Norms without Credibility: How Lack of Democratic Credibility Undermines Socialization through Naming and Shaming

Over the past decade, democratic backsliding within EU member states has intensified. From sporadic incidents and isolated concerns, democratic backsliding now stands as a widespread challenge for the EU. While much attention has been given to the internal consequences of these trends, less examined is how this impacts the EU’s legitimacy and ability to promote democracy in candidate countries and its neighbourhood. While the EU has long positioned itself as a normative actor, promoting democracy, human rights, and rule of law beyond its borders, democratic erosion within its member states risks undermining this narrative. This research focuses particularly on the EU’s use of naming and shaming, a widely used tool in international politics that seeks to induce compliance through public criticism. By doing so, the article explores how the EU’s diminishing democratic credibility shapes the perception of its legitimacy and the effectiveness of its democracy promotion. It raises the broader question of whether an IO consisting of members facing internal democratic decline can continue to function as a global promoter of democratic norms—or whether its soft power risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative. We theorize that the democratic quality of EU member states conditions the effectiveness of naming and shaming in promoting democratic behaviour abroad. Specifically, when internal democratic erosion is pronounced, naming and shaming is hypothesized to have weaker effects, both in terms of compelling compliance and signaling normative credibility. To examine this, we conduct a panel data analysis covering 25 years (2000–2025), focusing on the European neighbourhood and the EU’s efforts to encourage democratic reform in candidate and neighbouring states. By linking internal democratic backsliding to the external reception of democracy promoting interventions, this study provides a systematic evaluation of how domestic governance within EU member states shapes the Union’s ability to act as a legitimate democracy promoter internationally. The findings of this research contributes to multiple literatures. First, debates on EU foreign policy by highlighting the link between internal governance and external effectiveness. Second, the study informs scholarship on democracy promotion more broadly, emphasizing the constraints that domestic political conditions shape external influence. Finally, by connecting internal democratic quality to international outcomes, the research sheds light on the reputational dimensions of IO influence. This research thus underscores that the EU’s ability to shape norms abroad is inseparable from the quality of democracy within its own membership, highlighting the inextricable link between domestic legitimacy and international authority.