The Power of Words: Social Pressure and Human Rights Promotion at the Universal Periodic Review

When is criticism an effective tool to promote human rights? When does it lead to backlash? Studies of naming and shaming have assumed that criticism is a dichotomous variable. In this paper, I argue that criticism can be thought of as one of the two ends in a continuum of tone in language, where the other end would be praising. Comparing criticism with praising allows us to better identify the effect of criticism on human rights promotion strategies. In this paper, I argue that criticism is a better strategy than praising when sender and target are ingroups, while criticism is less effective than praising when both sender and target are outgroups. To isolate the causal effect of criticism and the target state’s willingness to change its human rights policy, I collect new data on more than 20,000 statements delivered at the United Nations’ peer review mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review, between 2008 and 2022. I generate a continuous measure of criticism-praise by using text analysis techniques. I implement an instrumental variable approach to isolate the causal effect of the tone in statements delivered at the Universal Periodic Review. I demonstrate that the tone contained in the statements affects the likelihood of accepting a recommendation. This effect, however, is mediated by the ingroup/outgroup relationship between recommender state and state under review.