The False Promise of the Nobel Peace Prize · The Nobel Peace Prize Committee initially remained true to Alfred Nobel s charge. Of the 19 prizes awarded between 1901 and 1914, almost

The False Promise of the Nobel

Peace Prize

RONALD R KREBS

Politicization is nothing new to the various Nobel prizes the mostdistinguished of international awards This is true even to some extent of thosein the sciences and it is obviously true of the award in literature However thePeace Prize is the most politicized of the awards and it more directly than theothers seeks to change the world through its very conferral Recognizing thosewho have already succeeded in changing the worldmdashthat is the criterion ofaccomplishment that guides the rest of the Nobel prizesmdashis secondary forthe Peace Prize as the Nobel Committee reminded us in 2009 in bestowingthe award on President Barack Obama

Many naturally doubt that any award could have much impact even at themargins let alone on enduring patterns of international politics Indeed theaward was early in its history and more occasionally since given to pacifistsand neither interstate nor intrastate conflict has been eliminated1 The NobelCommittee itself has been careful to damp down extravagant expectationsusually arguing that the award works in more-subtle ways to advance the win-nersʼ causes by raising the profile of organizations and problems by morallyand politically bolstering the forces for peaceful conflict resolution and by at-tracting international attention to repression and perhaps ultimately facilitat-ing pressure for liberalization2

Neither the skeptics nor the believers however are entirely correct Theconsequences of the Nobel Peace Prize for the winners and their causes varysometimes as skeptics expect the Prize has little impact occasionally but

RONALD R KREBS is associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota He ismost recently the author of Fighting for Rights Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship and haspublished on a wide range of topics in international relations in leading scholarly and popular outlets

1 But conflict seems in general to be decliningmdashthough pacifists may not be able to take too muchcredit See the Human Security Report Project accessed at wwwhsrgrouporg 12 October 2009

2 Geir Lundestad ldquoReflections on the Nobel Peace Prizerdquo December 1999 accessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacearticleslundestadindexhtml 8 July 2009

Political Science Quarterly Volume 124 Number 4 2009ndash10 593

more rarely than its advocates hope it draws attention to ignored problemsbut sometimes the award has also produced unexpected and unwantedoutcomesmdashundermining organizational competence and sparking repressivestate action Such rarely recognized perverse consequences have become morecommon in recent years since the SovietndashUS deacutetente and especially sincethe end of the Cold War as the Peace Prize has increasingly been given topromote domestic liberalization It is precisely in this prominent category ofcases that the good intentions of the Prize Committee have gone awry Inthe short-to-medium run the Peace Prize has more often brought the heavyhand of the state down on dissidents and has impeded rather than promotedconflict-free liberalization If the Nobel Committee wishes to foster peacefulconflict resolutionmdasha goal it has not been shy about endorsingmdashit should bemore cognizant of the awardʼs unintended consequences

This article is heavily empirical with clear normative implications but italso has relevance to theoretical debates that animate international relationsscholarship Its argument and findings part ways with both a rigid realism aswell as conventional institutionalism falling into and furthering the family ofapproaches that bridging between these two schools has elsewhere beentermed ldquorealist institutionalistrdquo3 Whereas realists generally see internationalinstitutions as epiphenomenal as reflections of power politics4 this articleclaims in line with institutionalist logic and findings that the Nobel PeacePrize which might be seen as a kind of international institution can have anindependent causal impact on state behavior5 However whereas so-calledneoliberals focus on how international institutions promote cooperation6 thisarticle shows that the bestowal of the Prize can contrary to neoliberal expec-tations exacerbate conflict and prompt intensified state repression generatingdynamics and consequences that are the opposite of the Nobel Committeeʼspurpose The article thus also reflects realist proclivities typical of the realistʼspessimistic worldview it is skeptical that human efforts to effect progressivechange in global politics work in straightforward ways to yield such outcomesand it is sensitive to the possibility and reality of unintended consequences incomplex political systems7 As Lisa Martin and Beth Simmons argued over a

3 On ldquorealist institutionalismrdquo see Ronald R Krebs ldquoPerverse Institutionalism NATO and theGreco-Turkish Conflictrdquo International Organization 53 (Spring 1999) 343ndash377 See also Victor DCha ldquoAbandonment Entrapment and Neoclassical Realism in Asia The US Japan and KoreardquoInternational Studies Quarterly 44 (June 2000) 261ndash291

4 John J Mearsheimer ldquoThe False Promise of International Institutionsrdquo International Security19 (Winter 1994) 5ndash49

5 On this central axis of debate among IR theorists see Robert Jervis ldquoRealism Neoliberalismand Cooperation Understanding the Debaterdquo International Security 24 (Summer 1999) 42ndash63

6 For the seminal work see Robert O Keohane After Hegemony Cooperation and Discord in theWorld Political Economy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1984)

7 On pessimism and the realist worldview see Robert Gilpin ldquoThe Richness of the Realist Traditionrdquoin Robert O Keohane ed Neorealism and Its Critics (New York Columbia University Press 1986)304 On unintended consequences and realism see Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics

594 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

decade ago the chief issue should no longer be whether international institu-tions matter but how they matter8 This article contends in line with ldquorealistinstitutionalistrdquo scholarship that those institutions may ldquomatterrdquo by doingharm as well as good Exploring the impact of the Nobel Peace Prize on itsrecipientsʼ causes is an important question in and of itself but it also providesa window onto these theoretical disputes

The rest of this article proceeds in four substantive parts First I reviewhistorical trends among the awardʼs winners arguing that this inherently po-liticized award has become increasingly ldquoaspirationalrdquo and has applied an in-creasingly broad definition of peace Second I explore three categories ofldquoaspirationalrdquo peace prizes and offer contending hypotheses regarding theireffects on the winnerʼs cause in this section I also develop the theoretical logicof my argument about the awardʼs potentially perverse consequences ThirdI examine and use computerized content analysis to cast doubt on the hypoth-esis that the Nobel Peace Prize benefits causes by drawing global media atten-tion to them Fourth I show that when the award is given to advance domesticpolitical change it can have unexpected and counterproductive consequencesthis section traces the awardʼs surprising effects in three such cases since 1989

PEACE PRIZE PATTERNS

The Peace Prize was first awarded in 1901 five years after Alfred Nobelʼsdeath In contrast to the broad definition of peace that came to inform theaward and the aspirational air that came to characterize its conferees Nobelʼswill defined peace narrowly and focused on candidatesʼ accomplishments itwas to be awarded to ldquothe person who shall have done the most or the bestwork for fraternity between nations for the abolition or reduction of standingarmies and for the holding and promotion of peace congressesrdquo9 But the willset the Peace Prize apart from the start with its inherently politicized characterits winners would be identified by a committee appointed by Norwayʼs Par-liament whereas Swedish institutions defined by substantive expertise (theSwedish Academy of Sciences the distinguished Swedish medical schoolknown as the Caroline Institute and Swedenʼs leading literary institute theSwedish Academy) had the responsibility for selecting the awardees in physicsmedicine chemistry and literature

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee initially remained true to Alfred Nobelʼscharge Of the 19 prizes awarded between 1901 and 1914 almost all went to in-dividuals who had made major contributions to the Inter-Parliamentary Union

(Reading MA Addison-Wesley 1979) 73ndash77 and especially Robert Jervis System Effects Complex-ity in Political and Social Life (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1997)

