Abstract
The existing scholarship in international relations (IR) has tended to underrate the conceptual implications of different types of shaming. This article advances a new terminology of shaming. Drawing from social and criminal psychology, the article distinguishes the social distancing effects of shaming that is disintegrative from the community-building effects of shaming that is reintegrative. This is important because it offers additional ways of seeing how it may be equally important to shed light on the multifaceted role and multiple effects of shaming in maintaining social order in world politics. The main argument raised here is that reintegrative shaming – shaming, which is followed by efforts to reintegrate the offender back into the community – is central to peaceful conflict resolution in a security community. This argument is empirically illustrated by the case of NATO’s military intervention in Libya.
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Notes
Germany had already once ‘abandoned’ its NATO allies in order to side with countries such as Russia and China, namely during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, at the time France and Germany both opposed the invasion. the Libyan case marked the first time that Germany stood alone in not siding with its fellow transatlantic community members. This fact is particularly relevant to the argument at hand, since it significantly increased the effectiveness of reintegrative shaming against Germany (which could not build on the support from other deviant members, such as France and Belgium during the case of the Iraq war).
The NATO Quint is informal decision-making group of the five NATO ambassadors from the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany.
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List of interviews
Anonymous interview partner A, 11 January, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner B, 3 March, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner C, 5 March, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner D, 11 March, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner E, 18 March, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner F, 4 March, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner G, 17 March, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner H, 12 February, 2021.
Anonymous interview partner I, 5 March, 2021
Anonymous interview partner J, 3 March, 2021.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Chiara Cervasio, Adrian Rogstad, Frank Stengel, Richard Sakwa, and the participants of panels at the ECPR in Hamburg 2018, EISA in Prague 2018, and ISA 2021 as well as two anonymous reviewers for extremely helpful feedback and suggestions. I would also like to thank my interview partners at NATO for sharing their valuable time and insights. Research for this study has been generously funded by the German Research Council (DFG).
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Koschut, S. Reintegrative shaming in international relations: NATO’s military intervention in Libya. J Int Relat Dev 25, 497–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00249-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00249-5