Chapter 6

Foreign Pressure and the Politics of Autocratic Survival
Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746997.001.0001
Published: 2015 Online ISBN: 9780191809262 Print ISBN: 9780198746997
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CHAPTER
6 Naming and Shaming Dictatorships 

Abel Escribà-Folch, Joseph Wright
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746997.003.0006 Pages 154–183

Published: September 2015
Abstract
This chapter explores how international campaigns to name and shame human rights abusers
in uence politics in targeted regimes. The chapter outlines three mechanisms that might link shaming
campaigns to autocratic (in)stability. First, shaming may increase domestic pressure on the target
regime in countries with strong human rights norms; in these cases shaming can bolster domestic
opposition groups and can alter the preferences of elites. Second, shaming may push international
organizations and democratic countries to materially punish targeted regimes by reducing aid and
imposing new sanctions. Third, shaming may raise exit costs for targeted elites. These arguments are
tested using cross-national data; the chapter nds that naming and shaming campaigns are associated
with democratic transitions, but only in military regimes. The argument is illustrated with a case study
of the international shaming campaign against military rule in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet.
Keywords: human rights shaming, norms, repression, punishment, regime change, military regimes, Chile
Subject: Comparative Politics
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR)
was formed to promote and protect human rights. It issued its rst reprimand in 1967, targeting the
apartheid regime in South Africa. The rst human rights investigation outside of South Africa or a country
in the midst of an international con ict was conducted by the UNCHR in the late 1970s and targeted
Pinochet’s military regime in Chile. In 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was
created to replace the UNCHR, which had been largely criticized for being ine ective, particularly after
losing credibility when Libya was selected to chair the Commission in 2003.
International NGOs (INGOs) have also been active in shaming human rights abusers by disseminating
reports cataloguing violations and identifying those responsible. Amnesty International (AI) began its
letter-writing campaigns in 1965, three years after it released its rst annual report on prisoners of
1
conscience. Another INGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW), began monitoring human rights violations in the
former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1978, shortly after the signing of the Helsinki Accords (1975). In
the 1980s, HRW quickly expanded its coverage to most other regions of the world.
Perhaps since the advent of mass-produced print newspapers, the media have also served to name and
shame human rights abusers. Amidst the debate over the slave trade in early nineteenth-century Great
Britain, an anti-abolition M.P., General Gascoyne, once complained, “[t]he attempts to make a popular
clamour against the trade were never so conspicuous as during the last election, when the public
2
newspapers had teemed with abuse of this trade” (Furneaux, 1974, 251). One of the earliest international
human rights shaming campaigns dates from the fteenth century, when a Spanish bishop in Chiapas,
Bartolomé de las Casas, lobbied the Spanish crown to end the slave trade in the “Americas.” With a long,

p. 155 though sporadic history, human rights shaming has become much more common in the past two
decades, a trend documented in the rst chapter (Figure 1.4).
In this chapter, we examine how shaming campaigns directed by international organizations in uence
regime survival. We posit three mechanisms, each with di erent empirical implications: (1) shaming
increases domestic pressure on the target regime in countries with strong human rights norms; (2) shaming
encourages international organizations and democratic countries to materially punish targeted regimes by
reducing aid and imposing new sanctions; and (3) shaming raises exit costs for targeted elites.
We rst explore how shaming campaigns can bring down regimes in target countries with higher levels of
human rights norms. Target countries with citizens who have experienced respect for human rights under
democratic rule may be more susceptible to shaming because international campaigns help mobilize
domestic pressure where prior normative t is strongest. Domestic groups bolstered by shaming campaigns
can undermine the regime’s ability to control and deter opposition’s activities (↓ R). When the norms logic
extends to professionalized military elites, shaming can alter the elite preferences regarding the use of
repression and even regarding the appropriateness of military rule itself (↓ S and ↓ R)—o cers who have
been soldiers under democratic rule may be more apt to liberalize when targeted by shaming campaigns
because they have a lower tolerance for human rights repression in the rst place. Thus domestic pressure
mobilized by international shaming campaigns may persuade military elites to step down. This often results
in divisions among the ruling coalition, eroding the regime’s support. By activating prior human rights
norms, shaming campaigns can therefore raise the regime’s costs of both obtaining domestic support and
pursuing repression, thus reducing the expected utility of retaining power.
Second, we posit a material explanation for how shaming campaigns might in uence regime stability. We
examine the costliness of shaming via reduced aid and the imposition of new sanctions. If shaming
campaigns marshal international support for cutting aid to targeted dictators and prompt economic
sanctions, shaming could hurt elite supporters. By reducing the international revenue sources necessary to
retain loyalty through patronage (P), shaming would lower the probability of retaining power (↓ P → ↓ p) if
the regime resists. Much like our explanation for why sanctions are destabilizing, this logic should be
strongest not only in those regimes that lose the most when shamed but also in regimes that are most
dependent on external resources to fund supporters. As we will see below (under ‘The Material Costs of
Shame’), personalist regimes tend to be hurt the worst when targeted by a shaming campaign; and as we
demonstrated in Chapter 5, these autocracies are also the most susceptible to loss of external sources of
p. 156 revenue to pay their support coalition. Thus, if shaming destabilizes by helping international actors
punish them, the evidence should be strongest for personalist regimes.
Finally, we consider the possibility that shaming deters repressive leaders from stepping down. By
highlighting repression in dictatorships, international shaming campaigns may impose costs on the ruler
and his elite supporters should the regime relinquish power. We know that when many regimes fall, their
leaders seek to destroy evidence of repressive behavior. As Russian troops approached Auschwitz in 1945,
for example, the SS blew up the gas chambers at Birkenau and the Gestapo ordered prisoners to burn
3
evidence documenting their repressive apparatus (Shelley, 1992, 10). More recently, Egyptian protestors
found piles of shredded documents when they stormed the main o ces of the state security agency in early
4
March 2011 in an attempt to preserve evidence of repression that could implicate senior o cials.
This behavior indicates that documentation of repression can harm perpetrators by increasing the
likelihood that they will be brought to justice once they leave power (↑ q). When the Spanish judge Baltazar
Garzón attempted to prosecute Pinochet in 1998, the judicial team relied on information collected during
the human rights shaming campaign in the 1970s and 1980s (Roht-Arriaza, 2005). Without this
documentation, the investigators would have had little evidence to pursue prosecution. If international
shaming campaigns produce information about repression that can later be used to punish dictators should

they step down, shaming should raise the costs of leaving power, and could thus lead dictators to cling to
power.
This argument is the opposite of the “exit guarantee” logic: exposing and documenting repression weakens
the promise of protection for exiting leaders and elite supporters. The evidence for this explanation should
be strongest in dictatorships where leaders face the worst post-exit outcomes. As we show in Chapter 3,
personalist dictators are more likely to be killed or jailed upon leaving power; thus this argument implies
that shaming should deter personalist regimes from stepping down.
These three arguments—norms, material punishment, and direct exit costs—have di erent empirical
implications. If the norms logic is correct, we should nd evidence that shaming is more likely to destabilize
military regimes because they rely most on repression and are more prone to elite divisions. The material
punishment argument points to personalist dictatorships because these regimes are the hardest hit by the
loss of aid and new sanctions when targeted by shaming campaigns. Finally, the exit-cost argument also
p. 157 points to personalist dictatorships; however, it implies that shaming should make regime change more
unlikely—the opposite prediction of the material punishment explanation.
International actors direct human rights shaming campaigns at speci c leaders and regimes. The three
arguments we consider in this chapter posit a direct e ect on the targeted regime; in the next, we examine
whether the growing tide of human rights prosecutions deters dictatorships from relinquishing power.
Much of the recent research on human rights shaming examines how international shaming campaigns
in uence human rights practices. Hafner-Burton (2008), for example, shows that shaming increases
violent repression outcomes in targeted countries but improves respect for political rights. In contrast,
DeMeritt (2012) and Krain (2012) nd that shaming reduces the likelihood and severity of state-sponsored
mass killings. Similarly, Franklin (2008) shows that governments subject to criticism tend to reduce
repression in the short-term. The search for how human rights naming and shaming can “work” took a
step forward with Lebovic and Voeten’s (2009) study of UNCHR resolutions and foreign aid, which nds
that this form of shaming reduces foreign aid in targeted countries. We build on this work by expanding
their analysis to test whether the in uence of resolutions varies by regime type.
We examine regime survival not repression, though our ndings have implications for the study of
repression as well because such behavior is a strategic response to opponents in an attempt to remain in
power (Davenport, 2007b). As we illustrated in Chapter 3, regimes vary substantially in their use of
repression and the intensity of this behavior varies in predictable ways relative to the use of other strategies
for dealing with the opposition—namely buying support and institutional co-optation. Establishing the link
between shaming and regime survival should therefore be treated as a rst step in a larger examination of
how shaming can in uence repression in dictatorships.
Shaming and Autocratic Politics
Norms and Domestic Pressure