8 Lisa Martin and Beth Simmons ldquoTheories and Empirical Studies of International InstitutionsrdquoInternational Organization 52 (Summer 1998) 742ndash743

9 Accessed at httpnobelprizeorgalfred_nobelwillwill-fullhtml 8 July 2009

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE | 595

popular peace organizations or the international legal tradition TheodoreRoosevelt as a sitting head of state and a realist to boot was a notable excep-tion though his award bestowed for his role in mediating the Russo-JapaneseWar was consistent with the Prizeʼs early focus on interstate peace (see Ap-pendix)10 Between 1901 and 1945 over three-quarters of the prizes (33 of 43)went to those who promoted interstate peace and disarmament pacifists in-ternational lawyers who saw law as the path to peace leaders who played cru-cial roles in the League of Nations The rest of the awards went to individualsand especially organizations dedicated to humanitarian causes or to statesmenwho sought to promote specific peace processes and resolve boundary dis-putes Only one award (1935) criticized and sought to effect change in a stateʼsinternal and repressive politics as the Committee honored Carl von Ossietzkythe journalist who served as a symbol of opposition to the Nazi regime

Since the Second World War however the Peace Prize Committee has im-plicitly adopted a definition of peace far removed from its original mandate11

Of the 21 prizes awarded between 1946 and 1970 just 6 (30 percent) went tothose promoting interstate peace and disarmament that number declined be-tween 1971 and 2009 to merely 12 of 49 prizes (245 percent) An increasingnumber of awards (16 of 49 since 1971) sought to encourage ongoing peaceprocessesmdashin line with a traditional understanding of peacemdashbut they oftenintervened in processes that had borne little fruit or had a long road aheadfrom Vietnam to Korea to Indonesia to Northern Ireland to the Middle EastAt the same time the awards increasingly equated peace with human well-beingparalleling the contemporaneous stretching of ldquosecurityrdquo (marked as ldquootherrdquoin the Appendix)12 Thus the microlender Grameen Bank and its founderMuhammad Yunus were acknowledged in 2006 for their pioneering work pro-moting development Thus Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change were honored in 2007 for raising awareness of the problem ofglobal warming While one might construct plausible causal chains leading frommicrocredit to development to peace or from climate change to localized re-source scarcity to conflict the Peace Prize Committee rarely justified the awardsin these terms that would link it to a more traditional definition of peace

Even more striking has been the Peace Prizeʼs growing focus since the Sec-ond World War on domestic political arrangements Between 1946 and 1970

10 Geir Lundestad ldquoThe Nobel Peace Prizerdquo in Agneta Wallin Levinovitz and Nils Ringertzeds The Nobel Prize The First 100 Years (London Imperial College Press 2001) 165ndash168 BurtonFeldman The Nobel Prize A History of Genius Controversy and Prestige (New York Arcade Pub-lishing 2000) 295ndash301

11 Douglas Bulloch ldquoFor Whom Nobel Tolls An Interpretive Account of the Migration of theConcept of Peace as Perceived Through the Solemn Eyes of Norwegian Lawmakersrdquo Millennium36 (May 2008) 575ndash595 Lundestad ldquoNobel Peace Prizerdquo 184ndash185

12 Roland Paris ldquoHuman Security Paradigm Shift or Hot Airrdquo International Security 26 (Fall2001) 87ndash102


the Prize was awarded twice (95 percent of the time) to domestic dissidents toencourage change in South African and US internal politics (1960 and 1964respectively) Between 1971 and 2009 the Prize was given 10 times (204 per-cent) for this purpose This has been slightly more true since the end of theCold War as over 22 percent of the awards have gone to that end (see Appen-dix) Here the links to interstate conflict and arguably to intrastate conflicttoo are even more tenuous In recent years the Peace Prize Committee hascast opprobrium on among others Myanmar and Iran for their disregard ofindividual liberties and democratic institutions Aung San Suu Kyi and ShirinEbadi might be admired for their courage but their awards do not recognizesubstantial contributions to interstate or intrastate peace

Finally the awards have also become increasingly ldquoaspirationalrdquomdashcon-ferred on individuals and organizations that have made relatively little prog-ress toward their stated goals13 The early years of the Peace Prize were similarin this respect as one might expect given the heavy representation of pacifistsamong the recipients 80 percent of the awards given out before 1919 markedaspiration more than accomplishment But the balance shifted after the SecondWorld War as nearly three-quarters of the awards during the Cold War (1946ndash1988) honored recipientsʼ tangible accomplishments With the end of the ColdWar the Committee again began to reward aspiration disproportionately with78 percent of the recipients so classified (see Appendix)14

13 In a sense of course each of the prizes was bestowed for ldquoaccomplishmentrdquo the prize-winnershave normally achieved positions of renown and prominence in their chosen arena But individualsmay well enjoy prestige out of all proportion to their effortsʼ concrete effects Thus I distinguishbetween awards that have honored individuals whose past actions have led relatively directly to tan-gible easing of human suffering or the cessation of violence (ldquoaccomplishmentrdquo) and those awardsthat have honored individuals whose causes at the time of the award remain far from having beenachieved (ldquoaspirationrdquo) I have drawn on the official Nobel Peace Prize Committee announcement toidentify the reasons the award was bestowed The former category (ldquoaccomplishmentrdquo) includes thenegotiators of completed peace agreements (for example 1906 1973 2008) humanitarian organiza-tions (for example 1944 1954 1999) scientists and financiers whose initiatives have advanced globalwell-being or human security (for example 1962 1970 2006) and others The latter category (ldquoas-pirationrdquo) includes peace activists nuclear disarmament advocates and environmentalistsmdashwhosecauses while arguably admirable had inarguably made little headway at the time of the awardmdashbut also key figures in ongoing conflicts (for example 1993 1998 2000) and human rights and de-mocracy activists in authoritarian regimes (for example 1984 1989 2003) among others There areof course cases that are difficult to classify such as prizes given to honor individuals for their role infounding organizations like the League of Nations and the United Nations When these prizes weregiven at the outset of the organizationsʼ existence and not after many years of operation I codedthem as ldquoaspirationalrdquo at the time of the award the organization had not yet demonstrated its valueor staying power These cases stand in contrast to the many awards given to humanitarian organiza-tions and human rights groups after decades of consistent operation and concrete achievement

14 While one might challenge individual codings the trend line is unmistakable and robust This ismoreover not a controversial claim See similarly Lundestad ldquoNobel Peace Prizerdquo Feldman NobelPrize chap 8


The more aspirational the Prize the more clearly the Committee has tried touse it for political effect Francis Sejersted the chairman of the NorwegianNobel Committee in the 1990s was open about this ldquoThe Prize hellip is not onlyfor past achievementhellip The Committee also takes the possible positive effectsof its choices into account [because] hellip Nobel wanted the Prize to have politicaleffects Awarding a Peace Prize is to put it bluntly a political actrdquo15 One mightcite many examples from the awardʼs history but the Committee has been par-ticularly explicit since 2001 about its political message That year as the UnitedStates geared up to invade Afghanistan and amidst early talk of US actionagainst Iraqmdashall outside the aegis of the United Nations (UN)mdashthe Committeeconferred the award jointly on the UN and its Secretary General Kofi Annanldquoto proclaim that the only negotiable route to global peace and cooperationgoes by way of the United Nationsrdquo16 The following year in bestowing the Prizeon former US President Jimmy Carter the Committee could hardly have beenmore clear ldquoIn a situation currently marked by threats of the use of powerCarter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be re-solved through mediation and international cooperation based on internationallaw respect for human rights and economic developmentrdquo17 In 2003 the Com-mittee honoring the Iranian feminist and reformer Shirin Ebadi pointedly notedthat ldquoat a time when Islam is being demonized in many quarters of the westernworld it was the Norwegian Nobel Committeeʼs wish to underline how impor-tant and how valuable it is to foster dialogue between peoples and between civ-ilizationsrdquo18 The New York Times observed that the Prize sent ldquoa message to the[George W] Bush administration that internal change brought about by localadvocates is preferable to invasionrdquo19 The Nobel Committeeʼs most recentaward in 2009 to President Obama was immediately widely interpreted on boththe left and the right as a censure of the style and substance of the previous ad-ministrationʼs foreign policy and as an embrace of Obamaʼs less confrontationalapproach and more multilateral inclinations

