The Impact of INGO Climate Shaming on National Laws

Abstract

Does INGO climate shaming translate into actual climate laws, or is it ineffective in altering the behavior of governments? This article provides the first systematic assessment of whether and under what conditions INGO climate shaming can influence national climate policymaking. Drawing on social movement and NGO literatures, we argue that INGO climate shaming can incur reputational costs for governments through two main pathways: public opinion and transnational politics. To test our propositions, we generate a unique dataset on INGO climate shaming, utilizing natural language processing (NLP) to extract INGO climate shaming events from media sources, covering the period 1990–2020. We find that climate shaming is generally effective in pushing government to introduce climate laws. Particularly, we find that climate shaming is consequential when governments are trade-dependent and have committed to global climate norms. Our findings provide substantive implications for the global climate governance literature.

 

¿Se traducen las vergüenzas climáticas de las ONG internacionales (INGO) en leyes climáticas reales, o son ineficaces para alterar el comportamiento de los gobiernos? Este artículo proporciona la primera evaluación sistemática de si las vergüenzas climáticas de las INGO pueden influir en la formulación de políticas climáticas nacionales y bajo qué condiciones. Basándonos en las literaturas de movimientos sociales y ONG internacionales, argumentamos que las vergüenzas climáticas de las INGO pueden incurrir en costos de reputación para los gobiernos a través de dos vías principales: la opinión pública y la política transnacional. Para probar nuestras propuestas, generamos un conjunto de datos único sobre las vergüenzas climáticas de las INGO, utilizando el procesamiento del lenguaje natural (PLN) para extraer eventos de vergüenzas climáticas de las INGO de fuentes mediáticas, cubriendo el período 1990-2020. Encontramos que las vergüenzas climáticas son generalmente efectivas para impulsar al gobierno a introducir leyes climáticas. En particular, encontramos que las vergüenzas climáticas son significativas cuando los gobiernos dependen del comercio y se han comprometido con las normas climáticas globales. Nuestros hallazgos proporcionan implicaciones sustanciales para la literatura de gobernanza climática global.

 

Le dénigrement climatique des ONG internationales (INGO) se traduit-il en lois climatiques réelles ou est-il inefficace pour modifier le comportement des gouvernements? Cet article fournit la première évaluation systématique de la capacité du dénigrement climatique des INGO à influencer l‘élaboration des politiques climatiques nationales et les conditions sous lesquelles cela peut se produire. En nous appuyant sur les littératures des mouvements sociaux et des ONG internationales, nous soutenons que le dénigrement climatique des INGO peut entraîner des coûts de réputation pour les gouvernements par deux principaux canaux : l‘opinion publique et la politique transnationale. Pour tester nos propositions, nous générons un ensemble de données unique sur le dénigrement climatique des INGO, en utilisant le traitement automatique du langage naturel (TALN) pour extraire des événements de dénigrement climatique des INGO à partir de sources médiatiques, couvrant la période 1990-2020. Nous trouvons que le dénigrement climatique est généralement efficace pour pousser les gouvernements à introduire des lois climatiques. En particulier, nous constatons que le dénigrement climatique est significatif lorsque les gouvernements dépendent du commerce et se sont engagés à respecter les normes climatiques mondiales. Nos résultats offrent des implications substantielles pour la littérature sur la gouvernance climatique mondiale.

Keywords:

• Climate laws
• global climate governance
• INGOs
• naming and shaming

Introduction

Does climate shaming by environmental international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) influence the domestic policies of governments? In parallel to the growing awareness of climate change and its consequences, numerous global initiatives in the form of international conferences and treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, have been introduced in recent decades. The fundamental goal behind these initiatives has been to make governments around the world commit to climate action in order to avoid the devastating effects of climate change. The structure of the current climate regime puts a strong emphasis on national climate laws for the fulfillment of international climate commitments (Hirono and Schröder 2004; Victor 2011). But the lack of enforcement mechanisms in climate agreements – and the proliferation of shaming-based mechanisms, such as the pledge-and-review system, that replace legally binding obligations in global climate agreements (Milkoreit and Haapala 2019) – have cast doubts on the prospects of ambitious national climate reforms. Observers have therefore emphasized that the effectiveness of pledge-and-review systems may depend on the power of shaming (Jacquet and Jamieson 2016; Keohane and Oppenheimer 2016, 144). In this context, the rapid increase of environmental INGOs in global environmental politics and their growing role as watchdogs and enforcers of ambitious national climate laws through international shaming has been a subject of academic scholarship (Corell and Betsill 2001, 67; Falkner 2016; Gunningham 2009; Murdie and Urpelainen 2015).

The role of INGOs in shaping international policies and national laws is well-established in both political science and sociology (Agnone 2007; Frank, Longhofer, and Schofer 2007; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Longhofer et al. 2016; Tarrow 1996; Tallberg et al. 2018). The influence of INGOs in global environmental and climate governance has also been stressed in myriad studies (Allan 2021; Allan and Hadden 2017; Corell and Betsill 2001; Dodds 2007; Longhofer et al. 2016). While INGOs may use various strategies to achieve their goals (Ayling and Gunningham 2017; Curran and Eckhardt 2017; Nasiritousi, Hjerpe, and Linnér 2016), public advocacy strategies are viewed as having a more prominent role in influencing government behavior (Hafner-Burton 2008; Murdie and Davis 2012; Murdie and Urpelainen 2015). Though previous studies have examined how INGOs influence various stages of international negotiations (Allan 2021; Corell and Betsill 2001; Hanegraaff 2015) – as well as how the presence of INGOs generate domestic environmental laws (Frank, Longhofer, and Schofer 2007; Longhofer et al. 2016) – we still lack empirical studies assessing the impact of environmental INGOs’ advocacy strategies on domestic policymaking (Murdie and Urpelainen 2015, 369; Koliev, Park, and Duit 2023).

