The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfires Rochelle Terman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. pp. 216.

In The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfires (Princeton University Press, 2023), Rochelle Terman takes on the important and interesting question of the effectiveness of states’ denunciation of each other in the enforcement of human rights. “Naming and shaming” states for their human rights abuses has long been a feature of international relations. Despite its consistent presence in the international arena, it is often met with skepticism by IR scholars and seen as nothing more than power politics in disguise. Rather than seeking to downplay or push back against this criticism of norm enforcement, Terman embraces the fact that human rights shaming is political. She argues that states’ decisions to shame, and their responses to shaming, are shaped by the geopolitical relationship between shamer and target.