A PRIZE PACKING A PUNCH

If the Nobel Peace Prize is intended to have political effects one should in-quire what kinds of effects might it produce Through what causal mecha-

15 Francis Sejersted ldquoThe Nobel Peace Prize From Peace Negotiations to Human Rightsrdquo ac-cessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacearticlessejerstedindexhtml 8 July 2009

16 Press Release 12 October 2001 accessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacelaureates2001presshtml 8 July 2009


18 Presentation Speech 10 December 2003 accessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacelaureates2003presentation-speechhtml 8 July 2009

19 Ethan Bronner ldquoThe Nobel Peace Prize Always Comes With a Message But is it Heardrdquo TheNew York Times 17 October 2003


nisms And does it actually produce the desired effects Naturally the Prizehas not directly brought about international peace and even the Prizeʼs advo-cates do not make so extravagant a claim When the Peace Prize is given toindividuals or organizations for past accomplishment the Prizeʼs effects onfuture performance are particularly difficult to gauge Then the recipient nor-mally has a well-established track record and funding base and further suc-cesses cannot be attributed persuasively to the award Alternatively theindividual is hailed for her role in facilitating or negotiating a relatively stablepeace and the Prize Committee thereby hopes to further stabilize the peacearrangement encourage others to follow suit and pursue peaceful conflict res-olution and promote a normative climate in which negotiated solutions arevalued That the Prize furthers the first of these aims cannot be demonstratedbecause continued peace can be ascribed to the conditions that gave rise to thesettlement and the Prizeʼs contributions to the other two goals are necessarilyhighly indirect if not elusive

When the Peace Prize is given to individuals and organizations whose ac-complishments are not substantial but whose aspirations are great its effectsmdashif there are anymdashmight be more easily ascertained Here the Prizeʼs advocatesplausibly suggest that the Prize helps set the international agenda draws atten-tion to forgotten or marginalized causes and thereby imparts a new impetus tostalled efforts Geir Lundestad the distinguished historian who has served asSecretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee observes that ldquomany are thePeace Prize Laureates who have reported how previously closed doors weresuddenly opened to them after they had received the Prizerdquo20 Accounts ofspecific cases have attributed precisely such an impact to the Prize Studentsof the Tibetan struggle have claimed that the Dalai Lamaʼs Prize was ldquoa tre-mendous blow to the Chinese governmentʼs priderdquo that gave the Tibet issuegreater international exposure inspired Tibetan activism and further isolatedChina the award they suggest opened the White Houseʼs door to the DalaiLama in April 1991 and led the US Congress to recognize Tibet as an occu-pied country21 This was moreover explicitly the hope of Czech PresidentVaclav Havel in nominating the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi22

Aspirational Peace Prizes have in the last four decades been given pri-marily in three circumstances Of the 28 awards between 1971 and 2009 codedas aspirational in the Appendix 6 honored contributions to general peaceand disarmament 9 aimed to advance incipient peace processes in specific

20 Lundestad ldquoReflectionsrdquo21 Pierre-Antoine Donnet Tibet Survival in Question trans Tica Broch (London Zed Books

1994) 202ndash203 Warren W Smith Jr Tibetan Nation A History of Tibetan Nationalism and Sino-Tibetan Relations (Boulder CO Westview Press 1996) 622 See also A Tom Grunfeld The Makingof Modern Tibet (Armonk NY ME Sharpe 1996) 236

22 ldquoBurma Hits at Nobel Prize Winnerrdquo Agence France Presse 15 October 1991


intrastate and interstate conflicts and 9 sought to promote domestic changein favor of human rights and democracy I analyze each category in turn

First the Nobel Committee has tried to promote disarmament by bestow-ing the award on individuals and organizations who have made arms controland ultimately the banning of classes of weapons their lifeʼs work In manysuch cases the award has done little to advance public awareness which is al-ready substantial That the nuclear arms race posed a threat to humanity washardly news in 1982 when the Committee honored Alva Myrdal and AlfonsoGarciacutea Robles for their work in both regional and global nuclear disarmamentnegotiations That nuclear proliferation remained of concern was hardly a rev-elation in 2005 when the Committee honored Mohammed El Baradei andthe International Atomic Energy Agency seven years before both India andPakistan had made their nuclear weapons capabilities clear and just two yearsearlier the world discovered that Pakistanʼs chief nuclear engineer AbdulQadeer Khan had been running a global nuclear technology and weaponsbazaar In cases involving less-well-known classes of weapons the Peace Prizemight conceivably play an agenda-setting function and the International Cam-paign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) winner of the 1997 award is a case in pointYet the Prize proved a mixed blessing for the Campaign On the one handfunding for ldquomine actionrdquomdashmine clearance mine risk education and minesurvivor assistancemdashsaw a massive jump in 1998 followed by two more yearsof double-digit percentage increases whereas global spending had averagedmerely $6475 million per year between 1992 and 1995 it reached $189 millionin 1998 and $309 million in 200223 Yet while the Nobel Committee mightplausibly claim credit for drawing resources to the Campaign the Prize alsosparked divisive in-fighting over the sudden prominence of coordinator JodyWilliams and over how to spend the Prize funds24 The unusual case of theICBL aside these awards cannot in general be expected to exert much impact

Second the Nobel Committee has sought to advance ongoing peace pro-cesses bestowing the award on the principals either before real progress hadbeen made (Kim Dae Jung and his ldquosunshine policyrdquo 2000 for example) orimmediately after agreements were signed but with much still to do (OscarArias Saacutenchez and the Esquipulas Accord 1987 for example) The Committeehas often been self-conscious and even defensive about these awards for in-stance acknowledging in 1994 when it honored the Palestinian leader YasirArafat Israelʼs Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israelʼs Foreign MinisterShimon Peres for the Oslo Accords that ldquoit has been said that the NobelCommittee ought to have waitedrdquo But the Committee justified the award by

23 For data see Landmine Monitor Report 2003 accessed at wwwicblorglm2003fundinghtml16 March 2009

24 ldquoAntimine Activists at War with Each Otherrdquo Globe and Mail 10 February 1998 Caryle MurphyldquoThe Nobel Prize Fight Claims of Jealousy and Betrayalrdquo The Washington Post 22 March 1998


affirming its capacity to spur further progress toward Mideast peace ldquoIt is theCommitteeʼs hope that the award will serve as an encouragement to all theIsraelis and Palestinians who are endeavoring to establish a lasting peace inthe regionrdquo25