In this article, we ask whether and under what conditions INGO climate shaming matters for domestic climate laws. We define INGO climate shaming as a strategy designed to publicly expose the poor performance of governments through media campaigns, typically in relation to generally agree-upon norms or formal international climate agreements such as the Paris Agreement. Unlike conventional economic sanctions, it primarily works through reputational costs. For instance, environmental INGOs, such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Greenpeace, and Conservation International, routinely call for adequate regulations and criticize governments that fail to live up to their international commitments. But does INGO climate shaming translate into actual climate laws, or is it ineffective in altering the behavior of governments?

The extant literature on human rights suggests that shaming can be an effective tool to produce compliance with human rights norms under some favorable conditions (Franklin 2008; Hafner-Burton 2008; Joachim 2007; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Krain 2012; Murdie and Davis 2012) However, there is a lack of systematic studies assessing whether INGO climate shaming has had an impact. In particular, we lack empirical studies assessing the relationship between INGO shaming strategies and governments’ regulatory change. Moreover, climate change differs from human rights with respect to some important factors. The international reactions to human rights violations are usually much harsher than to non-compliance with climate agreements (Koliev, Page, and Tallberg 2022), and climate issues are more tied to economic concerns than human rights (Hendrix and Wong 2014; Victor 2011).¹ Considering these dynamics, and the vital role of NGOs in promoting compliance with climate agreements through shaming strategies (Bäckstrand et al. 2017, 574; Gunningham 2009), examining the impact of INGO climate shaming is important for our understanding of NGOs’ role in the global climate regime. Specifically, the study of such impacts contributes insight into the extent to which INGO shaming can promote the enforcement of domestic laws as well as the international determinants of national climate laws.

This article makes several contributions to the literature. First, we draw on the NGO and social movement literatures to specify the pathways through which climate shaming can prompt governments to pass climate laws, as well as the conditions under which governments are most likely to be responsive to climate shaming. We contend that climate shaming, in general, can induce reputational costs via the channels of domestic public opinion and transnational politics. Moreover, we argue that climate shaming is particularly effective at inflicting these reputational costs when governments are democratic, reliant on trade, and committed to international climate agreements. Second, while prior studies have explored the relationship between NGO shaming and overall compliance levels, our study focuses on regulatory changes initiated by governments. This provides a more direct examination of the link between NGO shaming and state actions. For example, investigating the connection between shaming and pollution levels can be challenging since pollution often correlates with economic factors, complicating the causal relationship between shaming and pollution. While statistical models cannot establish causality definitely – and regulatory shifts might also be influenced by external factors – focusing on legislative actions aligns more closely with government interventions. In contrast, outcomes like CO₂ emissions can fluctuate without governmental interference. By focusing on regulatory changes, we sidestep numerous confounding factors, bolstering the plausibility of our claims. In addition, we focus particularly on climate shaming rather than general environmental shaming. Such disaggregation also contributes to a more direct examination of the impact of INGO shaming on state behavior. Third, we contribute with a new dataset, where we have utilized natural language processing (NLP) to extract shaming events. In contrast to previous studies (Murdie and Urpelainen 2015), our approach allows us to include multiple media sources and analyze entire documents rather than just lead sentences.

Our study offers preliminary evidence that climate shaming can be an effective tool to make governments deliver on their domestic climate action pledges by introducing climate laws. Potentially, then, climate shaming can to some extent substitute for the lack of sanctioning mechanisms in global climate governance. The pledge-and-review system in global environmental agreements may not be toothless after all. However, our findings also suggests that the effectiveness of climate shaming hinges on a government’s trade-dependence and its adherence to international climate agreements. If the shamed governments are dominant enough to dismiss concerns about potential trade reductions, or if they can circumvent international climate agreements, then climate shaming is likely to be inconsequential. Moreover, since our study cannot exclude the possibility that governments enact climate laws and regulations that are unambitious and lack force (UNEP 2019), future research could provide additional clarity by assessing whether climate shaming leads to shallow concessions in the form of tame climate laws or more substantial concessions.

Explaining the Impact of INGO Climate Shaming

INGO climate shaming often occurs when governments lag behind their climate commitments or act contradictory to what they have pledged. Climate shaming may also occur when governments fail to commit to global accords, such as the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Agreement. The main goal of climate shaming is to change a government’s climate policies. Domestic climate legislation is more powerful than international pledges due to the judicial consequences of non-compliance. Thus, INGOs try to push governments to enact ambitious climate laws by imposing reputational costs through shaming activities. In this context, INGOs often are viewed as authorities and credible actors and their campaigns can be supported and disseminated by media outlets, citizens, and local political actors (Avant, Finnemore, and Sell 2010; Thrall, Sweet, and Stecula 2014). Government representatives can be responsive to climate shaming because they value their reputation at home and abroad (Kelley 2017). To escape the reputational costs of negative public exposure by INGOs, governments may decide to pursue reforms that will increase their reputation and standing (Tingley and Tomz 2022, 446). In the social movement literature, reputational costs imposed by INGOs are seen as similar to disruption costs imposed by movements, which can “disrupt the target’s ability to obtain political or economic values” (Luders 2010, 3).

