2023-2024 Niehaus Fellow Lotem Bassan-Nygate wins the 2024 Merze Tate Award for “Who is Watching? The Consequences of Foreign Criticism”

The Merze Tate Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation in the field of international relations, law, and politics.   

Citation from the Award Committee:

Bassan-Nygate’s dissertation, “Who is Watching? The Consequences of Foreign Criticism”, examines the consequences of foreign criticism via “naming and shaming.”  Bassan-Nygate develops a novel theoretical approach to understanding naming and shaming, which focuses on multiple audiences of these behaviors–the shamed state, the shaming state’s domestic population, and the international community. Through a series of surveys in seven democratic states, Bassan-Nygate shows that shaming has positive effects on the reputation of the shaming state, but simultaneously creates backlash in the shamed state, often counter to the goals of the shaming policy. This dissertation sheds new light on our understanding of the costs and benefits of naming and shaming human rights abusers.