The rst approach we examine builds on the norms literature in international relations, which argues that
beliefs and rules embodied in a set of norms can in uence domestic politics when actors appeal to an
international norm to further their own domestic political interests (Cortell and Davis, 1996; Keck and
p. 158 Sikkink, 1998). These mechanisms shape political outcomes when the domestic salience of the norms is
high and when domestic actors have jurisdiction over the policy to which the norms apply. In dictatorships,

repressive practices are typically well within the purview of the targeted government, though in some cases,
for example during civil war, human rights abuses committed by non-state actors may be beyond the
control of the government (Hafner-Burton and Ron, 2009).
Since our focus is on autocratic politics, we concentrate on the normative t argument: when international
norms match domestic norms, human rights shaming should have a stronger e ect on the behavior of the
targeted regime. Hawkins (2002b, 37–8) summarizes the logic as: “[i]nternational norms and transnational
actors are unlikely to have much impact if they promote ideas, beliefs, and values that t poorly with
preexisting, domestic social understandings.” He cites the failure of international campaign against female
genital mutilation as a case in which international norms may not t domestic cultural values in parts of
some countries.
This is particularly true for domestic anti-regime groups. Shaming campaigns against autocracies are more
likely to target countries where there are more human rights organizations (Meernik et al., 2012). At the
same time, there are usually more groups in countries where autocracies replace previous democratic
governments. Transnational linkages between domestic and foreign human rights groups increase the
mobilization capacity of domestic groups, both through grassroots organizing and lobbying elites (Keck and
Sikkink, 1998; Murdie, 2014). First, INGOs help domestic groups’ activities by gathering information and
highlighting repressive behavior to other countries. Second, INGOs provide local protest groups with direct
funding as well as with educational programs and legal assistance, and can also train them in anti-regime
tactics (Murdie and Bhasin, 2011; Murdie, 2012). Direct support for domestic groups should be stronger
where there are local human rights organizations and prior linkages to these groups via participation in
international organizations. Murdie and Bhasin (2011, 167), for example, argue that “local representatives
serve as conduits for resources provided by [human rights organizations], including the latest information
about government atrocities and assistance to local groups already engaged in pressuring their
governments for protection of human rights.”
The domestic understanding of an issue is critical to whether it matches the conceptualization of the issue
by international actors. The framing of repression is adaptable, and political actors attempt to shape how
this behavior is interpreted. Importantly, this also a ects regime elites faced with growing externally
p. 159 assisted domestic discontent. In Chile, for example, the military regime used rhetoric about the dangers
of Marxism and the threat of armed civil war to depict repression as a national defense issue. Human rights
advocates countered by framing repression and military government itself as a violation of normal life for
Chileans. When the opposition was rst allowed to advertise on television in the late 1980s, for instance,
they opted for commercials that linked military rule with the disappearance of family members and the
inability of elderly citizens to buy packets for their afternoon tea—both sharp departures from “normalcy”
for ordinary Chileans.
Hawkins’ work on Chile demonstrates the proximate mechanisms in this argument. He shows that e orts to
frame repression as a rule-breaking activity contributed to the success of the international shaming
campaign targeting the Pinochet regime. An international shaming campaign that appeals to rules-oriented
o cers can shape their view of repression as well as the appropriateness of military rule itself, thus causing
divisions among the ruling o cers. Shaming becomes salient to reformist o cers when they view
repression as a violation of a lawful and orderly society that they value. Hawkins (2002b, 64) quotes a high-
ranking military o cer defending the regime by highlighting the legality of military rule: “Yes we’re a legal
government. We are not a dictatorship of the tropical variety.” Once repressive behavior is understood as
illegal behavior, reformers in the military may be less likely to support military rule, particularly if it
depends on continued repression that falls outside their understanding of “legality.”
This logic echoes traditional explanations of authoritarian breakdown which pointed at elite divisions as the
main factor explaining transitions from dictatorship (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, 19; Przeworski, 1991).

Military regimes are particularly prone to such divisions, as Geddes (1999) suggests. Such splits within the
regime can be caused by domestic factors, such as economic crises, but also, we argue, splits can be
externally induced by foreign actors’ strategies, in this case, international shaming campaigns.
Military dictatorships typically have more professionalized o cers than strongman rule (Geddes et al.,
2014b), and more so than other regimes, they arise after a period of democratic rule. During the third wave
of democratization, for example, over one-half of the military regimes that democratized had come to
power in coups that displaced elected democrats, whereas just over one-third of the personalist regimes
that democratized arose from prior democracy, and only 20 percent of party regimes. If the normative t
argument explains how shaming destabilizes dictatorships, we expect the evidence to be strongest in
military regimes for two reasons: higher pressure from local and international organizations and the likely
presence of rules-oriented o cers who, in response to the pressure of such groups, may change their
preferences.
p. 160 The Material Costs of Shame

The second mechanism focuses on the material costs of international shaming campaigns. These can be
costly for the targeted government if the international community uses shaming campaigns to coordinate
punishment of repressive regimes. In contrast to the “exit cost” logic, punishment changes the immediate
costs of repression, not the calculation of expected costs associated with the higher likelihood of being
prosecuted.
Lebovic and Voeten (2009) provide the rst systematic evidence that public resolutions by the UNCHR result
in the loss of multilateral foreign aid. Likewise, Murdie and Peksen (2013) nd that human rights INGOs’
activities increase the likelihood that a regime is targeted by sanctions. We expand this work in two ways:
we examine which regimes lose the most aid; and we analyze whether shaming campaigns lead to the
imposition of new economic sanctions. If shaming campaigns lead to a reduction in valuable sources of
external revenue, we then need to ask whether the lost revenue loosens a dictator’s grip on power by
decreasing his capacity to pay for the support of elites in his coalition. To generate empirical expectations
for the material costs argument, we answer two questions: (1) Does shaming reduce external revenues? and
(2) How important are external revenues for the survival of the regime? The next two sections take up each
question in turn.
Who gets punished?
Shaming campaigns are political tools that re ect the political calculations of the shaming organization.
Being targeted by a shaming campaign is not simply a function of the level of repression, but also re ects
5
larger political interactions. A quick look at some well-known human rights abusers represented on the
UNCHR suggests political explanations for being targeted by a shaming campaign. For example, the UNCHR
nominated Libya to its Commission in 2003. HRW and AI both protested the nomination, with AI arguing
that “it expected the chair of the Commission to lead by example, but that it was apparent from various
6
reports it had written on Libya that human rights were not respected there.” That repressive regimes make
p. 161 their way onto the U.N.’s shaming body suggests a political explanation for the initiation of shaming