If the Prize draws worldwide attention and resources to the conflict thenthe Committeeʼs ambition may not be misplaced But even if the Committee isright these seemingly positive developments can also call forth ldquospoilersrdquo whomay undermine fragile processes26 The Nobel Committeeʼs presumption isthat transparency strengthens peace processes and that is true in the longrun as mass publics on both sides must support any negotiated agreementBut that may not be true in the short run when processes are brittle and whentrust is scarce In those early stages secrecy may be an advantage Indeed hadIsraeli and Palestinian leaders tried to negotiate the Oslo Accords in thepublicʼs full glare the Accords might never have been signed as spoilers likeHamas would have arisen even earlier it is not accidental that the early stagescompleted in secret were successful while the subsequent more-public nego-tiations have been more troubled The third option is the null hypothesismdashthat the Prize has no impact on ongoing peace processes either for ill becauseactive peace processes have already moved spoilers wherever such actorsare present to action or for good because the Prizeʼs agenda-setting functionis weak

Third the Nobel Committee has increasingly sought through its awards tohighlight political repression and human rights violations in the hope that thebrighter media light will lead authoritarian governments to behave better andeven take painful steps toward democracy This goal motivated the Committeeto honor activist luminaries such as Andrei Sakharov Desmond Tutu theDalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi But the Nobel Committee thereby hasimplicitly presumed that regimes from the Leonid Brezhnev-era USSR toapartheid-era South Africa to Deng Xiaopingʼs Peopleʼs Republic of China(PRC) to junta-ruled Myanmar are so sensitive to their international reputationsas ldquogoodrdquo or ldquoresponsiblerdquo states that they would sacrifice their most-cherishedvalues to maintain or cultivate their reputations This is possible but implau-sible The more-likely alternative is that while the prize winners themselvesgiven their prominence might be relatively spared regimes will clamp downharshly on local dissidents to demonstrate their resolve and to prevent localand international activists from taking heart To the extent that the NobelPrize is successful in drawing worldwide attention to their plight it may renderan insecure regime even more anxious and thus more brutal and dangerousregimes desperate to hold on to power are more sensitive to threats to their

25 Peace Prize Press Release 14 October 1994 accessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacelaureates1994presshtml 8 July 2009

26 On ldquospoilersrdquo see Stephen John Stedman ldquoSpoiler Problems in Peace Processesrdquo InternationalSecurity 22 (Fall 1997) 5ndash53


rule than to the good opinion of the international community Moreover inso-far as local activists believe that the Nobel Peace Prize confers moral authoritythat the world has thereby given its imprimatur to their cause and that theinternational community has thereby signaled that it will protect them they mayramp up their demands or at least intensify their protest activitiesmdashintensifyingthe regimeʼs fears of encirclement and its sense of vulnerability boosting theregimeʼs desperation and calling forth still greater repression Ironically ifthe Nobel Committeeʼs aspirations are fulfilledmdashif the Prize emboldens localactors if it boosts global media coverage of regime repression and if it pres-sures authoritarian regimesmdashit may produce effects precisely the opposite ofthose it intends with moral victories substituting for actual ones This articlecontends that this tragic chain of events in which the Nobel Committeeʼs nobleintentions at least temporarily set back the cause of democracy and humanrights is not only plausible but relatively common in this important subsetof cases In fact Sejersted the Nobel Committee chairman has acknowledgedthat ldquoin some cases the prize has in fact provoked conflict in the short termrdquo27

His admission is revealing but it may understate the awardʼs human costThe experience of the US Civil Rights Movement is an analogous cau-

tionary tale Many have hailed the landmark US Supreme Court decisionin Brown v Board of Education with increasing media coverage and publicawareness of racism inspiring the Civil Rights Movement and driving a deci-sive nail into the coffin of segregation But Gerald Rosenberg has persuasivelyargued that court decisions on civil rights notably Brown had little sustainedimpact on the press or mass and elite opinion Brown not only produced littleif any positive change but ldquothere is some evidence that it hardened resistanceto civil rights among both [Southern] elites and the white publichellip By stiffen-ing resistance and raising fears before the activist phase of the civil rightsmovement was in place Brown may actually have delayed the achievement ofcivil rightsrdquo28 Brown mobilized opponents of civil rights more than it boostedthe capacity of its defenders The same may be true of the Nobel Peace Prizeas (an exaggerated) fear of its political consequences drives states to act with-out offering sufficient compensating advantages

Realists skeptical of the Nobel Committeeʼs optimism would view thismore-pessimistic argument as equally misguided they would argue that theaward itself has little impact on regime behavior for good or ill But eventhough (as I show below) the Peace Prize has typically had little impact onmedia coverage except in the short term state leaders have taken the Prizeseriouslymdashcontrary to realist expectations Whether the Prize actually sets theinternational agenda authoritarian leaders often act as if it does they fear thatit draws attention to raises the prominence of and boosts the moral authority

27 Sejersted ldquoNobel Peace Prizerdquo28 Gerald N Rosenberg The Hollow Hope Can Courts Bring About Social Change (Chicago IL

University of Chicago Press 1991) 155ndash156


of dissidents And they have consequently sought to undermine dissidentsʼ can-didacies When the Soviet government learned in 1973 that the well-knownphysicist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov had been nominated andthat an international campaign had taken shape to promote his candidacy itordered the KGB (the Soviet secret police) to launch a futile action to preventhim from being named a month after the award was announced the KGBauthorized an extensive covert campaign of character assassination againstSakharov and his wife Elena Bonner Three years later after the show trialof a less-prominent dissident physicist who had founded the Moscow HelsinkiWatch Group Yuri Orlov ldquothe KGBʼs main fearrdquo was that Orlov would winthe Prize and the KGB gave ldquothe highest priority to an active measures cam-paign personally overseen by [KGB head Yuri] Andropov himself designed todiscredit Orlov and ensure that his candidacy failedrdquo29 Similarly the Guatemalangovernment ldquofuriously lobbied the world to prevent Rigoberta Menchuacute fromgetting the 1992 Nobel Peace Prizemdasheven submitting the name of a ruling-class philanthropist (unknown outside of Guatemala City) as an alternativerdquo30

Realists would expect regimes to ignore the award or at most to pooh-poohit as international do-gooder blather or a reflection of power politics Yet re-gimes have reacted as if the award mattered They have responded with angernot indifferent laughter They have responded with organized campaigns todelegitimize the award and the recipient not mild derision The nature and mag-nitude of their response have been at odds with realist expectations When theDalai Lama won in 1989 in a clear rebuke to China after the Tiananmen crack-down the PRC did not slough it off the Foreign Ministry expressed ldquoindigna-tionrdquo at the Nobel Committee for its ldquoopen support to the Dalai Lama and theTibetan separatists in their activities to undermine the national unity and splitChinardquo and for this ldquogross interference in Chinaʼs internal affairsrdquo31 Nor didIranian conservatives pay little heed after the liberal-minded activist ShirinEbadi won the award in 2003 A leading conservative newspaper pointedlyeditorialized that ldquothe goal of this prize is to embarrass Muslims and especiallythe Iranian peoplerdquo32 That regimes take the Nobel Peace Prize so seriously andview it (wrongly) as so dangerous to their hold on power strikes a blow at therealist view and adds to the pessimistic hypothesisʼ surface plausibility

29 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin The Sword and the Shield The Mitrokhin Archive andthe Secret History of the KGB (New York Basic Books 1999) 322ndash324 329ndash330

