of political changes that took place in different parts of the continent
and in South America especially.
María Alejandra Aristeguieta was deeply involved in negotiations with Latin
American and Europeans countries during the drafting of the resolutions on
Venezuela at the UNHRC and has been an advocate for several years,
addressing diplomats, State officials and other activist and following the progress
of the transnational campaign to pressure Venezuela. When asked what the main

13
obstacles to the coordination of an international response were, she immediately
pointed towards an ideological factor that directly influenced the way that States
behaved on the matter. While this could be seen across the board, the effect -
she said - was clearer on Latin American countries that had offered unconditional
support in the past, especially through the creation of the Lima Group, but that
would completely reverse their positions when there was an ideological shift in
leadership.
Key countries like Argentina and Brazil (which not only are two of the largest
economies in the region, but also members of the trading bloc MERCOSUR,
together with Venezuela), were led by political figures and parties that were quite
close to the Bolivarian government. After the electoral victory of Mauricio Macri
in 2015 and the impeachment of Dilma Rouseff in 2016, both countries
completely changed their positions towards Venezuela. The political volatility of
the region and how it impacts the way that they understand questions regarding
human rights and the principles of non-intervention can still be seen today.
Argentina went from being one of Venezuela’s closest allies when it was led by
Cristina Fernandez, to one of the main proponents of the Lima Group and part of
the group that referred Venezuela’s case to the ICC under Mauricio Macri. Now,
after Marci was defeated by Alberto Fernandez, Argentina is abstaining on all
resolutions regarding Venezuela at the OAS, it abandoned the Lima Group and
has withdrawn from the ICC prosecution. Similar changes can be observed with
the victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018 in Mexico, who has also
changed the country’s stance and has decided to start abstaining as well. On the
contrary, Uruguay, that used to abstain or vote against these resolutions, started
to support them since Luis Lacalle Pou became president in 2020.
While the fluctuations in the support for action at a multilateral level should not
diminish the relevance and impact of the efforts of the OAS staff and the
transnational civil society to mobilize the international community, it could be
taken as a worrying symptom of an unconsolidated commitment to the promotion
and protection of human rights.
Similar patterns can be identified at the United Nations, where Venezuela has
a much larger number of partners, who are even more powerful that their
traditional regional allies. Akin to what happened in the OAS, the first report that
emerged from the OHCHR was drafted as an initiative by the High Commissioner,

14
Zeid Raad Al Hussein, following the wave of protest of 201720. However, it wasn’t
until 2018, when a follow-up report was published and after the creation of the
Lima Group, that a resolution was approved for the first time in the Human Rights
Council. Since then, the Council has remained engaged and has taken further
action by creating a Fact-Finding Mission in September 2019 and renewing its
mandate for another two years in October 2020, while special procedures have
continued to express their concerns.21
However, while the voting results for resolutions at the OAS reflects a sizeable
majority support for them, the Council remains heavily split, to the point where, in
the 42nd and 45th sessions, two separate resolutions on Venezuela were
approved. One drafted by the Lima Group and the European States, which
include the mandate for the Fact-Finding Mission and a strong condemnation of
Venezuela’s government.22 The other one was drafted by Venezuela’s allies in
the Council, which include Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, Algeria
and the State of Palestine, and while it expresses concerns, it doesn’t target the
government in strong terms, it seeks to promote technical assistance and praises
the commitment and efforts of the regime.23 These resolutions were also
supported by Venezuela itself, given that it was elected as a member of the
UNHRC in October 2019, a decision by the General Assembly of the United
Stations that stood in stark contrast to the recognition of the interim government
by the OAS only a couple of months earlier, and the suspension of Venezuela
from the trading block MERCOSUR24 in August 2017.
When one observes this decision by the General Assembly, the inactivity of
the UN Security, which hosted a debate on the situation in Venezuela in 2017
that was boycotted by members like Russia and China as well as by the
Venezuelans25, and the duplicity of the output of the Human Rights Council, one
may question the effectiveness of an inconsistent approach. But the success in
introducing the issue of Venezuela in the global agenda, especially considering

