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.