campaigns at international organizations.
Candidates for the UNCHR are submitted by regional bodies and are thus the winners of a regional political
game. They are not necessarily chosen based on their capacity to ferret out human rights abuses. Some
repressive countries, such as Libya or Zimbabwe, have a stronger incentive to gain a seat on the UNCHR to
shape international action and de ect criticism of their own human rights abuses. Other countries, such as
Tanzania, may have less to gain precisely because their governments are less repressive and thus unlikely
targets in the rst place. Because shaming is the outcome of a political process, repression does not
automatically result in being targeted by a shaming campaign.
Extending this logic, being targeted by a shaming campaign may not always result in damaging action
against the targeted regime. As Lebovic and Voeten (2009) show, bilateral aid donors do not always
withdraw aid from strategically important recipients, even when the U.N. shames them. Alternatively, they
argue, multilateral donors use UNCHR resolutions as a signal that the international community has agreed to
cut aid to targeted countries. Their nding suggests that whether shaming results in less aid for the targeted
country depends on the type of donor.
We expand this research to examine how U.N. resolutions in uence aid ows in di erent target regimes.
Some regimes may have more capacity to lobby donors and block a shaming campaign from turning into a
more costly loss of international revenue. The logic of Lebovic and Voeten (2009) suggests that UNCHR
resolutions should matter because they signal to donors that the international community has given
international organizations license to punish the targeted countries. In other words, targeted countries are
not only guilty of repression, but they have lost the political battle and are now eligible for punishment.
Personalist dictatorships typically lack strong domestic institutions and face few internal constraints on
their behavior (Weeks, 2008; Frantz and Ezrow, 2011; Svolik, 2012). This means leaders in these regimes are
less likely to face domestic audiences who can punish them for poor policy choices (Weeks, 2008) and more
likely to have bad information about their own domestic sources of power (Frantz and Ezrow, 2011). Bad
information and few domestic constraints, in turn, reduce the ability of these regimes to make credible
promises during international bargaining, which should reduce compliance with international agreements
and result in less international cooperation (Mattes and Rodríguez, 2014). With less-e ective domestic
institutions that would prove helpful for international bargaining, these regimes may therefore be less
e ective at international lobbying, and thus relatively unsuccessful in blocking action against them in the
international arena.
p. 162 Further, personalist leaders may have less legitimacy than other autocrats. Winning relatively free elections
by large margins may give leaders in dominant party regimes more international legitimacy, while military
regimes during the Cold War were often viewed as more legitimate precisely because their military capacity
was an asset in defending Western interests against the advance of communism—at least in the eyes of
many Western powers.
If personalist dictatorships have less international legitimacy and their domestic institutions make
international bargaining and lobbying strategies less e ective, these regimes should be more likely to be
punished by the international community. This does not necessarily mean these regimes are the most likely
7
to be targeted nor that they lack a presence in international organizations. Rather, we simply posit that
personalist leaders are less successful in blocking the negative repercussions of international
condemnation.
We rst explore how UNCHR resolutions in uence foreign aid ows. In the context of our larger argument,
we examine whether human rights shaming campaigns hurt autocratic regimes. According to the material
costs argument, those punished the most by the international community, especially if they depend on

external resources for survival, should be the most susceptible to shaming.
Lebovic and Voeten (2009) show that UNCHR resolutions decrease multilateral aid disbursements but have
no e ect on bilateral aid. For now we use UNCHR resolutions to measure international naming and shaming.
Below, we expand the measure of shaming to include NGO and media shaming. We use UNCHR resolutions
because this allows us to directly expand upon earlier research, and this form of shaming is the culmination
of a larger international process of condemnations than, for example, media shaming. These resolutions, as
Lebovic and Voeten (2006) argue, are the last stage and the most severe punishment that the U.N. can
dispense for human rights violators. Other forms of shaming (NGOs and media) may signal international
disapproval, but they cannot directly punish the targeted country. The U.N. does, in the form of these
UNCHR resolutions. Further, these resolutions capture the strategic component of aid distribution wherein
multilateral institutions use resolutions to determine which repressive countries the international
community has approved for targeting. After controlling for the level of repression, we can determine which
regimes su er the most when targeted by the UNCHR.
p. 163 UNCHR resolutions and foreign aid

We begin by extending Lebovic and Voeten’s (2009) analysis of UNCHR resolutions and foreign aid. Their
sample covers the years 1979–2002 for all aid-eligible countries, including democracies. The two
8
dependent variables are bilateral and multilateral aid, each divided by population and then logged. We use
their preferred model speci cation and add dummy variables for the three types of autocratic regime. The
excluded category is Democracy, and we drop monarchies from the sample. We then interact the autocratic
regime variables with the indicator of UNCHR resolution.
9
Figure 6.1 reports the ndings for bilateral and multilateral aid, by recipient regime type. Lebovic and
Voeten show that U.N. resolutions are associated with reductions in multilateral aid but not bilateral aid.
When we separate the regime type of the targeted country, personalist regimes are the only ones hit by
p. 164 reductions of both types of aid. While all regimes targeted by the U.N. lose multilateral aid, personalist
dictatorships again fare worse. The point estimates suggest that U.N. shaming that targets personalist
regimes reduces bilateral aid by around 30 percent and multilateral aid by roughly 50 percent. These results
are consistent with Lebovic and Voeten’s claim that the e ect of U.N. resolutions varies by aid donor, but
they also show that both bilateral and multilateral donors take aim at personalist dictatorships.
Figure 6.1.

U.N. resolutions and foreign aid. Replication of Lebovic and Voeten (2009) by regime type. Fixed e ects regressions.
Shaming campaigns and sanctions imposition

Next we examine whether shaming campaigns are associated with new sanctions. We use a measure of
naming and shaming that captures how many times the country has been shamed by AI (Ron et al., 2005;
10
Hafner-Burton, 2008). This measure adds the number of news releases and background reports published
by AI in a given country-year. In the sample of regimes with available shaming data (1977–2001), 30
percent of observations had no shaming and 66 percent had four or more shaming incidents. We use the
logged, one-year lag as the main explanatory variable.
The dependent variable is a binary indicator of sanctions used in Chapter 5. We control for lagged sanctions
so the estimate of interest gauges whether shaming campaigns are associated with the imposition of new
sanctions or the end of a current sanction episode. The reported speci cation includes controls for time
period, GDP per capita, population size, international war, and repression. However, the results are robust
to speci cations without control variables (save the xed e ects estimation) as well as to additional control
variables such as civil war, protest, neighbor democracy, and prior democracy. We report results for linear
probability models with country- xed e ects and clustered errors, though the results remain in a non-
linear model.
Figure 6.2 shows the substantive e ect of shaming campaigns in targeted countries. Again, personalist
dictatorships are hit the hardest. Shaming is associated with a 4-percent increase in the probability of
changing sanction status in personalist dictatorships, while these campaigns have little e ect on sanctions
in other dictatorships. This result is substantially weaker, however, for democracy-promoting sanctions.
Figure 6.2.

Shaming campaigns and new sanction imposition. Fixed e ects regressions.
The results for aid and sanctions imposition suggest an answer to the question of who gets punished:
personalist dictatorships. These ndings are consistent with the possibility that personalist dictators are
p. 165 more likely to be members of the UNCHR and less likely to be hit with U.N. resolutions in the rst place,
once we consider the strategic nature of signing international agreements and U.N. politics (Vreeland,
2008). Potential targets with the most to lose—and the evidence would suggest that these are personalist
regimes—have the greatest incentive to join the bodies that publicly shame and likewise have more to gain
by blocking action against their countries.
Which regimes are the most sensitive to external revenue loss?

