Selective norm promotion in international development assistance: the drivers of naming and shaming advocacy among European non-governmental development organisations

Abstract

European non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs) have used naming and shaming extensively in their advocacy to push the EU and member state governments to implement international norms on foreign aid. The paper analyses the contents of NGDO advocacy publications, with the goal of gaining insight into how and why these organisations engage in naming and shaming. The exercise reveals that NGDOs are highly selective in the norms they promote through naming and shaming: they shame governments heavily for not implementing norms on aid quantity, but are less vocal on norms related to aid effectiveness. The paper shows that NGDOs strategically select norms in their naming shaming activities which have higher resonance with the public and are less costly to monitor, criteria which aid quantity norms fulfil. There is also some evidence that NGDOs promote increasing the quantity of aid because it would enhance their own access to donor funding.