20 OHCHR, “Human rights violations and abuses in the context of protests

in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela from 1 April to 31 July 2017”, 30th August, 2017.
21 OHCHR, “UN Experts: Venezuela must stop attacks against civil society”, 18th December, 2020
22 UNHRC, Resolutions A/HRC/42/L.4/Rev.1 and A/HRC/RES/45/20.
23 UNHRC, Resolutions A/HRC/RES/45/2 and A/HRC/42/L.38/Rev.1
24 MERCOSUR, “Decisión sobre la suspensión de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela en el MERCOSUR en

aplicación del Protocolo de Ushuaia sobre Compromiso Democrático en el MERCOSUR” 5th August, 2017.
25 UN Web TV, “The situation in Venezuela - Security Council, Arria formula meeting”, 13th November, 2017.

15
that the first UN report was not published until 2017, and after many years of
advocacy by civil society, still shows an active and fast-growing naming and
shaming campaign that, based on the Spiral Model, may very well impact the
behavior of a non-compliant country, especially on one with prescriptive status,
as is the case of Venezuela (Clark, 2013).

VENEZUELA’S CONTESTATION STRATEGY

The revised version of the Spiral Model (2013) introduced a series of case
studies and critical analysis that added depth to the model. One of the main
criticisms to the logic of the original version was that “ not only failed to take note
of the dialogical character of the logic of persuasion, but lacked a concept of
persuasion allowing for the possibility that various domestic and international
audiences might actually accept the arguments of norm-violating governments.”
(Jetschke & Liese, 2013, p. 35). This notion was incorporated based on the
sizeable number of case studies that were conducted between the publication of
The Power of Human Rights (1999) and The Persistent Power of Human Rights
(2013), and offers a useful theoretical framework to interpret Venezuela’s efforts
to block the effects of the Spiral Model.
As it was described, while the human rights situation in the country has
deteriorated and went from the gradual undermining of the rule of law, to the
alleged perpetration of crimes against humanity, Venezuela remained actively
engaged with the international human rights system, kept its commitments and
prescriptive status under Inter-American and global instruments, and used the
language of human rights and democracy at the domestic and supranational
levels. But at the same time, Venezuela has implemented a series of strategies
to deflect or to counter the international and domestic pressure due to its human
rights record.
Following the theorization of Jetschke and Liese and by analyzing the content
of the statements by Venezuelan officials, it is clear that part of the strategy is to
challenge the framework that advocacy networks use to label the acts of the
government as violations. ““Justiications” are effective counter-frames. In the
case of justifications, actors accept their responsibility for a particular act that is

16
labeled as “wrongdoing” but reject the evaluation that the act itself was wrong.”
(Jetschke & Liese, 2013, p. 36). On 10th March, 2020 the Venezuelan
ambassador gave a Statement after the High Commissioner for Human Rights
gave an update on her report on the situation of human rights in the country, in
which he said that “resolution 42/25 approved on 27 th September, 2019 under
agenda item 4 of this Council, is interventionist and, therefore, has been
categorically rejected by our government”26. By invoking the principle of non-
interference, the Venezuelan delegation is effectively challenging the human
rights framework that motivated resolution 42/25 and the creation of the fact-
finding mission. This is a recurrent theme that is not just applied to counter their
critics, but also the denunciations of violations against other countries through its
participation, for example on the statements of the “Group of Like-Minded
Countries” at the Council.27
Similarly, during the interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s report on
Venezuela on 15th July, 2020 “Venezuela (…) reiterated its rejection of specific
reports on sovereign States, as the practice attacked the principles of
multilateralism on which the work of the Council, and the entire United Nations,
was based. The principles of universality, objectivity and non-selectivity must be
applied, to avoid the manipulation and double standards that were at play in the
creation of this resolution.”28 In this statement, not only Venezuela promoted the
issue of sovereignty to oppose resolutions that seek inquiries or accountability,
but also relies heavily on the language of human rights to do so. This is almost
completely consistent with its voting record in the Council as, during 2020, they
opposed every country-specific resolution.
Another justification put forward by the government has been the
characterization of its critics as violent, dangerous and threatening to the
democratic order.
“One might even argue that, today, threats to democracy constitute a
legitimate justiication for some forms of human rights violations. (…) There
are numerous empirical examples that show how – on a discursive and

