The Politics Of Leverage In International Relations

Features

Description

From campaigns against genocide to efforts against money laundering, governments, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations have attempted to change the behaviour of targeted actors through the public exposure of violations of normative standards and legal commitments. Despite the prominence of such efforts, the nature and impact of social sanction in international politics remains highly contested.

This unique collection unpacks the concept and practice of naming and shaming. Drawing on a diverse range of issues and theoretical controversies in the International Relations and Human Rights literatures, the contributors to this collection explore the ways in which state and non-state actors wield public exposure as an instrument of leverage and combine it with material sanction, the contextual factors that shape these combinations, and the conditions that generate effective pressure.

This volume will be of interest to students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners interested in international relations, human rights, the diffusion of global norms, transnational crime, targeted sanctions, corporate social responsibility, and the dynamics of leverage in international politics.

Review: 'Friman and colleagues make an important contribution for IR theory and with real policy relevance. Soft power strategies such as naming and shaming too often are more embraced than analyzed. The Politics of Leverage in International Relations provides an analytic framework which digs deeper with both intensive case studies on a range of policy areas (human rights, money laundering, drugs, armed conflict, corporate social responsibility) that are valuable in their own right as well as being woven together to get at patterns showing when, why and how such leverage can be effective.' - Bruce W.

Jentleson, Duke University and Woodrow Wilson Center Naming and shaming has become a widely deployed and analyzed strategy of transnational activists to remind states of their self-imposed legal obligations, in particular in the context of the post-World War II legal regime build around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

This edited volume takes a comprehensive critical perspective on social and material sanctioning and develops key insights into the conditions under which such strategies actually make a difference. Looking beyond naming and shaming as an exclusive weapon of the weak, the contributors to this important volume establish a comprehensive framework capable of analyzing the effectiveness of public exposure within its broader context of how international actors seek to influence others through the politics of leverage.' - Hans Peter Schmitz, Syracuse University