In particular, governments may become worried about their reputation and alter their behavior due to social and instrumental reasons. Though social and instrumental concerns are analytically distinct, they may empirically operate in a complementary fashion with consequences on state behavior (Goodman and Jinks 2013; Kelley and Simmons 2020). Social concerns are closely related to the notions of status and image. Governments are status-seeking and may anticipate that their image or status is at stake due to shaming campaigns (Checkel 2001; Johnston 2001). Status pertains to governments’ relative standing in international or domestic politics, where climate shaming can incur costs, for instance, by making shamed government representatives self-conscious of negative publicity at international summits and negotiations. This deprives them of a sense of belonging and may incur warnings of expulsion from international organizations and climate clubs. The role of status and image is well established in international relations (Dafoe, Renshon, and Huth 2014) and in shaming studies (Murdie and Davis 2012; Lebovic and Voeten 2006). Studies have also shown that INGOs can strategically frame their campaigns in a way that stresses the moral responsibility of governments to combat climate change (Allan and Hadden 2017, 613). INGO shaming can also activate instrumental concerns. Government leaders may fear that a damaged reputation can be translated into more tangible consequences by being viewed as an unreliable trade partner (Koliev, Sommerer, and Tallberg 2021). In sum, reputational costs can push governments into compliance due to status or instrumental concerns, or both (Hede Skagerlind 2021; Kelley and Simmons 2020, 498–499).

We contend that there are two main complementary arenas or pathways through which INGO climate shaming can activate reputational concerns: domestic public opinion and transnational politics. First, domestic public opinion is one of the most dominant pathways for shaming to exert influence over government policies (Ausderan 2014; Davis, Murdie, and Steinmetz 2012; Gulbrandsen and Andresen 2004, 58; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Tarrow 2023). Because citizens care about the reputation of their government (Tomz 2007), climate shaming can influence their perception of the government’s climate policies (Koliev, Page, and Tallberg 2022). When governments’ climate policies, or the lack thereof, are singled out and criticized by INGOs, citizens may punish their government by showing their disapproval, for example during elections. In line with social movement studies, media reports on demands for more and better climate laws by various local actors, amplified by INGO shaming, may also affect citizens and produce negative effects on public support for the government’s climate change politics (Agnone 2007; Bernardi, Bischof, and Wouters 2021; Walgrave and Vliegenthart 2012). The public disapproval of (inadequate or lack of) climate policies can be sufficient for governments to rectify their behavior in order to improve their reputation among the voters and loyal groups, both in democracies and autocracies (Johnson 2011). Indeed, the negative impact of international shaming on public support for governments – democracies and otherwise – has been established in both observational (Davis, Murdie, and Steinmetz 2012) and experimental studies (Ausderan 2014; Gruffydd-Jones 2019; Koliev, Page, and Tallberg 2022; Spektor, Mignozzetti, and Fasolin 2022; Tingley and Tomz 2022).

The second pathway, transnational politics, suggests that shaming activities by INGOs can motivate third-party actors, such as governments, international organizations and multinational corporations, to exert pressure on shamed governments (Barry, Clay, and Flynn 2013; Keck and Sikkink 1998). Studies have found that NGO shaming leads to economic losses for targeted governments through the mobilization of and pressure by third-party actors (Barry, Clay, and Flynn 2013; Dietrich and Murdie 2017; Peterson, Murdie, and Asal 2018). Within the climate change issue area, governments are the main third-party actors, while in the human rights area, intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nation (UN) human rights bodies, may also play a more prominent role in imposing costs on non-compliant governments (DeMeritt 2012; Lebovic and Voeten 2009). Foreign governments are the most powerful actors in this context because they can utilize diplomatic and trade policy-based tools to punish governments that fail to respect international agreements. Trade, a significant feature of the global economy, may constitute an especially important instrument for third-party actors (Franklin 2008). By singling out those with poor climate policies, INGOs motivate foreign governments to push for climate action, for instance through preferential trade agreements that have seen a growing number of climate-related provisions (Dent 2021; Morin and Jinnah 2018). Moreover, as demonstrated by Barry, Clay, and Flynn (2013), INGO shaming can influence the behavior of multinational corporations, leading to a decrease in foreign direct investments as a form of punishment. Taken together, INGO climate shaming can create reputational costs through public opinion and transnational politics pathways. International human rights scholarship stresses the complementarity of these pathways (Lebovic and Voeten 2009) and that simultaneous pressure from “above” and “below” is more likely to promote compliance (Brysk 1993). This discussion leads to our first general expectation, that is, if climate shaming can prompt reputational concerns, we should observe, on average, an altered government behavior in terms of the enactment of climate laws.

H1: INGO climate shaming is likely to lead governments to enact climate legislation.