26 Statement of the Venezuelan Ambassador at the UNHRC, as seen on the website of the Venezuelan Ministry
of the People’s Power for Foreign Affaris, 10th March, 2020.
27 Inboden, Rana Siu; “Authoritarian States: Blocking civil society participation in the United Nations”, Robert

Strauss Center, February 2019.

28 UN Geneva, “Human Rights Council holds panel discussion on upholding the human rights of prisoners,

including women prisoners and offenders, and starts interactive dialogue on Venezuela”, 15th July, 2020.

17
 political level – democracy and human rights can be played out against one
another.” (Jetshcke & Liese, 2013, p. 40).

This device has proved to be effective as a contestation method as it forces

the advocacy networks to demonstrate that the justification is not valid in order to
allow the socialization strategies to work (Jetschke & Liese, 2013). On a
statement from 30th August, 2017 at the Human Rights Council, the Venezuelan
ambassador talked about “the fascist and violent practices that sectors of the
Venezuelan opposition have executed, seeking to destroy the democratic order
and to disturb the peace and tranquility of the Venezuelan people”29, and in a
statement by Venezuela’s foreign minister to the UNHRC on 3rd June, 2019 he
stated that “the government of President Maduro has bet on dialogue and
however, the government of President Maduro is always blamed. We are waiting
for the Venezuelan opposition to sit down to talk, but they don’t do it because they
have instructions”.
As the networks of activists, international organizations and norm-complying
States have continued to assert pressure on Venezuela, particularly on the issue
of the release of political prisoners and the protection of freedom of expression,
freedom of association and the right to protest, the efforts to securitize its internal
political conflict don’t seem to be effective.
However, since 2017 the implementation of wider economic sanctions by the
United States and the European Union have given Venezuela a new set of
arguments. It is important to state for context that while reports from NGOs like
PROVEA explain that the wider structural economic and social problems that
Venezuela faces not only were not caused by the sanctions, but started to
develop several years before, the imposition of wider unilateral coercive
measures did contribute to the worsening of the humanitarian conditions and the
inability of the government to address them30. Relying also on the statements by
UN Special Rapporteurs who also call for the lifting of economic sanctions that

29 Statement of the Venezuelan Ambassador at the UNHRC, as seen on the website of the Venezuelan Ministry
of the People’s Power for Foreign Affaris, 30th August, 2017
30 Sutherland, Manuel; “Impacto y naturaleza real de las sanciones económicas impuestas a Venezuela”,

PROVEA, 12th June, 2019.

18
impact the humanitarian situation of the Venezuelan people31, the government
has been able to create a parallel dialogue to its human rights record, and push
for a counter-stigmatization strategy that seeks to divert the pressure towards
those who are stigmatizing the Venezuelan government as a human rights
violator (Adler-Nissen, 2014). Counter-Stigmatization, as theorized by Adler-
Nissen, has proven to be an effective strategy for countries that are targeted by
the socializing modes of the Spiral Model and to stop its progress, with Cuba
being the most prominent and successful example.
The area of unilateral coercive measures not only fit the counter-frame that
Venezuela and its allies seek to promote in opposition to the liberal democracies
of the West and their strategies to name and shame violators, but also provides
Venezuela with a field within human rights to build a reputation as a “good
citizen”, committed to the norms of human rights and actively engaged with
international human rights mechanisms, which may lead to a better treatment on
behalf of the international community and institutions, and to also contribute as a
block to the effects of the Spiral Model (Lebovic & Voeten, 2006).
In his statement during the 46th Session of the Human Rights Council on 10 th
March 2021, and following the presentation of the report of the Fact-Finding
Mission on Venezuela, the Venezuelan ambassador started his statement in a
way that concisely summarizes Venezuela’s contestation:
“Venezuela would wish to come to this Council to talk about the advances
and cooperation on human rights that we display with absolute confidence.
My country would wish also to come to debate about the impact of the illegal
unilateral coercive measures, and to count on the solidarity of this forum to
demand the lifting of these sanctions, that impose limitations to the
enjoyment of human rights by my people, and that amount to crimes against
humanity. My country would wish to come to this session to discuss
constructively numerous points that could help in the debate on human rights
from a positive perspective (…). However, we must intervene today to
denounce and reject categorically once again the perversion of mechanisms
that are created with the goal of attacking countries and to divide the world
between those who are allegedly good and those who are allegedly bad, with
that Manichean, inquisitorial and arrogant logic that empires have to classify
those who please them, and those who oppose them. Based on this hateful

