2024/02/20 by Amnon Cavari, Asif Efrat, Omer Yair · 1 voice · 3 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #European Union Policy and Governance #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/13691481241230859
openalex publication_date 2024/02/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
International rankings push governments to adopt better policies by providing comparative information on states’ performance. How do citizens respond to this information? We answer this question through a preregistered survey experiment in Israel, testing the effect of rankings in the fields of human rights and the environment. We find that citizens respond to international rankings selectively. Informed about a high ranking given to their country, citizens tend to express a more positive assessment of the country’s performance. By contrast, they seem to dismiss poor rankings of their country. We further find that poor rankings on a polarising issue, such as human rights, might face a particularly strong resistance from citizens. Overall, our results engage with and support recent scholarship sceptical of the impact of international shaming on public opinion. Even gentle shaming – expressed through a low numerical grade – might not be well received by the public.