30 Susanne Jonas Of Centaurs and Doves Guatemalaʼs Peace Process (Boulder CO Westview2000) 3

31 ldquoChina Deplores Peace Award to Dalai Lamardquo The New York Times 8 October 198932 The official Iranian reaction was muted as a reformer Mohammad Khatami was president But

influential conservatives in the press and the religious establishment condemned the award as aldquodisgracerdquo See Bronner ldquoNobel Peace Prizerdquo Robin Gedye ldquoSome Iranian Clerics Catholics Objectto Winnerrdquo Daily Telegraph 11 October 2003 Associated Press ldquoGathering Storm Over IranianʼsPeace Prizerdquo Mercury 13 October 2003


MEDIA IMPACT

Journalists scholars and activists often credit the Nobel Peace Prize with at-tracting media attention to stalled peace processes and deplorable humanrights situations generating pressure for change If the Peace Prize has a pos-itive effect this is its most likely route But these observations are based onimpressionistic evidence If this claim has validity one would expect to see sys-tematically greater coverage of the recipient and of the recipientʼs conflictcause in the global mediamdashbecause the Prize had made reporters editorsand publishers newly aware of a long-ignored problem because the Prizehad boosted the publicʼs demand for information on the problem or conflictto which newspapers and other media were responding or because the Prizehad prompted state leaders or international organizations to take the problemmore seriously and the media subsequently covered their interventions Re-gardless of the mechanism the expectation is that the organization individualor cause would receive increased coverage in mainstream prominent globalmedia outlets and that such coverage would persist for some substantial periodbeyond the awardʼs announcement

With the proliferation of electronic media one can easily test this proposi-tion One might examine all ldquoaspirationalrdquo cases since 1971 but that would stackthe decks against the Prizeʼs impact some cases were already the subject ofmedia scrutiny and the media might have been saturated before the awardTherefore I focus on cases of ldquoless well-known Laureates and their causesrdquomdashthat is cases in which Prize advocates expect the Prize to have a substantialimpact on media coverage33 These should be ldquoeasyrdquo or ldquomost likelyrdquo casesfor the media impact hypothesis If the effect is small or non-existent in eventhese cases one might conclude that the Prize does not have the effect oftenascribed to it The ready availability of data since the late 1980s warrants start-ing the analysis then It is also justifiable on methodological grounds to focuson awards since 1989 one might expect that superpower concerns woulddominate media coverage during the Cold War reducing the Prizeʼs impactand thus post-1989 cases are also ldquomost likelyrdquo for the media impact hy-pothesis These criteriamdashafter 1989 aspirational not already the subject ofbroad media coveragemdashleave eight cases (and 10 Nobel Laureates) worthyof examination34

These eight cases however reveal little evidence that the Nobel PeacePrize consistently boosts international media coverage beyond the short run

33 Lundestad ldquoReflectionsrdquo34 The analysis therefore includes two cases that Lundestad (ldquoReflectionsrdquo) specifically says the

Prize moved higher on the international agenda Myanmar and East Timor The excluded post-1989 aspirational cases are South Africaʼs transition from apartheid (1993) the Israeli-Palestinianconflict (1994) the troubles in Northern Ireland (1998) the conflict on the Korean peninsula(2000) the United Nations (2001) nuclear disarmament (2005) and President Barack Obama (2009)


Moreover in those cases in which global media sources do devote more re-sources after the award it appears to be for the reasons that pessimists notPrize advocates would expect Figure 1 displays the number of times the DalaiLamaʼs name appeared in headlines in the LexisNexis database of ldquomajorworld newspapersrdquo between October 1988 and December 1990 The an-nouncement of the award in October 1989 produced a large spike in articlesfocused on the Dalai Lama and a smaller spike in December when the presen-tation ceremony was held Excluding the three months of OctoberndashDecember1989 the Dalai Lama received somewhat higher overall coverage in the12 months beginning in January 1990 (38 articles) than in the year that pre-ceded the award (27 articles) but the pattern was not consistent with theconventional wisdom which would have expected the Prize to have initiateddependably higher coverage of the Dalai Lama in the months immediately af-ter the award In fact as Figure 2 indicates media coverage picked up only inthe spring and summer of 1990 as a product of a Chinese crackdownmdashin linewith the pessimistic hypothesis Coverage of Tibet in general was in fact higherbefore the award thanks to intensified government repression in March 1989there were 142 articles with Tibet in the headline between October 1988 andSeptember 1989 and 63 articles in 1990 In short the Nobel Committeeʼshopemdashthat the Prize would bring greater worldwide media attention to Tibetin particular (and perhaps to Chinese human rights abuses more generally)mdashis not supported by the data

In contrast awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Burmese opposition leaderAung San Suu Kyi in 1991 does appear to have led to greater worldwide media

FIGURE 1Coverage of Dalai LamaMajor World Newspapers

Source LexisNexis Academic


attention to her country This is not readily apparent from Figure 3 which wascalculated using the same method as above for MyanmarBurma However inthe three years preceding the award global media coverage averaged 13 ar-ticles per month in the three years after the award beginning January 1992global media coverage averaged 1761 articles per month The disparity is evengreater in the year immediately before and immediately after the awardmdash883 versus 1733 articles These differences are reproduced or are even greaterwhen one calculates median as opposed to mean monthly coverage How-ever Prize advocates should not take heart as I discuss in greater detail belowin the Prizeʼs wake the ruling junta showed even less tolerance than usual forpolitical dissent and increased media attention failed to moderate the regimeʼsrepressive behavior

The Myanmar case was less typical however than that of Tibet I cannotdue to space constraints present all the other cases in equivalent detail Butthe results follow the same pattern Neither Rigoberta Menchuacute nor theGuatemalan Civil War (1992) received substantially greater sustained cover-age after the award35 The plight of East Timor (1996) was covered with

FIGURE 2Coverage of Tibet

Major World Newspapers


35 This conclusion based on systematic examination of global media runs counter to accounts thatcredit the award with drawing international attention to the stalled peace negotiations and govern-ment abuses in Guatemala See Kay B Warren Indigenous Movements and their Critics Pan-MayaActivism in Guatemala (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1998) 53 Daniel Wilkinson Silenceon the Mountain Stories of Terror Betrayal and Forgetting in Guatemala (Durham NC Duke Univer-sity Press 2004) 30


equal intensity (or lack thereof) in the year before the award and in the yearafter respectively 11 articles per month versus around 10 articles per monthThe impressive coverage during the award period (OctoberndashDecember 1996)mdash27 articles per monthmdashwaned quickly The following year (1997) the Com-mittee sought to draw attention to the cause of the International Campaignto Ban Landmines but the effects were either small or nonexistent By onemeasure (references to ldquolandminesrdquo in the text of articles in major world news-papers) there were substantially more references in the year before the award(2381 per month) than in the year after (1721) By another measure (refer-ences to ldquolandminerdquo in headlines alone) the later period saw a slight increaseover the earlier (141 vs 125 articles per month) Not only is this differencesmall in absolute terms but it shrinks to insignificance when one takes into ac-count long-term agenda-setting trends the landmines issue had been steadilygaining coveragemdashwith monthly averages rising from 6 to 892 to 125 articlesin the three years preceding the award