31OHCHR, “Preliminary findings of the visit to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by the Special Rapporteur
on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights”, 12th February,
2021.

19
 classification that I just described, my country would proudly be on the side
of those who oppose the hegemony.”32

The Ambassador continued to decry the Fact-Finding mission as an immoral

attempt to undermine the country and effectively covered all the points that have
been highlighted as Venezuela’s contestation strategy. To summarize,
Venezuela is challenging the framework of the transnational advocacy networks
by providing justifications that negate its wrongdoing while pointing to other
normative principles. Respect for national sovereignty, the securitization of its
domestic political conflict, the delegitimization of international accountability
mechanisms are all aimed to avoid criticism and its potential consequences.
These tactics stand in contrast with the already described commitment of
Venezuela to several international human rights instruments, its active
participation in forums like the Human Rights Council and by referring an
alternative case on unilateral coercive measures to the ICC, its efforts to present
itself as a human rights defender, and its counter-stigmatization strategy which
combined aim to create the image of a “good citizen” and avoid stigma and its
consequences.
Assessing whether Venezuela’s contestation strategies are effective may lead
to diverging results. On the one hand, it is made clear by the vast number of
reports and statements by domestic and international civil society, by
international organizations and the results of processes under accountability
mechanisms such as UN Working Groups and the signs that an investigation will
be opened by the ICC, that Venezuela has not been able to deflect criticism and
to effectively counteract the normative framework that perceives its actions as
human rights violations. It has also felt the impact of the stigmatization, especially
through the challenges to access international credit, funding, and investment,
which is one of the main reasons why States seek to build a reputation as being
norm-complying (Lebovic & Voeten, 2009).
On the other hand, as Ms. Tineo explains, the lack of progress despite the vast
international mobilization comes down to some of the key factors that were
described: “Venezuela’s foreign policy has been very clever to create alliances

32UN Web TV, “ID: Fact-finding Mission on Venezuela - 29th Meeting, 46th Regular Session Human Rights
Council”, 10th March, 2021.

20
and strengthen its communications strategy. It created partnership in multilateral
organizations in order to deal with the [international pressure] and uses the issue
of sovereignty that ends up stopping stronger reactions in situations like ours”.

THE SPIRAL MODEL AND VENEZUELA

To recap the findings of the research so far, the case of Venezuela stands out
for a series of reasons. First, as it was shown through the description of the
modes of social interaction, Venezuela has been the target of transnational
advocacy networks that documented the violations and asserted an increasing
level of pressure on Venezuela
The high level of violations and the allegations on crimes against humanity as
well as the wide range of contestation mechanisms that Venezuela has been
executing stand in contrast with its extensive use of human rights language and
its numerous commitments to human rights norms through the ratification of
international treaties. It has also demonstrated a sustained engagement with
human rights institutions such as the UNHCR and the ICC.
The results of the high pressure from the international community have
remained extremely limited, and possibly only two tangible gestures may be
recognized as progress today: 1) The ongoing negotiations taking place in
Mexico, which have the support of key actors in the transnational network such
as the U.S. and the E.U., although similar gestures like the release of small
groups of political prisoners that have taken place in the past, were followed by
further repression. 2) The agreement33,34 between the government and the World
Food Program to start delivering assistance after years of rejecting any kind of
humanitarian aid35. However, it is unclear to which extent the decision was really
motivated by a push for compliance or if the added pressure of the effects of the
COVID-19 pandemic may have enabled an agreement without the perceived
symbolic weight that the decision would’ve had under normal circumstances, or