The existing literature gives us reasons to identify conditions under which climate shaming is more likely to elicit reputational concerns through the outlined pathways. Drawing on the characteristics of targeted governments, we theorize three favorable conditions under which INGO climate shaming is likely to influence governments’ climate law-making behavior. Specifically, we propose that governments that are more democratic (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 2013; Tarrow 2023), trade-dependent (Franklin 2008; Pacheco-Vega 2015; Pacheco-Vega and Murdie 2021), and that have signed more international climate agreements (Clark 2013; Longhofer et al. 2016; Tsutsui and Shin 2008) are more likely to be responsive to climate shaming.

First, in relation to the domestic public opinion pathway, democratic regimes might be especially receptive to INGO climate shaming. In democracies, civil society is often more robust, and public opinion plays a more critical role in the survival of governments compared to authoritarian states. The expectation that democracies will be more responsive to international criticism than non-democracies is well rooted in both political science and sociology, as well as in the shaming literature (Amenta et al. 2010; Koliev, Sommerer, and Tallberg 2021; Koliev and Lebovic 2022; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 2013; Shandra, Esparza, and London 2012; but see Hendrix and Wong 2013) and resonates with studies examining the impact of democracy on environmental and climate policies (Neumayer 2002; Fredriksson and Neumayer 2013; Obydenkova and Salahodjaev 2017). The social movement literature particularly stresses democratic norms as a favorable condition for civil society groups to exert influence on government policymaking (Amenta 2006; Meyer 2004; Tarrow 2023).

Second, with regard to the transnational pathway, it stands to reason that as a government becomes more dependent on trade partners, the impacts of INGO shaming on that government become more pronounced (Franklin 2008; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Luders 2010, 3–4). The main logic behind this proposition is that negative campaigns against trade-dependent governments would be more powerful and effective because of the potential cut-backs by trade partners, which are more economically damaging to trade-dependent states. A tarnished reputation – as a result of shaming campaigns – could potentially lead to reduced trade relations (Peterson, Murdie, and Asal 2018) or economic sanctions (Murdie and Peksen 2013). Illustrating this logic, a study by Franklin (2008) finds that the effects of human rights shaming by NGOs is conditioned on the targeted government’s trade ties with the outside world. A recent empirical study by Pacheco-Vega and Murdie (2021) also shows that more environmental NGOs in countries that are more dependent on trade is associated with improved environmental conditions compared to countries that are less trade-dependent.

Third and last, we expect governments that have signed more international climate agreements to be more receptive to INGO climate shaming than governments that have signed few or no agreements. This condition relates to both domestic public and transnational pathways. Committing to international climate agreements allows environmental INGOs to point to discrepancies between a government’s commitments and actual practices. Such commitments also generate overall pressure and may be more effective in damaging the international reputation of governments (Clark 2013). No less importantly, in the context of domestic public pathway, citizens are also more likely to judge their government harshly in cases of broken or violated international promises and agreements (Tomz 2007), even when they lack strong environmentalist values (Koliev, Page, and Tallberg 2022). Indeed, the social movement and NGO literatures both emphasize how a government’s commitments to international norms increase its vulnerability to both domestic and transnational demands (Brysk 1993; Lewis 2000; Clark 2013; Pacheco-Vega 2015, 383–385). For example, Clark (2013), finds that human rights shaming is more effective in influencing states that have ratified international human rights conventions than states that have not (Clark 2013). Tsutsui and Shin (2008) show that social movements are more effective in influencing policies in governments that increase their commitments to international norms and rules. This discussion results in three conditional-effects hypotheses:

H2a: INGO climate shaming is more likely to be effective when targeted toward more democratic governments.

H2b: INGO climate shaming is more likely to be effective when targeted toward trade-dependent governments.

H2c: INGO climate shaming is more likely to be effective when targeted toward governments that have committed to international climate agreements.

Research Design

We focus particularly on the shaming activities of environmental INGOs’ as they are the main actors engaging in climate-related shaming. Our main aim is to examine if and under what conditions INGO shaming can produce domestic policy change within the climate change area. This focus privileges policy change but does not inform us about the effectiveness of enacted climate laws with respect to, for instance, CO2 levels. Arguably, enacting climate laws is easier than enforcing them. For example, a comprehensive global assessment of environmental laws by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) showed that many national laws are weak in enforcement and less ambitious in mitigating climate change (UNEP 2019). This may suggest that enacted climate laws resulting from acceding to INGO demands are not costly actions for governments. Moreover, we also acknowledge that the impact of climate shaming is much broader than its impact on laws. As other studies have shown (DeMeritt 2012; Koliev and Lebovic 2022; Koliev, Sommerer, and Tallberg 2021), shaming can affect government policies and outcomes even if no new laws are passed. However, the strength of this study lies in its focus on regulatory changes rather than on outcomes like CO2 emissions. By focusing on legal reforms rather than outcomes, this study provides a more direct test of the impact of INGO climate shaming since outcomes like CO2 emissions, or other aggregate outcomes, typically are influenced by many other factors than those controlled by governments (Victor 2011). Perhaps more promising is that, with climate laws in place, citizens, civil society groups, and environmental INGOs have been able to file formal complaints and win some substantial legal cases against governments (UNEP 2019, 139–152).

