Condemns in the Strongest Terms: U.S. Exit and Shaming in United Nations Human Rights Council

The United States has increasingly exited from international organizations (IOs), raising concerns about the future of the liberal international order. Yet, we know little about the impact of exit by the U.S. from IOs on their operations or international cooperation. We investigate the possible effects of hegemonic withdrawal in the empirical context of the U.S. exit from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2018. We expect that the exit is linked to a decline in shaming within HRC resolutions, driven by the growing influence of China’s non-intrusive approach to human rights. Leveraging a recently compiled dataset on resolution texts and text-analysis with large language models, we find that despite a momentary drop in shaming in the UNHRC following the U.S. exit, the overall levels of strong condemning language in resolutions remains intact. The role of the U.S. in leading the shaming of human rights violators is in part replaced by other states stepping up. However, we also find a systematic shift in the targets of shaming, which is more strongly focused on liberal states. Our findings contribute to the fast emerging scholarship on the shifting patterns of international cooperation in the face of withdrawal by the hegemon, and suggest that the liberal international system is showing resilience amidst turmoil.