33 García Cano, Regina & Rueda, Jorge; “Venezuela's Maduro begins allowing aid against hunger, virus”, ABC
News, 23rd April, 2021.
34 UN News, “World Food Programme reaches deal to supply food to 185,000 children in Venezuela”, 20th

April, 2021.
35 Fieser, Ezra; Yapur, Nicolle & Zerpa, Fabiola; “Maduro Is Blocking UN Food Aid Into Crisis-Ravaged

Venezuela”, Bloomberg, 11th December, 2020

21
that it may even strengthen Maduro’s position when paired to the provision of
vaccines which are supplied by COVAX, also an international assistance scheme.
In other words, the prospects of tangible improvements in the situation of
human rights and the rule of law in Venezuela remain slim, in spite of the factors
that would make Venezuela a vulnerable State for socialization under the Spiral
Model.
As it was described before, Venezuela’s material vulnerability, not just for not
being a great power, but also due to its grave social and economic problems that
pre-existed the sanctions and that would theoretically make Venezuela more
susceptible to material incentives, including to access to humanitarian aid, which
the government rejected for years through the humanitarian crisis. However, as
it was pointed out, the assistance of close allies – which can also be considered
non-compliant countries – has mitigated this variable by providing financial relief
and material assistance.
Furthermore, the introduction of material incentives through sanctions may
have had an adverse effect. On one hand, it gave Venezuela a reasonable
argument for its counter-stigmatization and justification strategies. On the other
hand, sanctions may have resulted in an overjustification effect that pushes the
targeted country further from compliance if the sanctions are perceived as a
mechanism of control that undermines self-determination (Goodman & Jinks,
2013). Moreover, while there are cases of materially vulnerable countries that can
fend off international pressure, this happens only in contexts where there’s no
significant internal mobilization or when the target country doesn’t care at all
about its international status (Risse & Sikkink, 2013), and neither of these
conditions are true in this case.
Venezuela also has several traits that would increase its social vulnerability.
Its prescriptive status due to the ratification of multiple key human rights
instruments makes it more sensitive to criticism and scrutiny (Clark, 2013). Before
the absolute collapse of the democratic order, Venezuela’s democratic character
also made it more vulnerable, especially in scenarios like this one where there
was an active domestic mobilization (Risse & Ropp, 2013), and its contestation
strategies suggest that it is concerned about stigma and the perception that the
international community has regarding its human rights situation, “the application
of social pressure works, because actors care about their standing in a social

22
group. And the more the relevant community cares about human rights, the more
the target is vulnerable to external (and internal) pressures to comply with these
norms.” (Risse & Ropp, 2013, p. 21).
It is noteworthy however that regarding Venezuela’s management of stigma
and social pressure, as it is in the case of its material vulnerability, its strategies
rely on its relations, not only with other States, but also with friendly civil society
organizations and with select human rights experts and mechanisms, such as the
Special Rapporteur On The Negative Impact Of The Unilateral Coercive
Measures and the Independent Expert On The Promotion Of A Democratic And
Equitable International Order, that were the only special procedures allowed to
visit the country as they deal with issues compatible with Venezuela’s
contestation mechanisms. As it was explained before, at the UNHRC there is a
high level of coordination within groups of States that share the principles that are
part of Venezuela’s contestation strategy. The “Group of Like-Minded Countries”
for example, has worked to execute similar strategies in a wide range of situations
that are analyzed by the Council, and has pushed back against initiatives to
scrutinize under the pretext of national sovereignty, non-interference and to
promote what they understand to be more positive and constructive approaches
(Inboden, 2019).
This is also where the explanations that María Alejandra Aristeguieta gives to
the challenges around international mobilizations gains further meaning. Looking
back to the response of the Latin American countries in conjunction with
Venezuela’s contestation effort, it is interesting to understand how the two are
closely intertwined and coordinated. At the State level, groups like the Bolivarian
Alliance of Peoples (ALBA)36 have articulated the same elements of the
Venezuelan contestation and joined the denial efforts with regards to the status
of democracy and the rule of law in the country.
Similarly, groups like the Grupo de Puebla37 and the Foro de Sao Paulo38 that
group political parties, civil society organizations and high-level politicians

