Do the ''shaming'' activities of HROs (human rights international non-governmental organizations) have a direct influence on state behavior? We argue, consistent with existing scholarship, that states targeted or ''shamed'' by these organizations do improve their human rights practices. However, mere shaming is not enough. Improvements in human rights practices result from the interaction of shaming by HROs with (i) a domestic presence of HROs within the targeted state and ⁄ or (ii) pressure by third-party states, individuals, and organizations. Using a new data set of the shaming events of more than 400 HROs toward governments, we test these propositions quantitatively and find widespread support for the arguments. This research provides the first global quantitative evidence of the conditional importance of HRO shaming in transnational advocacy efforts.

This article studies the effects of human rights international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) on domestic antigovernment protest. Unlike mainstream scholarship, the authors argue that human rights INGOs are not simply the magic bullet in orchestrating nonviolent protests; different types of human rights INGO activity have varying effects on protest. Moreover, some human rights INGO activities may lead to higher levels of violent protest. The empirical tests use new data on the activities of over 400 human rights INGOs and domestic nonviolent and violent protest globally from 1991 to 2004. The authors find that increases in human rights INGO activities reflecting a greater commitment to the domestic population are associated with higher levels of both violent and nonviolent protest.

Do human rights international nongovernmental organizations (HROs) impact public opinion? This article argues that HROs provide information to citizens in repressive regimes about their government's human rights practices. Without this information, worsening governmental abuse of human rights alone will not lead to fewer people believing their government respects human rights. With increased HRO shaming of the state, however, a smaller proportion of people come to believe that their government respects human rights. These hypotheses are tested using an updated dataset on shaming by over 400 HROs, together with never-before-examined data from the World Values Survey on the public's opinion of human rights within a state. The results largely support the article's contention: HROs are powerful conduits through which a population becomes informed of domestic human rights issues. Without HRO shaming, a bad or worsening human rights condition does not diminish the proportion of a population that believes their government respects human rights.

Do transnational human rights organizations (HROs) influence foreign military intervention onset? We argue that the greater international exposure of human suffering through HRO "naming and shaming" activities starts a process of mobilization and opinion change in the international community that ultimately increases the likelihood of humanitarian military intervention. We test the empirical implication of the argument on a sample of all non-Western countries from 1990 to 2005. The results suggest that HRO shaming makes humanitarian intervention more likely even after controlling for several other covariates of intervention decisions. Further, the suggested effect of HROs holds when we use just the general count of all shaming reports by HROs in the popular press or weigh this count by the intensity of the negative shaming message. Finally, HRO activities appear to have a significant impact on the likelihood of military missions by IGOs as well as interventions led by third party states.

Using a risk assessment method developed by Gurr and Moore ( American Journal of Political Science 41: 1079–1103, 1997) and applying O’Brien’s ( Journal of Conflict Resolution 46: 791–811, 2002) risk assessment metrics, we present a global, comparative, cross-national model predicting the states where political violence is likely to increase. Our model predicts more political violence when governments violate the physical integrity rights of their citizens—especially when they frequently imprison citizens for political reasons or make them “disappear”. These coercive techniques may create more citizen dissatisfaction than other types of violations of physical integrity rights, because citizens perceive political imprisonment and disappearances as the direct result of the deliberate policy choices of politicians. Our model also forecasts more political violence in weak states and states that allow dissatisfied citizens to coordinate their anti-government activities. Specifically, we demonstrate that political violence tends to be higher if governments respect their citizens’ right to freedom of assembly and association and offer widespread use of mobile phone and internet technology.

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Much scholarship concerning human rights international nongovernmental organizations (HR-INGOs) focuses on the central role they play within transnational advocacy networks. Despite this theoretical focus on networks, there has been scant empirical attention on the characteristics of the HR-INGO network or on whether the network characteristics of a HR-INGO matter for its advocacy output. Introducing a new relational dataset on 681 HR-INGOs, this article finds that the HR-INGO network is somewhat like a public good and that the organizations who utilize it benefit in terms of their international advocacy output. Other findings focus on how the structural characteristics of organizations can influence their propensity to connect to each other and how ‘free-riding’ can limit the benefits organizations receive from the network.

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