The Dependent Variable

Our dependent variable, climate laws, captures whether governments enact climate laws (=1) or otherwise (=0) in a given year. Data for this variable are collected from the Climate Change Laws of the World (CCLW) database, hosted by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. This comprehensive global database on climate laws covers the period 1990–2020 and includes over 190 countries. The database includes only climate change-related laws that

establish rules and procedures related to reducing energy demand; promoting of low carbon energy supply; restricting the development of fossil fuel-based infrastructure; promoting low-carbon buildings; carbon pricing; lower industry emissions; tackling deforestation and promoting sustainable land use; other mitigation efforts; climate-related research and development; low-carbon transportation; enhancing adaptation capabilities; natural disaster risk management (CCLW 2022).

The CCLW database is based on information from official governmental and judicial documents, coded manually by a group of experts. Our sample includes 1,352 climate law events for the period 1990–2020. Figure 1 shows the average number of climate laws introduced per year. The overall trend in the number of climate laws passed per year was positive until 2015 and especially increased between 1999 and 2014. It peaked in 2014 when 150 climate laws were passed. From 2015 onwards, the number of laws passed per year has decreased and amounted to 72 in 2020.

Figure 1. Number of climate laws passed per year.

Germany, Italy, Brazil, Spain, and Ireland are the five countries that have passed the largest number of climate laws. Kuwait, Sudan, Vietnam, Turkmenistan, and Iraq, for instance, belong to those countries that have passed the lowest number of climate laws. Burma, North Korea, Somalia, and Cabo Verde are examples of countries that have not passed any climate laws during the study period.

The distribution of climate laws among regions, as reported in Table 1, is relatively flat. The Middle East and North Africa – two regions that are dense with oil exporting countries – stand for the smallest share of total climate law events.

Table 1. Total number of climate law events per region.

Region	Average climate laws	Percentage
Asia and Pacific	293	22%
Western Europe and North America	271	21%
Sub Saharan Africa	247	19%
Latin American and the Caribbean	239	18%
Eastern Europe and Central Asia	162	12%
Middle East and North Africa	103	8%

While we recognize that the CCLW database offers the most extensive collection of data on climate laws, it does come with certain limitations. Notably, it lacks details regarding the qualitative distinctions of climate laws, such as their level of strictness or breadth. Gathering such information is a difficult and time-consuming task that is beyond the scope of this article. Therefore, our study is a preliminary analysis of the relationship between climate shaming and climate laws. Future studies are needed to determine whether climate shaming leads to superficial or more significant concessions.

The Key Independent Variables

To assess our hypotheses, we generated an original dataset that captures the overall climate shaming by environmental INGOs. The dataset was produced in three steps.

First, to identify the entire population of environmental INGOs, we used the Yearbook of International Organizations (YBIO). The YBIO has the largest global and longitudinal coverage of INGOs compared to other existing datasets (Hadden and Bush 2021, 210–211). In identifying the environmental INGOs, a group of research assistants read through the mission statements of INGOs and included those that addressed environmental issues as one of their main missions. We excluded organizations that were not international and or environmentally oriented. This resulted in a sample of 2,295 environmental INGOs, encompassing major INGOs, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, WWF, and Greenpeace, as well as less-known organizations like the International Society for Endangered Cats, International Bird Rescue, and EarthRights International (see Table A1 in Online Appendix for the full list of environmental INGOs). In other words, our sample of environmental INGOs is not a homogeneous group, but is characterized by great variation with regard to size, resources, and influencing strategy. Some, such as Greenpeace, are more focused on advocacy while others, such as the Center for International Environmental Law, are more lobby-oriented. More established INGOs like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and WWF work with both shaming strategies and lobbying.

Second, because we are particularly interested in climate-related shaming, we created a dictionary with the most common words related to climate change, such as greenhouse emissions, sea levels, Kyoto Protocol, and global warming (see Online Appendix Table A2 for the full list). Then, drawing on previous work on NGO shaming by Murdie and Bhasin (2011), we compiled a list of keywords that would capture conflictual events, including, for instance, “accuse”, “denounce”, “demands”, and “criticize” (see Online Appendix Table A3 for the full list).

Table 2. The top 10 most and least shamed.

Top 10 most shamed	Top 10 least shamed
USA	Tonga
Australia	Montenegro
United Kingdom	Moldova
Germany	Mauritania
France	Uzbekistan
Poland	Slovenia
India	Djibouti
Brazil	Yemen
Argentina	Serbia
China	Gabon

Table 3. The impact of INGO shaming on climate laws.

Independent variables	Model 1	M 2	M 3	M 4	M 5
INGO climate shaming	1.000***	1.720***	1.481***	1.336***	1.551***
	(0.000)	(0.138)	(0.138)	(0.111)	(0.199)
Democracy			3.110***	2.401***	0.930
			(0.896)	(0.528)	(0.747)
Climate agreements			1.090	1.052	1.208
			(0.169)	(0.136)	(0.274)
Economic development			0.889	0.883	0.551
			(0.172)	(0.127)	(0.249)
Trade openness			0.999	1.000	1.003
			(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.004)
CO2 per capita			1.230	1.146	1.504
			(0.351)	(0.242)	(1.012)
Federal			0.403**	0.501*
			(0.163)	(0.196)
Urbanization			0.998	0.998	1.044*
			(0.005)	(0.004)	(0.027)
Previous number of climate laws				1.099***	0.716***
				(0.024)	(0.032)
Cube spline 1				1.027***	1.022*
				(0.009)	(0.011)
Cube spline 2				0.987***	0.989**
				(0.005)	(0.006)
Cube spline 3				1.003**	1.004**
				(0.001)	(0.002)
Constant	0.053***	0.020***	0.066*	0.115*
	(0.027)	(0.011)	(0.103)	(0.139)
Year-fixed	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country-fixed	No	No	No	No	Yes
Observations	3,564	3,564	2,877	2,877	2,846