As stressed in Chapter 3, while patronage is an important strategy available to all dictatorships, personalist
regimes are more reliant upon supplying supporters with immediate material rewards than other
dictatorships. Bratton and van de Walle (1994, 458), for example, argue that “[i]n neopatrimonial regimes,
the chief executive maintains authority through personal patronage, rather than ideology or law.”
Personalist regimes often lack strong institutions to help them rule, with weak militaries and either weak or
non-existent parties and legislative institutions (Wright, 2008). Even with an incapacitated military, they
may be reluctant to activate (and adequately supply) it for fear the soldiers will organize against the leader.
Thus, pursuing widespread repression can be a risky strategy for surviving in power when external
resources available for patronage spending fall short.
Further, because personalist regimes lack strong political institutions they are less likely to make credible
inter-temporal promises to their supporters. Dominant party regimes can and do make good on promises to
p. 166 distribute patronage in the future—particularly around election time (Magaloni, 2006; Blaydes, 2008;
Pepinsky, 2007). This may be one reason why dominant party regimes are relatively resistant to economic
shocks (Haggard and Kaufman, 1995; Geddes, 1999), and typically only lose power once the state—and
hence the party—permanently loses control of the economy (Greene, 2010). Because of the long history of
state patronage and large margin of electoral victories for dominant parties, supporters expect the party to
remain in power at least in the near- to mid-term, and thus believe party promises of future distribution.
While much of the literature on personalism emphasizes the ruler’s dependence on patronage resources to
maintain loyalty, we take this claim further to suggest that personalist rule is more sensitive to the loss of
external revenue sources than other regimes because: (1) they do not have strong militaries that can
e ectively repress mobilization against their rule and mobilizing the military is a risky strategy; and (2)
these leaders typically have weak parties and hence cannot make credible inter-temporal promises to their
supporters. Therefore, when personalist leaders lose valuable external sources of revenue, they have little
else left in their toolkit of autocratic strategies. Thus, we posit that the answer to the question “which
regimes are most sensitive to external revenue losses?” is the same as in Chapter 5: personalist
dictatorships.
Shame and Post-Exit Punishment

After President Ben Ali ed Tunisia amidst mass uprisings in February 2011, the secret police emptied the
11
ruling party’s headquarters of paper les under the watchful eye of soldiers. In 2004, Morocco established
the Equity and Reconciliation Commission to investigate forced disappearances and detention under the
rule of King Hassan II, who had died in 1999. However, this commission discovered that many les had gone

missing. These examples suggest that repressive regimes fear public documentation of human rights abuses
during their rule. Damaging information about repression may increase the likelihood that regime elites will
be punished once they leave power.
Shaming campaigns are information strategies, in which human rights organizations gather information
about abuses and disseminate it to attract international attention. Since reports by these organizations and
treaty-monitoring bodies normally point to those state actors deemed responsible for the abuses, naming
p. 167 and shaming can also be viewed as “shaming and blaming” (Murdie and Bhasin, 2011; Murdie, 2012). For
example, during the Syrian civil war, AI not only documented abuses but also repeatedly accused the Syrian
government of crimes against humanity. Further, AI and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
12
urged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to refer Syria to the ICC.
If human rights shaming campaigns unearth, document, and preserve information that can later be used
against dictators and other state o cials after they leave power, shaming in the current period could
increase the costs of exiting power by raising the expected likelihood of post-exit punishment. Evidence
from particular cases suggests that shaming campaigns aid documentation of abuses. For example, in Chile,
INGOs received information from and provided funding for domestic human rights groups (Hawkins,
2002b, 57). The Vicaría de la Solidaridad, one of the most respected domestic human rights groups in Chile
during military rule, worked extensively with international human rights groups to disseminate
information about human rights violations. Information from the shaming campaign—in particular
documentation from the Vicaría—was later used as evidence in the prosecution of Chile’s dictator, General
Pinochet (Roht-Arriaza, 2005, 208). Many human rights abuses in Southern Cone military dictatorships
13
were publicized to an international audience by AI.
Central to this explanation is the prospect of punishment after leaving power. The converse would be “exit
guarantees,” or credible promises not to harm regime elites once they leave power. The literature on
democratic transitions has long noted conditions that make negotiated exits more likely, in particular exit
guarantees (Dix, 1982; Huntington, 1991b; Sutter, 1995). Dix (1982) and Sutter (1995), for example, argue
that military regimes are more likely to democratize via negotiated settlement because they do not cede
control over violent coercion and can therefore credibly threaten to re-intervene after they leave power.
This may be one reason that amnesties for military elites are often credible. Some have argued, for example,
that the Brazilian military left power peacefully because they not only perpetrated fewer human rights
abuses than other Southern Cone military dictatorships (e.g. Argentina), but, as importantly, were granted a
credible amnesty backed by guarantees of military autonomy (Oliveira, 1988; Stepan, 1988). Chile’s
constitution directly protected Pinochet from domestic prosecution by granting immunity to the head of the
military, which not coincidentally was the position Pinochet assumed after handing power back to civilians.
p. 168 As shown in Chapter 4, in dominant party regimes, the party itself can guarantee protection for former
ruling elites by winning power via elections in a new democracy (Huntington, 1991a; Wright and Escribà-
Folch, 2012). Elites in these regimes frequently win some legislative power in subsequent democracies.
While the long-dominant party in Mexico lost the presidency in 2000 and placed third in the 2006
presidential contest, they won a legislative plurality in 2003 and the 2012 presidential contest. After the fall
of Soviet-bloc dictatorships, numerous ex-Communists won elections in Eastern Europe. Even those former
ruling parties that lost elections were partially protected from punishment by the documentation of party
collaboration by elites in opposition parties (Nalepa, 2010). When so many opponents had been (secretly)
implicated in aiding the former Communist regime, the opposition was reluctant to push for punishment
against ex-party elites for fear that their own records as collaborators would surface.
As we have stressed throughout, personalist dictators typically lack both the means of violence and the
strength of a party to protect them from post-exit punishment. Hence, if human rights shaming increases

the likelihood of punishment, elites in these regimes should be most susceptible to changes in these costs.
This logic suggests that these regimes should be less likely to leave power peacefully when targeted by a
shaming campaign.
Shaming and Regime Change
Let us brie y summarize the hypotheses thus far. First, if the normative model is correct, shaming should
destabilize military regimes because they typically have professionalized o cers and arise in countries with
prior democratic experience—both factors that increase normative t. A second hypothesis argues that
material costs matter. The immediate costs that result from a shaming campaign might destabilize the
regime. Because personalist dictators face steeper material costs when shamed and because these regimes
are typically the most sensitive to the loss of external revenue, this argument suggests that shaming
campaigns should be most likely to destabilize personalist regimes. Our nal hypothesis posits that
shaming campaigns increase the expectation of post-exit punishment for dictators. By raising the cost of
leaving power, international disapprobation lowers the expected utility of pursuing this strategy. Because
elites in personalist regimes often lack strong organizations—such as a cohesive military or a dominant
political party—that help preserve their interests after they leave power, they are likely to be the most
p. 169 sensitive to changes in post-exit punishment. Thus if shaming raises the prospects of punishment, we
should expect shaming campaigns to decrease the likelihood that personalist dictators leave power.
Data and Methods

To test how human rights shaming in uences regime survival, we use a measure of naming and shaming
that captures how many times the country has been shamed by AI (Ron et al., 2005; Hafner-Burton, 2008).
We use a logged, one-year lag. In robustness tests, we replicate the main result using a scaled measure of
three types of shaming: the number of AI reports and briefs; the number of articles in two international
newspapers (The Economist and Newsweek) that mention human rights violations in the target country; and
an indicator of whether the UNCHR targeted the country with a passing resolution condemning human
14
rights violations.
As the literature on naming and shaming demonstrates, countries targeted by international shaming
campaigns are not randomly distributed across the world. There are systematic reasons why some countries
are more likely to be targeted than others. Countries in regions closer to the U.S. or to Europe, for example,
tend to garner more international attention. These geographic features could also independently in uence
outcomes such as democratization. To address omitted variable bias that results from time invariant
factors, such as proximity to the West, that in uence both regime stability and shaming campaigns by
transnational human rights activists, we include country- xed e ects. Thus the interpretation of the
results for shaming campaigns is time-varying and not cross-sectional because we account for di erent
levels of shaming in di erent countries.
Our preferred speci cation also includes variables to account for domestic repression: civil war, violent
anti-regime protest movement, and political terror. We use a new measure of domestic political terror that
accounts for the fact that standards for documenting human rights abuses have improved over time, leading
to more reporting (and higher observed levels) of repression (Fariss, 2014). Because most measures of
domestic repression use information from AI, we also tested models with measures of political terror from
p. 170 the Political Terror Scale project, which uses information from the U.S. State Department’s human rights
reports.
As in prior empirical tests, we include controls for population and level of development; regime duration
(and interactions with regime type); and time-period- xed e ects. The main explanatory variables are

