Does shaming make non-compliance with international court rulings costlier? Evidence from China

Abstract Can naming and shaming reduce domestic public support for a government that fails to comply with an international court ruling? While existing research suggests that such tactics can diminish public support for non-compliance with international law, this evidence largely stems from Western democracies. Far less is known about how naming and shaming functions in autocratic contexts. We address this gap by conducting a conjoint survey experiment with 1,500 respondents in China – an environment where naming and shaming is generally expected to have limited impact. In our experiment, respondents were informed about a ruling by the International Court of Justice against China. While we found that citizens generally favored non-compliance with the ruling, shaming by the United Nations significantly reduced public support for non-compliance. In contrast, shaming by the United States had no significant effect. These results suggest that naming and shaming may bolster domestic support for compliance with international court rulings, even in restrictive environments like China.