Robust standard error in parentheses; *** p < .01, ** p < .05, * p < .1

Third, we relied on the canonical media database Lexis-Nexis in order to identify all INGO climate shaming events. When analyzing INGO shaming events in a times-series-cross-sectional setup, it is important to consider the questions who did what to whom and when. To identify who (which INGO) did what (shaming), to whom (country target) and when (year), we employed the Stanford Core NLP tools (Manning et al. 2014) to analyze the media database. More specifically, we used conditional random fields (CRF) based Named Entity Recognizer (NER) and Basic Dependency Parsing to extract the shaming events (Finkel, Grenager, and Manning 2005).

Our approach considers each document (i.e., news article) as a distinct event in which an INGO criticizes a target country. This means that our approach may overlook cases where more than one country has been targeted by an INGO. However, this assumption is reasonable given that INGOs usually target one country to maximize the spotlight effect. Compared to other shaming datasets, our data has several advantages. First, this is the first INGO shaming dataset on climate change issues. Most of the other datasets focus on broader issues, such as the environment or human rights. Second, we rely on multiple international media sources in the Lexis-Nexis database, whereas previous datasets are based on Reuters Global News Data (Murdie and Urpelainen 2015). Third, existing environmental NGO shaming datasets identify shaming events based on titles and lead sentences of Reuters newswires. Our approach analyzes entire articles to extract climate shaming events, as lead sentences and headlines usually are short and may leave out important aspects of shaming events. In total, we identified over two million news articles in which environmental INGOs included in our sample were mentioned.

Our final INGO climate shaming dataset includes 12,947 events, covering 176 countries for the period 1990–2020. More precisely, it captures the total number of shaming events by INGOs for each year and country. The number of countries shamed by INGOs for climate-related issues has increased over time (Figure 2), reflecting the overall increase in environmental INGOs coupled with increased attention to climate change issues (Berny and Rootes 2018, 949, 963). By 2020, almost all countries had been targeted by climate shaming.²

Figure 2. Number of shamed countries per year.

The descriptive statistics in Table 2 provides some initial insights into INGO climate shaming. In line with previous studies on NGO shaming, we find that most of the negative attention is directed toward rich and powerful countries with high levels of CO₂ emission per capita, such as the US, Brazil, China, and the major European countries. The US is the most climate-shamed country in the sample, receiving an average of 2,282 shaming events. Similar patterns, where rich and populated countries are most targeted, is also found in the NGO and IO shaming literatures (Lebovic and Voeten 2009; Murdie and Davis 2012). Two viable explanations are that these countries in general receive more media coverage and have higher CO₂ emission levels compared to other countries. In the analysis, we take a natural logarithm of the INGO climate shaming variable to address its highly skewed distribution – the results with raw count numbers are also reported.

To test hypotheses H2a-H2c, we incorporate three variables to interact with INGO climate shaming. First, in relation to H2a, we include a measure of democracy to interact with the INGO climate shaming variable. The reasoning is that the domestic public pathway is more apt to induce reputational costs in democratic governments. For this, we utilize the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Liberal Democracy Index (Coppedge et al. 2018). Furthermore, the standalone effect of this measure also acts as a control variable. This is based on studies which suggest that more democratic nations tend to enact environmental (Li and Reuveny 2006) and climate (Bättig and Bernauer 2009; Neumayer 2002) policies.

Second, to capture the trade-dependence of countries in line with H2b, we include Trade as a percentage of GDP, extracted from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI 2021). Our expectation is that the transnational pathway is more likely to be effective if shamed countries are more dependent on trade and thus vulnerable to potential cut-backs from trade partners as a result of tarnished reputation (Peterson, Murdie, and Asal 2018).

Third, consistent with H2c, we add a variable capturing the number of international climate agreements signed by governments (Mitchell 2020; Mitchell et al. 2020).³ As outlined in H2c, we anticipate that INGO climate shaming will carry more weight in countries that have ratified more international climate agreements. This is because such countries might face reputational risks via both the domestic public and transnational channels, or through their combined effects. Previous studies have also shown that governments that commit more to international climate agreements also enact more domestic climate laws (Perkins and Neumayer 2007).

In addition, we include several control variables that may influence governments’ climate policymaking. To this end, we control for a country’s economic development using (log) GDP per capita (WDI 2021), which also serves as a proxy for state capacity. Following the convention of previous studies on the determinants of environmental policies, we account for a country’s (log) CO₂ per capita levels (WDI 2021). Additionally, we incorporate the variable of urbanization (as a percentage of the total population) because more urbanized countries are characterized by greater pressure on governments to introduce environmental and climate laws that address pollution problems (Dasgupta et al. 2006). Furthermore, when necessary, we include a dummy variable to indicate whether countries have a federal system or not.

