Brief 84: How Citizens’ Nationalist Sentiments Shape Responses to Foreign Climate Criticism
EGAP researchers: Umberto Mignozzetti
Other researchers: Matias Spektor, Guilherme Fasolin
Key takeaways: Citizens with strong attachments to their national identity react particularly negatively to foreign criticism of their countries’ environmental policies, regardless of the source or framing of the messages. However, even among highly nationalistic individuals, support for extreme responses to such criticism—like withdrawing from multilateral climate agreements—remains low.
Geographical Region: Latin America
Type of study: Survey experiment
Preparer: Mark Williamson
Executive Summary
This study examines how national identity attachments shape public reactions to foreign criticism of a country’s environmental policies. Using two survey experiments conducted in Brazil, the authors explore whether the source and framing of international criticism influence domestic support for different policy responses. The findings reveal that individuals with strong national attachments prefer rejecting and defying such criticism, regardless of whether the criticism comes from an ally or adversary or is framed in liberal cosmopolitan terms. However, support for extreme reactions, such as abandoning multilateral agreements, remains low, even among highly nationalistic respondents. These results suggest that while naming and shaming may face resistance from nationalist segments of the public, it remains a viable tool for informing domestic audiences about their countries’ environmental records.
Policy Challenge
In recent decades, new norms have emerged around countries’ responsibilities to protect the environment and combat climate change, codified in multilateral agreements and institutional frameworks. Yet not all countries – including those that sign on to such formal agreements – uphold their commitments to environmental protection. In response, “naming and shaming” has been employed as a policy tool to enhance compliance with the global environmental regime. Other foreign countries or organizations can call out countries that lag behind or actively flout their commitments to generate social and political costs for non-compliance.
There are risks to this strategy. Domestic audiences may interpret such criticism negatively, seeing it as an intrusion on their national autonomy. The potential for such public backlash may be more pronounced when foreign criticism comes from an adversary country or invokes cosmopolitan language. This is especially true among those with strong national attachments, who see such criticism as threatening their identity. In such cases, by mobilizing public sentiment against compliance, naming and shaming may reduce the likelihood that countries recommit to environmental protection. In this study, the authors use survey experiments to test the plausibility of these concerns by measuring the extent to which foreign criticism of environmental issues provokes adverse reactions among the domestic public.
Context
The authors focus on domestic reactions to naming and shaming in Brazil. This is an ideal case for several reasons. For one, deforestation rates in the Amazon have provoked significant international criticism. For example, in a 2020 United States presidential debate, Joe Biden warned Brazil to “stop tearing down the forest,” or else it would face “significant economic consequences.” In turn, discussions over how to respond to this criticism have often been framed in terms of concerns over autonomy and foreign interference. Brazil’s nationalist president at the time, Jair Bolsonaro, decried Biden’s comments as “coward threats toward our territorial and economic integrity,” stating “our sovereignty is non-negotiable.” This exchange exemplifies much of the rhetoric around Brazil’s environmental policies that domestic audiences are exposed to, offering a realistic setting for the authors to manipulate these messages experimentally.
Research Design
The authors conducted two separate survey experiments in January 2020, each with a representative sample of roughly 2,000 Brazilians. Both experiments used factorial randomization to simultaneously assign respondents to read about (a) different sources of international criticism against Brazil (Experiment 1) or different framings of the criticism (Experiment 2) and (b) different possible responses Brazil might take to the criticism (e.g. keep silent, express regret, reject the criticism, or recommit to the noncompliant behavior).
For example, in the first experiment, respondents are randomly told that either an ally or an adversary country had criticized Brazil for mismanaging wildfires and deforestation in the Amazon. They are then randomly presented with a potential response to that criticism, such as remaining silent, and then asked to indicate their level of agreement with that response. For each respondent, we thus observe a dependent variable measuring the degree of support for a proposed reaction and a treatment variable related to the source of the criticism. The second experiment is set up similarly, except that instead of being told whether the criticism comes from an ally or adversary, the source of the criticism is left ambiguous as “other countries.” Here, the authors instead vary whether the criticism is couched in the language of liberal cosmopolitanism by either randomly telling (or not telling) respondents that the message mentions that the Amazon rainforest “is a common good and that it belongs to all of humanity.”
The authors also had prior expectations that reactions to the treatments would vary according to respondents’ pre-treatment attachment levels to their national identity. For example, those with highly nationalist views might react more negatively to criticism from an adversary or criticism that can be interpreted as challenging Brazil’s sovereignty. To operationalize national attachments, the authors have respondents complete a standard battery of items commonly used in the literature.
Results
The authors begin by showing that national identity attachments strongly predict how Brazilians feel their country should respond to foreign climate shaming. Individuals with higher levels of national attachment are more likely to favor rejecting such criticism and withdrawing from international environmental agreements. However, most nationalistic respondents still oppose extreme actions, such as defying international accords. These respondents are also slightly less inclined to believe that their country should express regret for past mistakes and recommit to environmental protection. These findings are robust to controlling for observable factors such as education, income, gender, age, and religion.
It is not the case that the source of the criticism affects respondents’ preferences for how the country should respond. Whether respondents learn that an ally versus an adversary was responsible for the shaming does not alter support for expressing regret, rejecting the criticism, or defying international agreements. This is true across levels of national attachment: those who feel especially close to their country reacted similarly to those who do not. In the second experiment, the authors reach similar conclusions. National identity attachments structure preferences for potential responses, but this relationship is independent of the nature of foreign criticism. Regardless of whether the cue is couched in cosmopolitan language, respondents who identify strongly with their country support rejecting and defying criticism rather than expressing regret.
Lessons
This study provides several insights for policymakers about the effectiveness of naming and shaming as a policy tool. For one, foreign climate critics are likely to meet resistance from nationalist segments of domestic audiences, regardless of who they might be or how they frame their criticism. Politicians opposed to climate action may be tempted to exploit concerns over foreign meddling to stoke backlash. However, the authors find that even among strongly nationalistic citizens, support for extreme actions, such as abandoning the Paris Agreement, remains limited. The international community should therefore not preemptively abandon naming and shaming as a strategy for informing domestic audiences about their governments’ environmental policies. Going forward, the crucial challenge will be to identify the actors and messages that can most effectively resonate with the public, especially in highly nationalistic contexts.
To enhance the effectiveness of naming and shaming strategies, practitioners should consider the following recommendations:
- Engage Domestic Allies: Collaborate with local actors or respected domestic institutions to deliver criticism, minimizing perceptions of foreign interference.
- Focus on Shared Benefits: Frame messages around mutual interests, such as economic or health co-benefits of environmental compliance, to reduce nationalist resistance.
- Avoid Overuse of Cosmopolitan Language: While global solidarity is important, messages should avoid framing that undermines national sovereignty, especially in contexts where autonomy is highly valued.
- Leverage Positive Messaging: Combine criticism with positive reinforcement, such as highlighting successful environmental policies or opportunities for leadership in global climate efforts. These strategies could help maximize the impact of international criticism while minimizing the risks of nationalist backlash.