In 2003 and 2004 the Nobel Committee honored two individuals with ex-tremely low world press profiles and the award unquestionably helped themas individuals gain attention from the media Shirin Ebadi appeared in theheadline and lead paragraphs of merely three articles of major world news-papers in the three years preceding her award but nearly 400 times in thethree years thereafter For Wangari Maathai a Kenyan environmentalist andpolitical figure the corresponding figures are 8 and 216 But whether theircauses profited is less clear Maathai was associated with sustainable develop-ment and especially deforestation causes whose profile rose along with theglobal environmentalist movement Global media had thus devoted increasing

FIGURE 3Coverage of MyanmarBurmaMajor World Newspapers



attention to problems of deforestation but there was no marked increase inthe wake of her award Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange were honored in 2007 for raising public awareness of global warmingWhile media coverage of climate change and specifically rising global tem-peratures rose after 2007 one cannot with confidence credit the Peace Prizemedia attention to climate change had been steadily rising for years As a lead-ing liberal voice in Iran Ebadi is linked to political and social reform agendasas well as human rights Figure 4 demonstrates clearly based on references toIran and reform in the headlines and lead paragraphs of major world news-papers between 1997 and 2007 that Ebadiʼs increased personal prominencedid not translate into systematically greater coverage of the impediments todemand for or prospects for reform in Iran

In conclusion with the possible exception of Myanmar (1991) the NobelPeace Prize cannot be credited with drawing global media attention to recipi-entsʼ causes When recipients are largely unknown the award can be a personalboon but such cases are rare Moreover even in these instances there is littleevidence that the award redounds to the benefit of their causes which the NobelCommittee wishes to further So much for the Prize advocatesʼ hopes

PERVERSE CONSEQUENCES

The conferral of the Nobel Peace Prize does however appear to have an im-pact in certain circumstances more in line with the previously articulated ex-pectations of pessimists Of the nine aspirational cases since 1971 aiming atdomestic change (see Appendix) six produced the opposite effect of thatdesired the other three seem to have had no effect and in no case does the

FIGURE 4Coverage of Iran and ReformMajor World Newspapers



Prize appear to have played a substantial role in bringing about the changesfavored and envisioned by the Nobel Committee The Committee has the bestof intentions in promoting responsive regimes and the protection of humanrights but the consequences can be perverse

Space constraints preclude adequate tracing of all these stories and thusI focus on the post-Cold War cases in which one might have expected thewarming international environment to be most conducive to effective interna-tional pressuremdashthat is a best-case scenario for the Peace Prize Few for in-stance would be surprised to learn that the award to Sakharov in 1975 sparkeda vigorous crackdown by the authorities on Soviet dissidents the Prize helpedtemporarily protect Sakharov himself but even he would eventually be exiledto Gorky after his outspoken opposition to the war in Afghanistan36 Of thefive such cases since 1989 three produced unexpected negative effects de-scribed below The other two are exceptional The 1993 award bestowed onNelson Mandela and FW de Klerk did not have disruptive effects becausewhile it sought to encourage democratic change that change was already wellunderway and it was transpiring after years of confrontation through a nego-tiated solution But this was a singular case in contrast to nearly all other do-mestic change cases in which the Peace Prize honored the opponents ofrepression and implicitly or explicitly criticized the powers that bemdasha tack takenwith regard to South Africa as well with predictably disappointing results in1960 and 1984mdashthe Prize Committee in 1993 hailed the South African gov-ernment for its initiative encouraging it along its liberalizing path rather thantaking it to task for its misdeeds The Prize thus worked with state powerrather than against it The previous yearʼs award to Rigoberta Menchuacute wasalso unusual in that it came amidst an ongoing civil war Levels of violencewere already high in Guatemala and the conflict had ebbed and waned severaltimes It is difficult to attribute any increase in state violence to the award nordid the Guatemalan government seem to grow any more intransigent than italready was Overall the award seems to have had little impact on the stallednegotiations which resumed only a year later after a UN special representa-tive came on the scene Menchuacute and the Nobel Prize were from the perspec-tive of the peace process irrelevant37

To be clear the claim here is not that the Nobel Peace Prize was the pri-mary or fundamental reason that these states repressed activism on behalf ofdemocracy and human rights After all in these cases the Prize was given pre-cisely to draw attention to ongoing or recently intensified repression in author-itarian regimes and to pressure those regimes for change Moreover as I make

36 Andrew and Mitrokhin Sword and the Shield 322ndash336 Richard Lourie Sakharov A Biography(Hanover NH Brandeis University Press 2002) 276ndash277

37 Susanne Jonas ldquoDemocratization Through Peace The Difficult Case of Guatemalardquo Journal ofInteramerican Studies and World Affairs 42 (Winter 2000) 9ndash38 at 12 David Holiday ldquoGuatemalaʼsLong Road to Peacerdquo Current History 96 (February 1997) 68ndash74


clear in the brief case studies that follow an upsurge of activism and repressionoften preceded and motivated the award Finally as I discuss below otherfactors in addition to the Prize often contributed to the authoritarian regimeʼssense of encirclement and anxiety But within the necessary space constraintsI do seek at least to clear room for the possibility and to suggest that it is plau-sible that the Nobel Peace Prize not only failed to produce greater toleranceof dissent but exacerbated the regimeʼs perceived vulnerability and boosted itsincentives to stifle dissent in the short to medium run In the long run the in-creased repression that follows the award might contribute to liberalizationand indeed one could argue that this was the case in South Africa after DesmondTutu was honored in 1984 But such processes are highly contingent ChinaIran and Myanmarmdashthe three cases explored belowmdashhave not in the yearssince the award experienced much political liberalization Moreover thiscomplex causal chain does not reflect how the Nobel Committee envisionsthe award exerting a progressive impact Because the Prize advocatesʼ catalogof effects focuses on the short to medium run so too does this article fullyaware that the repression prompted by the award may nevertheless be partof the winding long-run and always uncertain path to liberalism

1989 14th Dalai Lama

One might reasonably argue that the Peace Prize awarded in 1989 to Tibetʼssupreme religious leader and national symbol made little difference to theTibetan cause Chinaʼs response to Tibetan demands for self-rule has varied overtime but it took a hard-line turn in 1988 after Tibetan activism intensified Theauthorities imposed martial law in Lhasa in March 1989 after bloody clashesbetween protesters and police and although it was formally lifted in May 1990that was a ldquocosmetic exerciserdquo as the authorities retained and continued toemploy these repressive tools38 Tibetans were highly mobilized immediatelybefore and immediately after the award and Chinese policy was repressivebefore and after as well The Peace Prize would at first blush seem to havehad little impact Yet such an account presumes that the path of politics is lin-ear that the Tibetans and the Chinese government would independent of thePeace Prize have proceeded along the same way regardless It misses the con-tingency of political process and it fails to grasp how the Nobel Prize alteredthe politics on both sides

In one sense the award was successful It sought to give emotional succorto the Tibetan people and to democracy activists across China and to pressurethe Chinese government for change After the Tiananmen Square massacre ofJune 1989 the Committee used the Peace Prize to send a message of interna-