Empirical Analysis

Because we are interested in whether governments introduce climate laws or not, the nature of our dependent variable is binary. We therefore estimate our models employing logistic regression analysis. To account for possible heteroskedasticity and intra-group correlation, we use Huber robust standard errors (Beck 2008, 486). To control for aggregate changes in both dependent and independent variables, we utilize year-fixed effects. In addition, all control variables are lagged one year to control for simultaneity bias between the dependent and control variables. The main independent variable – INGO climate shaming – is lagged two years, which is reasonable given that we focus on legislative processes that may not be finalized within the same year (Koliev, Sommerer, and Tallberg 2021).

We present the findings from our logistic regression models in Table 3. The estimates are reported in odds ratios in order to facilitate the interpretation. In the first and second models, we present the bivariate models with the raw count and the logged version of the INGO climate shaming variable. The bivariate analysis in models 1-2 also ensures that the included control variables in other models do not affect the main statistical inference. Model 3 presents the full model together with the control variables. Model 4 includes cubic splines as an additional control for duration dependence (Beck, Katz, and Tucker 1998). We also include the variable Previous number of climate laws that counts the number of previously enacted climate laws to tame the duration dependence problem and control for governments past regulatory behavior (Beck, Katz, and Tucker 1998). In Model 5, as a more conservative test, we utilize country fixed-effects to account for time-invariant omitted factors (e.g., two-way fixed effects model).

Overall, in line with our hypothesis 1, the findings in Table 3 suggest that INGO climate shaming has a positive and statistically significant effect on governments’ climate laws. The results remain robust with different specifications, including the model with country fixed-effects. The impact of climate shaming is also relatively substantial. A one unit change in the INGO climate shaming variable increases the odds of introducing climate laws by a factor of 1.33, (Model 4). The level of democracy has the strongest impact on the likelihood of governments to introduce climate laws, which is in line with the findings of previous studies examining the link between democracy and environmental regulations.

In order to assess our conditional-effects hypotheses, we interact the INGO climate shaming variable with the variables Democracy, Trade openness, and, Climate agreements. We present the conditional marginal effects in Figure 3a–c. Our expectation in H2a was not confirmed. The interaction term between climate shaming and democracy is very weak, with a minor negative impact on the probability of introducing climate laws the more democratic governments become. While the independent effect of democracy increases the likelihood of climate legislation, Figure 3a suggests that shaming more democratic countries may be inconsequential. In the robustness checks section, we perform several additional analyses that demonstrate no statistically significant interaction effects between shaming and regime type or the strength of civil society. We surmise that various factors may lie behind these effects. Important to note, however, is that previous studies focus on human rights violations on the ground rather than policies, which is the focus of our study. The impact of shaming may be more observable in cases of violations on the ground than in regulation behavior. Democratic governments’ reactions may also be more visible in other areas than regulations – for instances, they may double-down on their pledges or financial contributions. Another possible explanation is that human rights violations may attract stronger reactions than climate shaming among civil society groups and the general public, as shown by a recent study (Koliev, Page, and Tallberg 2022).

Figure 3. (a–c) Conditional Marginal Effects of INGO Climate Shaming (95% confidence intervals).

Our analysis suggests that other hypothesized conditions for effective climate shaming can be more fruitful. Our expectations regarding the effects of trade-dependence and level of commitment to international climate agreements (H2b and H2c) were borne out. Figure 3b shows that INGO climate shaming is more effective when governments are trade-dependent. This suggests that governments introduce climate laws in order to prevent potential cutbacks by trade partners and to maintain their status as reliable partners. Of course, such actions need not be substantial but rather highlight the impact of shaming. Figure 3c indicates that the impact of climate shaming is also conditioned on the number of climate agreements that a government has signed. This implies that governments that have made climate pledges may find themselves trapped by their commitments - domestically and in the international arena – and have difficulties in maintaining the status quo in their climate action.

Robustness Tests

We perform several robustness tests. First, we interact INGO climate shaming with the Civil society participation index and with the Core civil society index drawn from the V-Dem dataset (Coppedge et al. 2018). Both of these interaction terms show similar results as Figure 3a. (see Table A4 and Figure A1 and A2 in Online Appendix). Second, we re-run the interaction terms in Figure 3a–c using the raw count version of INGO climate shaming. The analysis shows that the results are largely similar (Table A5 in the Online Appendix). Third, we evaluate whether climate shaming is more effective in countries with a robust presence of environmental NGOs, drawing on the insights of Keck and Sikkink (1998). For this purpose, we employ data from Longhofer et al. (2016) that captures the density of domestic environmental NGOs. The results from our interaction terms indicate slightly negative but no statistically significant effects (Online Appendix Figure A3). Fourth, because we transformed our dependent variable into a binary variable to capture the legislative changes, we now also analyze the number of climate laws passed by governments for each year. For this purpose, we employ negative binomial regression models that deal with over-dispersed count data. Our findings are robust across different specifications and suggest that INGO climate shaming also increases the number of enacted climate laws (Online Appendix Table A7).

