Past studies suggest that domestic public support for compliance with international human rights law can constrain governments to comply with human rights law. But the question remains: Why does the public care about compliance? Using a series of survey experiments in South Korea and the United States, this study finds that constituents are concerned about compliance in one issue area—such as human rights—because they believe it will affect the country's reputation in other domains of international law. Cross-national survey experiments demonstrate that past noncompliance negatively affects the South Korean public's second-order beliefs about the likelihood of future compliance across different issue areas. However, past noncompliance has a limited impact on the US public's first-order beliefs across different domains.
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