Shame and the interaction between this variable and the regime type indicators. With data from a shorter
time series (1977–2001), we employ a linear probability model with unit e ects because this approach does
not drop stable autocratic countries that do not experience regime failure during the shorter sample period.
Again, we test three dependent variables: all regime collapse events, democratic transitions, and autocratic
transitions.
Results
The full results are reported in the Appendix (C); we concentrate on interpreting the ndings in the Figures.
The rst models examine all regime failures and show that, on average, shaming has little in uence on
regime instability. Yet, when we include regime type interactions, the estimate for Shame×Military is
positive and signi cant. We replicate this nding for democratic transitions, but we nd little evidence that
shaming is correlated with autocratic transitions.
15
Figure 6.3 shows the substantive interpretation of the main results. The left panel shows that shaming
increases the linear probability of democratic transition in military regimes by over 10 percent, while it has
little e ect in other dictatorships. For autocratic transitions, shaming appears to have little in uence.
Figure 6.3.
Shaming and regime change. The change in the predicted linear probability of democratic and autocratic transition, by regime
type.
These results provide evidence consistent with only one of the three theories proposed: the normative
argument. The other theories predicted that shaming should either increase or decrease the likelihood of
transition in personalist regimes. However, we only nd evidence that shaming is associated with
democratic transitions in military regimes.
Robustness Tests
16
We report two robustness tests in the Appendix (C). First, to ensure we have modeled time properly, we
p. 171 show that the main result remains when we employ year- xed e ects instead of time-period e ects.
Second, we report results from a speci cation that controls for foreign aid and economic sanctions. Because
aid and sanctions are “post-treatment” conditions with respect to shaming campaigns, this test further
rules out the possibility that the main nding is due to “material costs” and not the norms theory.
Finally, we test a two-stage instrumental variables model because political instability might endogenously
determine whether a particular regime is targeted by an international shaming campaign. If the estimate

from a naive model is upwardly biased due to non-random target selection, this would mean that
international organizations target regimes that are more likely to democratize due to unobserved factors. In
a test of whether democratic and autocratic transitions in uence the incidence of shaming in the
subsequent year, we nd that democratic transition is associated with less shaming while autocratic
transition with more. This should not be surprising, since human rights groups would typically greet a
democratic event by ending a shaming campaign. Thus the bias in naive tests of democratic transition may
understate the in uence of shaming campaigns.
We employ an excluded instrument that contains information on the number of natural disasters in the
target country in a given year, weighted by the inverse of the distance from the United States. Natural
p. 172 disasters bring international media attention. For example, when cyclone Nargis hit the Irrawaddy delta
in Myanmar in 2008, journalists ocked to the region to report the story. Because the military junta largely
rebu ed international organizations’ attempts to aid the relief e ort, the regime did not actually receive
additional foreign assistance as a result of the disaster. It did, however, su er a torrent of negative
international media coverage, largely focusing on the regime’s refusal to accept international aid. A month
after the storm, AI issued a human rights report chastising the regime for abuses committed during the
relief e ort and then used the one-year anniversary of the storm to further shame the regime.
The measure of natural disasters isolates geophysical events (earthquakes, volcanic activity, and dry mass
17
movements) that are not in uenced by human activity. Further, this measure does not contain
information on damage, such as the numbers of deaths, from natural events because the level of disaster
damage may be endogenously determined by political instability or regime type. Because we continue to
model country- xed e ects, we exploit the exogenous timing of disasters, and control for the cross-country
variation in the incidence of natural disasters.
Geophysical natural disasters and distance from the U.S. should not be endogenously determined by
political instability in the target country. While some research argues that natural disasters can
independently in uence stability by, for example, prompting anti-regime protest or inciting violence
(Quiroz-Flores and Smith, 2013; Nel and Righarts, 2008), we directly model these causal pathways by
including multiple measures of this concept in the speci cation: anti-government demonstrations; violent
protest campaigns; non-violent protest campaigns; low-intensity civil war; and high-intensity civil war.
We control for additional factors through which natural disasters and distance could in uence regime
stability, such as neighbor democracy (i.e. di usion), population size, and prior democracy. We control for
domestic repression with a variable that captures the changing standards for verifying human rights abuses
(Fariss, 2014). Further, because we include country- xed e ects, we account for time-invariant factors that
in uence democratic transition and that are also correlated with distance to the U.S. Finally, to identify the
p. 173 equation with two endogenous variables (Shame and Shame×Military), the second excluded instrument is
the interaction between Military and the main instrument.
The excluded instrument is correlated with shaming campaigns: the rst-stage F-statistic is almost 14,
alleviating concerns about weak instruments. The second-stage result indicates a stronger pattern than
reported in the naive models: shaming in military regimes increases the likelihood of democratic transition
18
but is not strongly correlated with transitions in other regimes. We report these results in the Appendix.
Human Rights Campaigns and Regime Change in Chile
The 1973 military coup in Chile followed over four decades of democratic politics. Military intervention to
remove an elected civilian leader, suspend the legislature, and rule under a state of emergency marked a
stark departure from politics as usual in South America’s most democratic country. In the late 1970s the
military wrote a new constitution, adopted by popular referendum in 1980, and institutionalized military

rule. It also circumscribed the powers of the military junta and laid the foundations for a plebiscite eight
years later that would end military rule.
Violent political repression peaked in the years immediately after the 1973 coup when the military attacked
politicians and citizens associated with the democratic left. While repression diminished after this initial
outburst, the regime never relinquished its power to repress and continued to use disappearances, torture,
and detention to combat the opposition throughout the 1980s. Political repression sparked backlash, both at
home and abroad, helping forge strong links between international human rights organizations and
domestic opponents. Working in concert with domestic groups, the international shaming campaign turned
the Pinochet regime into an international pariah by lobbying international actors, documenting and
publicizing political repression, and providing material support for opposition mobilization at home.
Our sketch of these events underscores two points. First, the 1980 Constitution and the legalization of
military rule were the product of international pressure and the preferences of the military elite. Key
p. 174 military elites viewed institutionalization of military rule as a necessary component of rule of law as well
as a means to counter international condemnation. Second, the international shaming campaign, in concert
with domestic regime opponents, pressured the regime to hold a fair plebiscite in the late 1980s. Further,
prior democracy helped shape the preferences of key military elite members as well as opposition
mobilization strategies. Thus the combination of prior democracy, domestic human rights organizations,
and international pressure led to the demise of autocratic rule and a peaceful transition to democracy.
These factors did not operate alone. Military factionalism, the inability of Pinochet to consolidate power,
and the opposition’s moderation and ultimate rejection of violence all contributed to a relatively peaceful
regime change. But without international pressure, the institutionalization of the regime in the form of a
new constitution would have come later, and the opposition likely would have had more di culty voting out
the dictator in 1988.
Prior Democracy, Norms, and the Institutionalization of Military Rule

Prior to the 1973 coup, the Chilean military had a long tradition of constitutionalism, and Chile experienced
over a century of democracy with only one brief period of military involvement in politics in the 1920s and
early 1930s. During the subsequent democratic decades, the military was led by a generation of o cers who
had experienced prior military intervention, leading to strong preferences for adherence to civilian rule
(Nunn, 1976, 223; Barros, 2002, 40–1). The last of these o cers was the head of the military under Allende,
19
General Carlos Prats. The next generation of o cers who rose through the ranks to become generals in the
early 1970s “had not experienced the antimilitary reaction of the 1930s nor the drastic professional losses
associated with it” (Remmer, 1989, 153). However, many involved in the 1973 coup had family connections
to the o cers who intervened in the 1920s (Remmer, 1989, 154).
Even with the rise of o cers who had little memory of the military’s previous incursion into politics, the
coup and especially e orts to secure inde nite military rule “represented a profound break with Chile’s
constitutional and military traditions, as well as open rupture with widespread civilian expectations”
p. 175 (Barros, 2002, 52). Thus, decades of prior democracy had established a set of norms within the military
and expectations among citizens—even for those who supported the coup—about the limits of military
interference in politics (Hawkins, 2002b, 64).
Divisions within the military were present from the beginning. While the junta leaders had successfully
purged military elites who opposed intervention and many with close ties to the Christian Democrats, those
in power still had substantial disagreements about the role of the military in the new government. As