38 Human Rights Watch Merciless Repression Human Rights in Tibet (New York Human RightsWatch 1990) Jonathan Mirsky ldquoChinese Chase US Loans by Lifting Martial Law in Tibetrdquo Globeand Mail 3 May 1990


tional displeasure to the Chinese government39 In awarding the Prize to the14th Dalai Lama it emphasized his ldquophilosophy of peacerdquo and his steadfastopposition to violence no matter how worthy the cause in pointed contrastto the Chinese authoritiesʼ repression in Tibet ldquoas in other parts of the worldit is becoming increasingly obvious that problems cannot be solved by the useof brutal military power to crush peaceful demonstrationsrdquo That the interna-tional community had sided with the Tibetan struggle against the ldquoChineseinvadersrdquo40 indeed seems to have buoyed the spirits of Tibetans and revital-ized their flagging campaign ldquoTibetans everywhere considered this a majorvictoryrdquomdashconfirmation of the justice of their cause and a sign of the worldʼssupport Tibetans in Lhasa reacted to the announcement with pride andsome took to the streets in celebration41 A representative of the Dalai Lamadeclared the award ldquothe best thing that has happened to Tibetans in 40 yearsrdquo42

That fall and especially the following winter and spring political unrest spreadacross Tibet43 Tibetans calculated that with the world focused upon themthanks to the Prize the Chinese authorities would prove more lenient Theywere wrong

The Chinese undertook a vicious crackdown in late fall 1989 Aweek afterthe Nobel Committeeʼs announcement the authorities forbade even such tra-ditional non-violent forms of celebration as burning incense and throwingtsampa (flour) into the air Public religious observances were also banned44

Political imprisonment according to Human Rights Watch abounded in theperiod after the award45 On the first anniversary of the imposition of martiallaw in March 1990 China held a military parade in Lhasa that was intendedby one account to make ldquoclear what would follow even the most peacefuldemonstration against their presencerdquo Tibetans reported that the parade

39 Sheila Rule ldquoHow and Why the Dalai Lama Won the Peace Prizerdquo The New York Times 13 Oc-tober 1989

40 Press Release 5 October 1989 accessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacelaureates1989presshtml 8 July 2009 Presentation Speech accessed at httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacelaureates1989presentation-speechhtml 8 July 2009

41 Human Rights Watch Merciless Repression 27 Melvyn C Goldstein The Snow Lion and theDragon China Tibet and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley University of California Press 1997) 91 See alsoTsering Shakya The Dragon in the Land of Snows A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 (New YorkColumbia University Press 1999) 431

42 Philip Colley ldquoSupport for Tibet Grows in Chinardquo Guardian 4 January 199043 ldquoUnrest Spreads in Tibetrdquo Guardian 6 April 199044 ldquoNew Crackdown Follows Celebrations in Lhasardquo The Washington Post 21 December 1989 Hu-

man Rights Committee of LAWASIA and Tibet Information Network Defying the Dragon China andHuman Rights in Tibet (London Tibet Information Network 1991) 30 Ronald David Schwartz Circleof Protest Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising 1987ndash92 (New York Columbia University Press1994) 173 Robert Barnett ldquoSymbols and Protest The Iconography of Demonstrations in Tibet1987ndash1990rdquo in Robert Barnett ed Resistance and Reform in Tibet (Bloomington Indiana UniversityPress 1994) 250ndash251

45 Human Rights Watch Merciless Repression 34ndash37


marked the authoritiesʼ ldquobiggest show of forcerdquo since political unrest had com-menced two and a half years before46 The last six months of martial lawmdashfromNovember 1989 to April 1990mdashreportedly marked the period of most-intenseChinese repression with as many as 2000 Tibetans executed countless moreimprisoned and tortured houses razed and monasteries violated HumanRights WatchAsia Watch reported in May 1990 that ldquothe incidence of serioustorture is at least as bad as it has been for years and in some cases it seemsworserdquo47 While the intensified repression in Tibet cannot be divorced from thelarger context of the Tiananmen protest and crackdownmdashindeed the NobelPrize was awarded to the Dalai Lama within that contextmdashthe patterns inTibet were distinctive part of a history that preceded Tiananmen and the de-mocracy movement and proceeded at least somewhat independently of themRepression in Tibet came not immediately after Tiananmen but hardly coin-cidentally latermdashwith the Dalai Lama winning the Peace Prize and with theinternational community seeming to legitimize Tibetan independence claimsIn fact beginning in November 1989 government cadres charged with coun-tering Tibetan ldquosplittismrdquo especially in monasteries and nunneries were spe-cifically told in addition to their other duties ldquoto condemn and campaignagainst the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Dalai Lamardquo48 As onescholar concludes the Prize marking the culmination of a string of interna-tional successes by the Dalai Lama signaled that ldquomomentum appeared tohave shifted to the Dalai Lama hellip [and] Beijing reacted predictably to thethreat this shift in momentum posed by moving to a more hard-line integra-tionist policyrdquo49 If the Nobel Committee was sending a message so too was theChinese government

Awarding the Peace Prize to the 14th Dalai Lama was gratifying to Tibetannationalists living abroad and it may even have been welcomed by nationalistswithin Tibet But it did little to make an autonomous let alone an indepen-dent Tibet a reality or to make the Chinese authorities more open to Tibetandemandsmdashjust the opposite Instead the government eager to prove that itcould not be bullied by the international community and that it had resolvein reserves battened down the hatches refused concessions and ramped uprepression That the award might have this effect was anticipated by at leastsome contemporary observers50 and the reaction may have been reinforced byChinese cultural norms highly sensitive to loss of ldquofacerdquo

46 ldquoEyewitness Chinese Show of Force Chills Tibetrdquo Guardian 9 March 199047 Peter Ellingsen ldquoCrackdown Reported in Tibetrdquo Sydney Morning Herald 23 May 1990 Lena

H Sun ldquoHuman-Rights Abuses Said to Mount in Tibetrdquo The Washington Post 29 May 199048 Ronald D Schwartz ldquoThe Anti-Splittist Campaign and Tibetan Political Consciousnessrdquo in

Barnett ed Resistance and Reform 21749 Goldstein Snow Lion and the Dragon 91 See also ShakyaDragon in the Land of Snows 431ndash43350 Jonathan Mirsky ldquoGiving Peace Prize to Dalai Lama may Tighten Chinaʼs Screws on Tibetrdquo

Globe and Mail 9 October 1989


The Nobel Peace Prize did not of course produce this unwelcome back-lash in isolation from other instances of international pressuremdashnotably UScongressional resolutionsmdashand domestic discontent in Tibet and elsewherein China As international ldquointerferencerdquo in Chinaʼs ldquodomestic affairsrdquo grewand as civil society became more restive the Chinese government reconsid-ered the moderate stance it had adopted toward Tibet in the first half of thedecade and it clamped down on the dissent it had permitted (in relative terms)to flourish But the Prize did mark the symbolic culmination of the DalaiLamaʼs efforts to win international support for the Tibetan cause and to per-suade the world of Chinese aggression against his country In the mid-1980she began to travel more frequently abroad with an expressly political agendato establish allied groups across the world especially but not exclusively in theUnited States to recruit foreign parliamentarians to the Tibetan cause and tobuild global popular support for Tibet51 The Dalai Lama proved a skilled pol-itician outmaneuvering the Chinese in Western forums he was successful be-yond all expectations and the Peace Prize was perhaps his greatest tacticalsuccess But despite the Dalai Lamaʼs tactical accomplishments the strategywas misguided and Tibet today is no closer to autonomy than it was 30 yearsago As one historian concludes the Dalai Lama ldquomiscalculatedrdquoHis efforts didnot ldquoprod Beijing toward further compromiserdquo but ldquoonly strengthened the handof hard-linersrdquo52 The Peace Prize seems perhaps even more than Tiananmento have been the proverbial straw that broke the camelʼs or perhaps the tigerʼsback Chinaʼs reaction to the Prize was its new approach in microcosm the Prizespurred China not to adopt a more liberal policy toward Tibetan nationalismbut rather to tighten the screws

