Nationalist Backlash Against Foreign Climate Shaming
With Matias Spektor and Umberto Mignozzetti. Global Environmental Politics 22 (1), 139-158, 2022.
Overview
Should international pro-climate actors speak up against climate rogues, or do foreign critics risk igniting nationalist backlash against global environmental norms and institutions?
We explore naming and shaming dynamics in global climate politics by fielding survey experiments to nationally representative samples in Brazil. Our results show that nationalism moderates public reactions to foreign climate shaming: individuals who are highly attached to their nation are more likely to reject international criticism than their lowly attached peers.
Contrary to existing expectations, however, we find that nationalist publics express little support for virulent defiance against foreign critics. Our findings hold irrespective of the source of criticism and the nature of the critical message. These results sound a cautionary note on the belief that liberal internationalists should tread carefully so as not to unadvisedly unleash nationalist pushback. Although foreign climate criticism may bump up against nationalist sentiment in climate rogues, it will not necessarily fuel an all-out backlash against the global environmental regime.
My Work
Selected Research
My research has been published or is forthcoming in Global Environmental Politics and Journal of Global Security Studies, and other journals.
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