Loveman (1979, 314) notes, in the aftermath of the coup, “no fundamental consensus existed within the
military regarding the appropriate duration of military rule or upon a comprehensive alternative political
regime.” These divisions would be central to the bargaining over institutionalization of the regime as
international pressure mounted in the late 1970s, leading to the 1980 Constitution (Barros, 2002, 68–9;
Hawkins, 2002b, 83–4).
Despite outward appearances of growing centralization of power in Pinochet’s hands—namely the securing
of the titles of both President and Commander of the Armed Forces—Barros (2002) argues that the junta’s
early negotiations over the rules for governing served to institutionalize checks on the power of the
president. The leaders of each of the main branches of the military had veto power over major policy and
institutional decisions. Thus while there existed few checks on the power of the junta from the outside, the
group of junta leaders themselves presented a check on Pinochet (Barros, 2002, 68–9). Di erent branches
of the military had separate organizational norms and traditions, and prior to the coup had been under the
command of a civilian defense minister. While Pinochet emerged with the presidency in his hands and
dissolved an informal agreement to rotate the executive, other junta leaders retained veto power.
The preferences of the junta leaders over key institutional arrangements quickly surfaced. Hawkins (2002b,
83–5) depicts the main cleavage within the military as a group of “force-oriented” o cers pitted against
“rules-oriented” o cers. The force-oriented faction backed continued use of repression and corporatist
economic policies, while the rules-oriented group viewed repression as a potential obstacle to long-term
military rule because it would help mobilize the domestic opposition. The latter faction preferred to
institutionalize military rule through a constitution that would permit a “protected democracy” and ensure
the interests of the military and their supporters were guaranteed over the long-term. With a constitution,
military rule would not be inde nite.
International pressure and the 1980 Constitution

Without a blueprint for governing, the junta met with an increasing legislative workload in the initial
p. 176 months after the coup. While the lack of governing expertise prior to the coup meant that
institutionalization of military rule would be necessary for it to function, the shape of institutionalization in
the rst years after the coup would be the product of both the prior institutional structure of the military
under democracy—i.e. separate and co-equal military branches—and international pressure.
In response to repression, international pressure increased in the mid-1970s. Domestic groups provided
international organizations with information about repression in exchange for material support to sustain
their activities (Hawkins, 2002a, 55). Religious leaders created the Vicaría de la Solidaridad to investigate
and document human rights abuses. In addition to providing information to international actors, the Vicaría
opened up a political space for opponents to organize amidst continued repression (Oxhorn, 1995; Baldez,
2002). International nancial support was crucial for domestic human rights groups, especially the Catholic
Church, which received nearly $22 million in international donations from 1974 to 1975, with $67 million to
follow in 1976–9—a sum an order of magnitude larger than domestic donations during that period (Smith,
1986, 283).
Pinochet’s initial e orts to counter international criticism included an invitation to the Organization of
American States (OAS) to visit Chile in 1975 and the sending of emissaries to Europe to lobby on behalf of the
regime (Muñoz, 1986, 93). Upon returning from the international lobbying e ort, one minister reported
that international scrutiny of the regime was so high precisely because the country had a long democratic
tradition:
they told me that the past of Chile…is too interesting and important for them not to follow what

happens here with much more care than they do regarding events in other countries. They add that
20
we are neither Bolivia, nor Mexico, nor any other country that has had a stormy past.
Thus international pressure was not simply the result of repression but also the seemingly anomalous
combination of human rights abuse in a formerly democratic country.
The regime’s charm o ensive did not last long. In July 1975 Pinochet reneged on an agreement to allow the
UNCHR to investigate human rights abuses in Chile, creating a sense of urgency to deal with impending
international approbation (Muñoz, 1986, 193; Barros, 2002, 163). After the Chilean national security agency
(DINA) assassinated a prominent critic of the regime, Orlando Letelier, in Washington D.C. in 1975, Pinochet
p. 177 himself came under increased international pressure that threatened his position within the junta.
Pinochet’s top civilian advisor warned that because by law Pinochet was directly responsible for DINA, he
was “extremely vulnerable to charges leveled against the security agency” (Hawkins, 2002b, 97).
The international shaming campaign intensi ed after the Letelier assassination, prompting the regime to
restructure the national security agency—if only cosmetically—and dismiss its head. These e orts to blunt
international criticism, however, did not su ce. The regime responded by institutionalizing checks on the
power of the president and started to substitute “legalistic” repression for outright violence against
opponents (Hawkins, 2002b, 101). Institutionalization of the regime became a solution to the human rights
problem—“a tactic that would come to stand as the centerpiece of the military government’s maneuvers to
stave o international pressure” (Barros, 2002, 165).
Amidst the internal debates over institutionalization, the shaming campaign prompted the “rules-
oriented” faction to advocate for constitutional rule. Their legal expertise gave them the upper hand in
negotiations because they o ered a solution to the issue of international criticism while still providing a
mechanism for the regime to retain power. The 1980 Constitution therefore legitimized military rule by
creating checks on the power of the junta, “strengthen[ing] the government’s long-term legitimacy
problem while preserving its short-term power” (Hawkins, 2002b, 121).
Legitimacy through constitutional rule came at a price, though. The constitution established a mechanism
for removing the president, albeit through plebiscites that were potentially prone to manipulation. Perhaps
more importantly, the new constitution institutionalized basic individual rights. In an e ort to avoid a
repeat of the political crisis under the later years of Allende’s presidency, the constitution writers re-
invigorated extra checks on the power of elected leaders: a body with power to review presidential decrees
(Contraloría) and a constitutional court (Tribunal Constitutional) (Barros, 2002, 237). The latter would prove
crucial for ensuring a fair plebiscite in 1988.
In short, international pressure set in motion a process of regime institutionalization and at the same time
intensi ed existing divisions within the military during the bargaining over the 1980 Constitution. From the
outset, “the Junta embraced constitutional ‘self-limitation’ as a stratagem to stave o international critics
without abdicating power” (Barros, 2002, 167). But as Hawkins argues, the combination of international
pressure and normative t in uenced the institutionalization process because the “rules-oriented” faction
within the military understood that the long-term viability of military interests depended upon addressing
the human rights question in a country with a long history of democracy. Citizens would “eventually
generate demands for more participation and greater respect for human rights” (Hawkins, 2002b, 103).
p. 178 Although the 1980 Constitution succeeded in institutionalizing military rule, it also enshrined rights that
would later become crucial in the referendum defeat of Pinochet. That said, the constitution was intended to
and initially succeeded in prolonging military rule. As Barros (2002, 168) stresses, the constitution “neither
set in motion a transition nor inaugurated a liberalization of the military dictatorship.”
Constitutional rule, shaming, and the 1988 plebiscite

