Reintegrative shaming in international relations: NATO’s military intervention in Libya

Abstract

The existing scholarship in international relations (IR) has tended to underrate the conceptual implications of different types of shaming. This article advances a new terminology of shaming. Drawing from social and criminal psychology, the article distinguishes the social distancing effects of shaming that is disintegrative from the community-building effects of shaming that is reintegrative. This is important because it offers additional ways of seeing how it may be equally important to shed light on the multifaceted role and multiple effects of shaming in maintaining social order in world politics. The main argument raised here is that reintegrative shaming – shaming, which is followed by efforts to reintegrate the offender back into the community – is central to peaceful conflict resolution in a security community. This argument is empirically illustrated by the case of NATO’s military intervention in Libya.