36 ALBA-TCP; “ALBA-TCP rechaza tendencioso informe elaborado por denominada misión de determinación de
hechos sobre DDHH en Venezuela”, 18th September, 2020.
37 Grupo de Puebla; “Declaración Del Grupo De Puebla Sobre Las Elecciones En Venezuela”, 10th December,

2020.
38 Foro de Sao Paulo; “Llamado Mundial para el respeto a Venezuela por parte de la Unión Europea”, 13th July,

2020.

23
(including heads of State) from across the continent have also played an
important role not just at forums like the United Nations, but also at the domestic
level in each country of the region, and in different advocacy spaces.
While identifying the existence of diverging interpretations on what human
rights are, how they should be implemented and enforced and on what role
should international organizations have is neither new nor groundbreaking.
However, the degree of coordination and institutionalization that exists around
the contestation efforts of a particular country has a direct connection to the
effects of the Spiral Model on said country, especially considering that these
groups not only address this positions to deflect criticism from Venezuela, but
similar strategies are applied in the cases of Cuba and Nicaragua, two countries
that have also been targets of pressure from transnational networks and that may
also be interesting case studies for a research of this type.
This is made especially relevant by the active participation of China in some of
these groups and in the promotion of its counter-discourse, including while
discussing Venezuela39. “This discourse challenges the universality and
generalizability of human rights and criticizes the individualist approach to human
rights as Western or Euro-centric” (Risse & Sikkink, 2013, p. 285). China has
therefore demonstrated a strong interest in influencing the design and work of
human rights institutions (Kinzelbach, 2013; Foot & Inboden, 2014). “The
Chinese government has effectively exploited the distinction between the civil
and political rights long favored and promoted by the West, and the economic,
social and cultural rights more favored among authoritarian and developing
countries. It has done this with a considerable degree of success, not only to
defend itself but also to shift the center of gravity of both the normative debate
and the practical application of human rights.” (Busan & Zhang, 2020).
The greater implications of this dynamic can be interpreted through the
application of social identity theory and the principle that “social groups strive to
achieve a positively distinctive identity. When a group’s identity is no longer
favorable, it may pursue one of several strategies: social mobility, social
competition, or social creativity” (Shevchenko & Welch, 2010, p. 66). Under the

39UN Web TV, “ID: Fact-finding Mission on Venezuela - 29th Meeting, 46th Regular Session Human Rights
Council”, 10th March, 2021.