Nearly a decade after the coup, in mid-May 1983, opposition political parties and unions organized the rst
widespread national protests against the regime. Still technically illegal, parties mobilized opposition
rallies, lobbied military reformers, and coordinated meetings of various opposition groups in the Asamblea
de la Civilidad (Garretón, 1988).
Constitutional rules—in particular the independent power of the Constitutional Tribunal—and

international pressure combined with a mobilized domestic opposition to force a free and fair plebiscite in
1988. The opposition won and the military stepped down in early 1990. We highlight three key decisions of
the Constitutional Tribunal that proved decisive in ensuring a fair plebiscite, and then describe how
international pressure groups helped mobilize the opposition to vote against the dictatorship.
The 1980 Constitution speci ed a bill of rights, such as the right to association and speech, and created a
constitutional court to provide a check on the rulings of the junta. These institutional features proved
important for ensuring a free and fair plebiscite in 1988. In the three years prior to the plebiscite the
Constitutional Tribunal ruled against the junta on at least nine occasions (Zapata Larraín, 1991, 287).
Perhaps most importantly, the Constitutional Tribunal decided that the formation of the electoral
commission must take place before the plebiscite and not at a later date when the rst direct elections for
representatives were to be held. By eschewing a literal interpretation of the constitution, the court not only
ensured the electoral commission would administer the plebiscite, it set a precedent for independent
interpretation that would allow the court to rule against many of the junta’s laws (Barros, 2002, 293–302).
In addition to forcing the regime to establish an independent electoral commission, the Constitutional
Tribunal ruled that the electoral commission would oversee the voter-registration operation, prompting the
government to embark on a fair process of creating the electoral registry. Barros (2002, 299) argues that
without this ruling, electoral registries would not have been used for the plebiscite, further reducing the
credibility of the vote.
Based on the previous, rigged plebiscite in 1978, many potential opposition voters might have been
p. 179 circumspect about the 1988 plebiscite and abstained from voting so as not to legitimize an unfair contest.
But the formation of the electoral commission and its mandate to oversee a fair voter registration campaign
provided signals of credibility for voters who might have otherwise viewed the plebiscite as a sham. Indeed
the success of the “¡No!” campaign against continued military rule would need both a fair ballot and the
participation of opposition voters.
Second, the constitution contained a bill of rights for individuals, including the right of association. After
the Constitutional Tribunal ruled on the electoral commission, the court had a precedent to declare
unconstitutional any law promulgated by the junta that violated these rights in the run-up to the plebiscite
(Barros, 2002, 302). For example, the court ruled against the junta’s laws on the formation of groups that
had ties to pre-coup political parties and undid emergency laws that restricted political activity (Zapata
Larraín, 1991, 299–301; Hawkins, 2002b, 156). This allowed opposition groups to tap into party
identi cation—especially among centrist Christian Democrat voters—to mobilize support for the “¡No!”
campaign.
Finally, a ruling by the court opened up television advertising to the opposition during the plebiscite
campaign. This ruling required equal free TV time for opposition groups that coordinated the “¡No!”
campaign. Hawkins (2002b, 157) notes that the TV spots “focused on Chile’s bright future and undoubtedly
helped sway voters against Pinochet.”
The Constitutional Tribunal was created by the junta with purview over constitutional matters; and
importantly, their rulings on constitutional questions were absolute, with no process for appeal. Thus, in an

attempt to preclude the possibility of an elected president ruling by decree as Allende had done in his nal
year in o ce, the 1980 Constitution circumscribed the rule-making power of the military. The same
military that created the court was later bound to its ruling without recourse to revision.
International pressure aided the plebiscite campaign by ensuring regime opponents would cast ballots. The
international shaming campaign moved from documenting human rights abuses to lobbying international
governments in an e ort to provide material support for the opposition (Rickard et al., 1988). This nancial
support for domestic groups, such as the Catholic Church, helped organize a united opposition to military
rule (Pinto-Duschinsky, 1991, 56).
International funding helped opponents mobilize support, both on the ground through voter-registration
programs and over the airwaves in television advertising promoting the “¡No!” vote. The Konrad Adenauer
Foundation, a German Christian Democrat organization, funded activities such as an agrarian institute, a
self-help project in working-class neighborhoods and academic institutes, including the Fundación
p. 180 Eduardo Frei (Pinto-Duschinsky, 1991, 41). While technically this nancial support was “non-political,”
these organizations nonetheless helped opposition groups mobilize throughout the 1980s. U.S. foreign aid,
sent under the auspices of the National Endowment of Democracy (NED), helped train election monitors
and advised the opposition campaign on media strategies. NED money even helped fund an opposition
21
newspaper, La Época, whose owners were Christian Democratic supporters of the “¡No!” campaign.
A united opposition, with internationally supported leaders as their public face, not only helped convince a
wary public that the plebiscite would be fair, but also provided a centrist alternative to the scaremongering
campaign from the Pinochet camp. The opposition media campaign promised a new, brighter future that
looked neither like military rule nor the chaos of the Allende years (Spooner, 1994, 232). In contrast, the
military’s case for continued rule was simply o ering more of the status quo because this was better than
the political crisis of the early 1970s. Thus the “¡No!” campaign successfully convinced voters that a return
to civilian rule would not mean a return to the days of polarization in the nal months of Allende’s aborted
presidency.
In sum, the international shaming campaign proved crucial for both establishing legitimacy as the
benchmark for the Constitutional Tribunal’s rulings against the regime and in supporting the opposition
plebiscite campaign through international lobbying e orts and nancial and organizational support.
Shaming in Context
To complete the story of human rights shaming and political change in Chile, we discuss how the shaming
campaign compares with other forms of international pressure, such as economic sanctions and foreign aid.
We then contrast the e ect of international pressure on the regime with sources of domestic pressure, in
particular anti-regime violence.
To posit a normative mechanism as the sole explanation for how international shaming campaigns
in uence regime change in military regimes might weaken the overall explanatory power of this type of
international pressure because shaming is often a precursor to other forms of international pressure, such
as the imposition of economic sanctions (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Murdie and Peksen, 2013). That said, the
Chilean case o ers an illustration of how shaming campaigns work relative to other forms of pressure.
p. 181 When the U.N. General Assembly condemned the regime in 1974, many Western countries were quick to cut
foreign aid. Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway cut economic aid, while the U.S. and U.K. reduced military
aid. U.S. Senator Kennedy obtained congressional restrictions on U.S. economic aid, capping it at $25 million
in 1975. However, even with this cap and the decrease in military aid, total U.S. aid to Chile actually
increased in 1975 because the Nixon–Ford administration circumvented the congressional mandate by
sending aid from discretionary categories (Hawkins, 2002b, 72). Further, private international nance and

multilateral lending more than lled the gap created by the loss of bilateral aid. Letelier and Mo tt (1978,
120) tracked down over $1 billion in loans from banks, mostly in the U.S. and U.K. And while the U.K. cut
o cial military assistance, Brazil and Israel continued as major arms suppliers (Hawkins, 2002b, 73).
Hawkins (2002b, 71–6) argues that economic sanctions were not helpful in placing human rights on the
political agenda because many international actors continued to support the regime nancially despite
sanctions. The possibility of further sanctions, however, did threaten the regime, as they feared that
pressure from human rights groups might lead to the loss of more crucial international nancial support.
Sanctions alone, though, cannot explain why the military junta put human rights concerns on the table
during negotiations over institutional rules in the mid- to late 1970s. Further, Hawkins (2002b, 156–9) cites
the need for legitimacy as a motivating factor for the Constitutional Tribunal’s decision to uphold equal
22
television time for the opposition during the run-up to the plebiscite in 1988. Normative concerns driven
by international pressure appear to be the primary factor explaining this outcome: “No mass protests or
economic sanctions centered around television time for the opposition” (Hawkins, 2002b, 158).
International pressure aligned with domestic opposition helped force regime change in Chile. Domestic
opponents began mobilizing in early 1983 in response to continued economic hard times. A centrist union
that had protested against the Allende government started the protests, giving credibility to the movement
and spurring others to follow (Garretón, 1988; Oxhorn, 1995). The roots of this mobilization were
predominantly domestic—namely the economic crisis in the early 1980s—and not international.
The opposition protests of the mid-1980s provided cover for extreme left-wing groups to organize as well
(Garretón, 1988). These groups applied violent pressure to the regime, culminating in an assassination
p. 182 attempt on Pinochet in 1986. The regime’s response to violence was to re-impose a state of siege, with an
attendant increase in government repression (Policzer, 2009, 89). In contrast, international pressure
helped domestic groups lobby the regime to lift the state of emergency shortly before the plebiscite in 1988
(Hawkins, 2002b, 156). Thus the risk of violent regime failure in Chile was the product of domestic factors
and not the material consequences of the international shaming campaign. An increase in the chances of
violent change prompted the regime to retrench. International pressure via domestic human rights groups
had the opposite e ect.
Finally, the Chilean case illustrates the normative implications of prior democracy. We found evidence for
this mechanism both among the military and the civilian opposition. Military generals and their appointed
judges on the Constitutional Tribunal were swayed by appeals to legitimacy. Opposition groups built upon
parties and unions that dated from decades of prior democracy, and were aided by international support
from human rights organizations with strong links to domestic groups such as the Vicaría de la Solidaridad.
To the extent that the military and the opposition can be circumscribed as the elite and citizens in Chile, we
thus have evidence that normative pressures can operate from both the “top down” and the “bottom up.”
However, from one case we cannot infer whether the normative e ect of prior democracy is more important
for opposition behavior or for shaping military preferences.
While Remmer (1989) argues that junta leaders disregarded the long-standing norms of Chile’s democratic
tradition, Barros (2002) and Hawkins (2002b) document numerous occasions when international pressure
activated these norms among military leaders—even those who initially supported military intervention
and appeared unmoved by the negative legacy of military interference half a century earlier. To understand
the proximate causal role of human rights norms, we would need a contrasting case where military exit was
not the mechanism for peaceful transition, but where international pressure activated human rights norms
to help the domestic opposition mobilize and peacefully oust a dictatorship.
Discussion