The Determinants of INGO Climate Shaming

We also conduct further robustness tests related to the potential strategic behavior of INGOs. While INGOs can employ various strategies, as noted by Murdie and Urpelainen (2015) and Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers (2005), the one most pertinent to this study concerns strategies that might introduce bias in our evaluation of the effects of climate shaming. Specifically, INGOs might focus on governments that are already inclined to introduce climate laws, essentially shaming the “low-hanging fruits” or “easy cases.” This can be driven by INGOs’ incentive to attract funding and demonstrate their effectiveness and accomplishment of objectives to current donors (Prakash and Gugerty 2010). Such strategic selection may overestimate the impact of climate shaming. We therefore perform separate analyses of the determinants of INGO climate shaming (see also Koliev, Park, and Duit 2023). We focus on factors that in previous research have been shown to correlate with environmental and climate regulations, such as level of democracy, number of signed international climate agreements, trade openness, GDP growth, GDP per capita, the density of environmental NGOs, and CO2 emissions per capita (Kelley and Simmons 2015; Murdie and Urpelainen 2015; Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers 2005). Due to the nature of the dependent variable, we employ both OLS and negative binomial models. Our results do not provide evidence that climate-shamed countries are “easy targets” (Online Appendix Table A6). The analyses indicate that INGOs tend to target more democratic governments, those that have either not signed or have signed fewer climate agreements, governments less reliant on trade, and those linked with high CO₂ emissions. Even though some of the results do not achieve conventional significance levels, the direction of the coefficients does not give us reason to assume that we are overestimating the influence of INGO climate shaming.

However, while INGOs do not select their targets at random, there are still reasons to believe that climate shaming may be endogenous due to unobserved factors that could skew our estimates. Given the nature of our main independent variable, Heckman models are not suitable for our needs, and we lack appropriate instrumental variables, we chose the control function method (CF) to account for potential endogeneity (Imbens and Wooldridge 2007). The CF is similar to the two-stage least squares approach (2SLS). In the initial stage, we assess the determinants of INGO climate shaming, including variables like democracy and climate agreements, CO₂ emissions, and economic variables (see models in Online Appendix Table A6). We then calculate the general residuals from this model, which captures the unobserved factors that might cause endogeneity (Wooldridge 2015). In the second stage, we execute our main model from Table 3 – assessing the impact of INGO climate shaming on national laws – along with the general residuals calculated from the first stage. If these residuals are statistically significant, it lends weight to the assumption that climate shaming is endogenous. The outcomes from the CF method indicate that our findings are robust, and the effects of the residuals are not statistically significant (see Online Appendix Table A6).

We also run our main models excluding the US as it is an obvious outlier, as well as European countries and North America, since these regions stand for a large share of total climate laws and are frequently targeted by INGOs. There is a possibility that the influence of INGO climate shaming is predominantly driven by Western nations. However, analyses conducted on a sample excluding Western nations indicate that our results remain consistent (Models 1–2, Online Appendix Table A8). Finally, to control for possible reverse causality, we lag INGO climate shaming with four, six, and ten years (Models 3–5, Online Appendix Table A8). Taken together, our results are overall robust to these different tests.

Conclusions

Scientists agree that the world needs to swiftly reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. To do so, governments need to come up with more ambitious policies and implement them effectively in order to reduce their emissions. However, climate inaction is evident in the broken climate pledges. For instance, the European Union (EU) stands at a crossroads after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Will the EU strengthen its commitments to develop renewable energy sources or will it prolong its reliance on natural gas? The recent decision in the European parliament to classify natural gas as a “green fuel” – though its main component is methane – suggests more gas projects in the future. Such behavior is unlikely to make other countries double-down on their climate pledges. To reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, the involvement of various non-state actors will be necessary. One important step in the right direction is the introduction of climate laws that contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, international actors can play an important role in pushing states to adopt such laws, for instance through shaming campaigns. This study asked whether and under what conditions INGOs’ climate shaming campaigns can influence governments’ climate law behavior. Our findings suggest that INGO climate shaming can be effective in pushing states to introduce climate laws. For the scholars of global climate governance, this study provides preliminary support that the “pledge-and-review”-based agreements may not be toothless after all. This implies that broken climate promises might be a costly path to embark on, at least to states that have made climate commitments and are trade-dependent. Of course, additional motivation will be needed for governments to deliver on and implement their promises.

A critical direction for future research involves evaluating whether enacted climate laws are both ambitious and carry significant costs for governments. It is plausible to suggest that while reputational concerns levy costs on the current climate action stance, there are also associated concession costs (Klein and Regan 2018; Luders 2010). These costs are taken into consideration by government officials when responding to the demands of INGOs. Our study does not rule out the possibility that governments might introduce climate laws and regulations that, while present, lack ambition and effective enforcement (UNEP 2019). Addressing this aspect lies beyond the purview of our current analysis. If this is the case, the importance of climate shaming in global climate governance may be exaggerated, and scholars should question whether INGO climate shaming leads to greenwashing instead. Future research should examine the ambitiousness of national climate laws – a multi-tool research agenda that examines these issues can provide a clearer picture of when climate shaming can effectively push governments to act on climate change.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation [MMW 2017-0087] and Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas [2019-01587].

Notes

1 Though recent studies have suggested that environmental NGOs increasingly relying on linking climate change to human rights, in order to attract more attention for their campaigns (Hadden 2015; Kuchler 2017).

2 Exceptions were Eritrea, Libya, Liberia, Togo, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sudan, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

3 We thank Ronald Mitchell for generating this data for us.