24
premise of the Spiral Model, countries that lack a positively distinctive identity
under the normative framework of human rights may adopt different strategies to
reach that status, adopting a strategy that the authors call “social mobility”, which
“emulates the values and practices of the higher-status group” (Shevchenko &
Welch, 2010, p. 67), in this case by socializing human rights norms and moving
towards compliance. However, Venezuela and its partners have engaged in a
different strategy: “social competition” which “tries to equal or surpass the
dominant group in the area on which its claims to superior status rest.”
(Shevchenko & Welch, 2010, p. 67). If this is an accurate observation, then the
Spiral Model, which relies on the international community’s coordinated efforts to
enact changes in behavior by promoting a cohesive normative framework, is now
facing an increasingly equal effort to promote an, if not opposite, considerably
different set of principles.
The limitation of the Spiral Model and how it is theorized could lie then on the
scope that its studies and implementation adopt. So far, scholars have focused
on assessing individual case studies, small comparisons or conducted
quantitative studies where each country still stands isolated as a value in the
variables. The emergence of contestation mechanisms and blocks to the
progress of the Spiral that go beyond the actions of a target State and instead
rely on what could be described as “counter-networks” that not only aim to deflect
international social pressure, but also seek to promote their own normative
framework demands that the transnational networks contemplated in the Spiral
Model address the problem of the gap in compliance not as a case by case issue,
but rather as a systemic challenge to the promotion of compliance with human
rights norms.
As the authors of the model put it: “the application of social pressure works,
because actors care about their standing in a social group. And the more the
relevant community cares about human rights, the more the target is vulnerable
to external (and internal) pressures to comply with these norms.” (Risse & Ropp,
2013, p. 21). Similarly, Adler-Nissen identifies as a crucial factor for these kinds
of strategies that “there is the degree to which the norms underpinning the stigma
are shared. (…) If these norms are shared and the moral authority of the
stigmatizer is recognized, we can expect that stigmatized states want to become
part of the "civilized group" and will try to overcome their stigma or try to pass as

25
normals. If states do not share the norms underpinning their stigma, they are
more likely to reject the norms and seek solidarity among the deviant” (Adler-
Nissen, 2014, p. 154). The Spiral Model then should incorporate a greater vision
of the global dynamics about contestation to compliance, which instead of being
a merely defensive mechanism against the forces of the socializing networks, has
instead evolved into “counter-networks” which adopt a more proactive attitude to
the construction of alternative normative frameworks at a global scale.

CONCLUSIONS

This research seeks to understand why the Spiral Model of Change in Human
Rights falls short in explaining why there haven’t been signs of increased
compliance of human rights norms by the government of Venezuela, in the
presence of multiple modes of social interaction and given the characteristics that
would make Venezuela a vulnerable target of the Spiral.
The description of the socialization mechanisms active in Venezuela
throughout the years sets the stage for a case that has been introduced into the
high-level agenda of human rights, with extensive efforts to persuade and socially
influence the government through naming and shaming, and with extensive
participation of civil society organizations, the domestic opposition, States, and
international organizations.
In contrast, the explanation of Venezuela’s contestation strategies illustrates
the effective mechanism that the government has been able to implement to block
to a certain degree the effects of the transnational advocacy networks, most
importantly, in coordination with other States and civil society actors. However,
the exclusive use of the revised version of the Spiral Model and the theoretical
contribution of other scholar is still not enough to explain why the government has
been able to resist the intense international pressure by looking exclusively at
Venezuela as an isolated example.
It is when we incorporate a greater vision of the current dynamic of the debates
in human rights, the understanding of the coordinated counter-networks of
advocacy that compete against the socializing efforts (through both, social and
material pressure) under the Spiral Model, and the inclusion of the role of China

26
as major player in the dialogical nature of human rights socialization that it is
possible to provide an explanatory framework.
The original version of the Spiral Model in The Power of Human Rights
published in 1999, as the authors recognize, was too rooted in the post-Cold War
context and liberalization processes of the third wave of democratization. By
2013, The Persistent Power of Human Rights introduced the realities of the post
9/11 international order, recognized the dialogical and bidirectional process of
norm socialization, and incorporated the question of contestation and blocks that
stopped countries from moving from commitment to compliance.
Now, as Joseph Nye (2018) puts it, “the human-rights regime may face a
tougher environment, but that is not the same as a collapse.” This research
doesn’t aim to discredit a model that has been studied and verified extensively
and that is a useful tool for policy makers and activists. Instead, it intends to
contribute to the understanding of the core subject of the Spiral Model, hoping
that it may provide a potential path forward for a further expansion of the
substance of the model and to keep it up to date. Due to the extension of this
paper, it is not possible to dive further into the conceptualization of the notion of
counter-networks, or to fully explore what they may mean for the international
liberal order at large, but these are potential paths for further research in the area
and hopefully, a meaningful concept for the actors of the transnational networks
that move the Spiral forward and for their policy and strategy decisions.

27
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