This chapter shows that human rights shaming campaigns are associated with democratic transition in
military regimes. This nding may give us some purchase on how shaming campaigns a ect repression in
di erent types of autocratic regimes. If we are unable to detect any average e ect of human rights shaming
campaigns on the observed level of repression in targeted countries (Hafner-Burton, 2008), our ndings
p. 183 suggest a next step might explore how shaming in uences the incentives to repress in a variety of
di erent autocratic contexts.
The evidence that human rights shaming campaigns are associated with an increased probability of
democratic transition—but only in military regimes—is consistent with the literature on normative t,
which argues that human rights campaigns should be most e ective when the norms they articulate are
salient in the domestic context. This point underscores an important limitation of the analysis. Our research
design does not allow us to pinpoint the causal arena in which norms shape actors’ preferences and
behavior. The evidence from Chile suggests that shaming can reinforce norms in shaping collective
mobilization among opposition groups as well as in uencing the preferences of professional military elites.
That is, there is evidence of norms operating from the bottom up as well as the top down. A paired
comparison of a country with prior democracy but no professionalized military elite, and a country that has
both, would provide the necessary analytic leverage to better answer this question. We leave this task for
future research.
We nd little systematic evidence consistent with the direct material cost or post-exit punishment
hypotheses, both of which have implications for regime stability in personalist dictatorships. Although U.N.
shaming is associated with a decrease in aid and AI shaming with the imposition of new sanctions, this may
not su ciently hurt these regimes to destabilize them because shaming does not directly and automatically
lead to aid cuts or trade sanctions. Or perhaps, as Figure 6.2 suggests, new sanctions are not su ciently
focused on democratic regime change.
The study of human rights shaming is still in its infancy, as illustrated by the fact that the data we use span
less than thirty years, mostly covering the 1980s and 1990s. The short time series re ects the fact that
human rights regimes are a relatively recent phenomenon. Unlike sanctions and foreign aid, we can only
study this form of foreign pressure during a time period when its use is escalating, as illustrated in the rst
chapter. The results in this chapter should therefore be treated with appropriate caution because, as we have
seen in the case of foreign aid, the broader international context can play an important role in the
e ectiveness of foreign pressure.
The most common approach to studying human rights focuses on their origins and whether they can be
e ective in combating repression (Hafner-Burton, 2008; Kim and Sikkink, 2010). Our approach is to
examine the broader domestic political context in which shaming campaigns take place to help us
understand how human rights regimes in uence the political incentives of targeted governments. We
encourage future research on human rights and repression to approach the question through the lens of
domestic political survival in dictatorships (Escribà-Folch, 2013b).
Notes
1 On the history and functioning of AI see Hopgood (2006).

2 Quoted in Drescher (1994, 148).
3 Also see Rees (2005, 326).
4 Sarah El Deeb, “Egyptians fear evidence of abuse will be destroyed,” Associated Press, 5 March 2011.
5 For explanations and analyses of why some countries are targeted and others not, see Lebovic and Voeten (2006), Ron et
al. (2005), and Meernik et al. (2012). The former focuses on the UNCHR while the latter two focus on Amnesty
International.
6 “Libya takes human rights role,” BBC News, 20 January 2003. Following the accession of repressive regimes to the UNCHR,

the U.N. replaced it with a new organization, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in 2006.
7 We find that personalist dictatorships are less likely than other regimes to be targeted by the U.N., and that they are
slightly more likely to be members of the UNCHR.
8 They test both random- and (country)-fixed e ects models. We report results from fixed e ects models, though similar
results hold with random e ects. Their model specification includes: a lagged dependent variable; the Political Terror
Scale as a measure of violent repression; Civil Liberties from the Freedom House; USAgree as a measure of how o en the
recipient country votes with the U.S. in the U.N. General Assembly; War as measures of internal or external conflict, coded
by Gleditsch et al. (2002); and Capabilities as the Correlates of Warʼs Composite Indicator of National Capability. The time
trends measure calendar years.
9 See Appendix Table C-1 for the full results of these models as well as those in the next figure.
10 We use this form of shaming to capture advocacy group shaming campaigns; it has the longest time series; and it mirrors
the research design in Murdie and Peksen (2013). Data on this variable obtained from replication files for Murdie and
Peksen (2013).
11 Borzou Daragahi, “In Tunisia, where record keeping is good, some seek to preserve documents of tyranny,” Los Angeles
Times, 16 April 2011.
12 “Amnesty accuses Syria of crimes against humanity,” BBC News, 6 July 2011.
13 See, for example, Amnesty International (1984).
14 This scaled measure is the first principal component of a factor model with three shame variables: log(1+AI), log(1+Media),
UNCHR. Missing data on the component variables drops the sample size from over 1600 to roughly 1100, thus excluding
thirty-one dictatorships and eleven democratic transitions from the analysis. Data on additional sources of shaming are
from Hafner-Burton (2008).
15 The substantive e ects are calculated based on movement in the shame variable from the twenty-fi h percentile to the
seventy-fi h percentile.
16 In replication files, we test additional models: without control variables, with additional control variables (domestic
protest, non-violent protest movement, neighbor democracy, and trade), as well as multiple specifications with
alternative measures of domestic repression. We also show that the finding holds with a non-linear link function.
17 The instrument is: the square root of the number of geophysical disasters in the past three years plus one, divided by the
square root of the kilometer distance between the target country capital city and Washington D.C. Distance data is from
Kristian Gleditsch; and the disaster data is from The International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) published by the Centre for
Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the School of Public Health of the Université Catholique de Louvain.
18 Robustness tests in replication files show that the results remain in specifications—with no control variables; adding
controls for aid and sanctions; excluding high-intensity civil wars; and various lags for anti-government protest.
19 A er the coup, General Prats went into self-exile in Buenos Aires and was assassinated in 1974 by Pinochetʼs security
service.
20 Fernando Linz, Actas de Sesiones de la Honorable Junta de Gobierno 177, 11 December 1974, page 3. Quoted in Barros
(2002, 162).
21 Shirley Christian, “Group Is Channeling U.S. Funds to Parties Opposing Pinochet,” The New York Times, 15 June 1988.
22 See Zapata Larraín (1991, 296–311) as well.

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Foreign Pressure and the Politics of Autocratic Survival

Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright

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6 Naming and Shaming Dictatorships 

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746997.003.0006 Pages 154–183

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Norms and Domestic Pressure

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p. 160 The Material Costs of Shame

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p. 163 UNCHR resolutions and foreign aid

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Shaming campaigns and sanctions imposition

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Which regimes are the most sensitive to external revenue loss?

Shame and Post-Exit Punishment

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Shaming and Regime Change

Data and Methods

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Human Rights Campaigns and Regime Change in Chile

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Prior Democracy, Norms, and the Institutionalization of Military Rule

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International pressure and the 1980 Constitution

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Constitutional rule, shaming, and the 1988 plebiscite

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Constitutional rules—in particular the independent power of the Constitutional Tribunal—and

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1 On the history and functioning of AI see Hopgood (2006).

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