1991 Aung San Suu Kyi

Observers of Myanmar rightly give the Nobel Peace Prize credit for fixing theworldʼs attention on the plight of the democratic opposition embodied in thefigure of Aung San Suu Kyi53 But this I will argue represents only the positiveside of the ledger As in China the Peace Prize brought substantial costs aswell for the very cause it sought to promote

One might argue that in Myanmar as in China the Nobel Prize was more aresponse to than a cause of state repression and indeed the human rights sit-uation had long been dire in BurmaMyanmar and in the months before theNobel Committeeʼs announcement it was reportedly deteriorating54 perhaps

51 Goldstein Snow Lion and the Dragon 75ndash78 Grunfeld Making of Modern Tibet 230ndash232 236ndash238 Shakya Dragon in the Land of Snows 412ndash416 Smith Jr Tibetan Nation chap 15

52 GrunfeldMaking of Modern Tibet 233 and generally 233ndash23553 David I Steinberg Burma The State of Myanmar (Washington DC Georgetown University

Press 2001) 9054 Louise Williams ldquoJunta Tightens Grip on Powerrdquo Sydney Morning Herald 28 March 1991


contributing to the Committeeʼs choice But the decision to honor Aung SanSuu Kyi intensified the regimeʼs fear of encirclement activated its sensitivity toforeign interference in Myanmarʼs affairs and increased its reason and in-centives to lash out Just before the Prize was awarded Myanmarʼs militaryrulersmdashthe State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)mdashpurgedthe civil service firing 15000 civil servants The move marked the final stageof the SLORCʼs steady reassertion of control over Myanmarʼs institutions andsociety55 but it was also ldquoa symptomrdquo according to a ldquowell-informed Yangonresidentrdquo ldquoof [the regimeʼs] anxietyrdquo specifically its ldquonervousnessrdquo at the pros-pect of Suu Kyi winning the Prize Later that fall Amnesty Internationalcharged the SLORC with having intensified its efforts to crush the countryʼsnonviolent opposition56 Student leaders were rounded up in the days andweeks after the Prize announcement opposition and ethnic political partyleaders were detained and asked to provide their ldquoopinionrdquo on the awardingof the Peace Prize to Suu Kyi Also that fall the remaining leadership of thecountryʼs second-largest opposition party fled to Thailand declaring that as aresult of the regimeʼs persecution ldquothe status of all political parties has beenunderminedrdquo57 Offering concessions was the last thing on the SLORCʼs mindas it faced a world ldquobullying our country threatening our countryrdquo58 It insteadfocused on harassing and punishing Suu Kyiʼs aides and on trying to discreditSuu Kyi by alleging that she was an agent of imperialist powers by launchingsexist broadsides against the very prospect of female leadership and by play-ing the race card against her children59 When students protested that fall allinstitutions of higher education were shuttered to reopen only three years later60

By helping to boost ldquoher name and her aurardquo a Western diplomat observedthe Peace Prize made Aung San Suu Kyi a target the SLORC could no longerignore her61 The Prize may also have undermined military moderates whodesirous of improving Myanmarʼs international standing sought a more tolerantapproach toward Suu Kyi and her fellow democracy activists62

55 Michael W Charney A History of Modern Burma (Cambridge Cambridge University Press2009) 177

56 William Branigin ldquoMyanmar Said to Purge Civil Service Opposition Leaderʼs Candidacy forNobel Focuses International Irerdquo The Washington Post 14 October 1991 Branigin ldquoMyanmar StepsUp Repression Says Amnestyrdquo The Washington Post 10 December 1991

57 Myanmar lsquoNo Law at AllʼmdashHuman Rights Violations Under Military Rule (New York AmnestyInternational USA 1992) 9

58 David E Sanger ldquoBurmese Military Increases Attacks on Detained Opposition Leaderrdquo TheNew York Times 29 December 1991

59 Branigin ldquoMyanmar Said to Purge Civil Servicerdquo Charney Modern Burma 17660 ldquoBurmese Universities are Closed as Military Acts to Block Protestsrdquo The New York Times 13 De-

cember 199161 Sanger ldquoBurmese Military Increases Attacksrdquo62 Andrew Selth ldquoThe Armed Forces and Military Rule in Burmardquo in Robert I Rotberg ed Burma

Prospects for a Democratic Future (Washington DC Brookings Institution Press 1998) 99


As part of its postndashNobel Prize ramped-up repression Myanmarʼs militarygovernment initiated that winter an all-out military assault against pro-democraticrebels and the ethnic insurgents notably the Karen with which they were al-lied This was reportedly the most intense assault in more than 40 years on theKaren and for the first time the military prosecuted the campaign on all re-gional fronts at once producing a transnational refugee crisis By the end ofMarch the military had scored impressive victories including the capture of akey strategic mountain from which it could freely lob mortars and artillery intothe rebel capital though these advances fell short of the militaryʼs promise tocapture the rebelsʼ headquarters63 The campaign signaled the always-anxiousregimeʼs heightened anxiety in the wake of the Prize but it also revealed themilitaryʼs increased capability thanks to an infusion of Chinese weapons (Acomplementary explanation is that the SLORC saw these military operationsas diversionary hoping thereby to focus the populationʼs attention on mattersother than democracy) The regimeʼs successmdashmagnified because the pro-democracy movement had tarnished itself by engaging in an internal witchhunt in which it used torture to extract confessions from alleged governmentspiesmdashmay have reduced its anxiety to the point that it could allow some cos-metic concessions such as releasing a few hundred less-prominent politicalprisoners allowing Suu Kyiʼs family to visit her without preconditions openinga dialogue with the now-weakened opposition and (by fall) lifting martial lawhowever ldquothese actions and promisesrdquo one analyst noted ldquoadd[ed] up tonothing more than the appearance of changerdquo64

In sum the Nobel Peace Prize did bring greater attention to Myanmar andcoalesce Western pressure but the result was to weaken not strengthen pro-democracy forces SLORC repression grew and the pro-democracy movementcracked The events of 1991ndash1992 bore out an observation common amongBurmese the military regime has been only marginally responsive to pressurewhether domestic or international in origin and such pressure often has provedcounterproductive65 As one balanced critic of the Westʼs policy of censure

63 Because of the intensity of the militaryʼs efforts one analyst characterized the campaign as aldquoclear defeatrdquo but it is not clear that the military saw it that way See Josef Silverstein ldquoBurma inan International Perspectiverdquo Asian Survey 32 (October 1992) 951ndash963 at 959 See generally LarryJagan ldquoOffensive Targets Burmaʼs Ethnic Rebelsrdquo Toronto Star 16 February 1992 William BraniginldquoBurmese Recount Tales of Terror at Hands of Troopsrdquo The Washington Post 16 February 1992Barbara Crosette ldquoThousands of Burmese Said to Flee Drive by Armyrdquo The New York Times5 March 1992 Philip Shenon ldquoMilitary Operations to Stoprdquo The New York Times 29 April 1992

64 Others attributed these liberalizing moves to the militaryʼs inability to overrun the Karen head-quarters before the monsoon season Generally on the liberalization see David I Steinberg ldquoMyanmarin 1992 Plus Ccedila Change rdquo Asian Survey 33 (February 1993) 175ndash183 esp 176ndash178 SilversteinldquoBurma in an International Perspectiverdquo and Robert D McFadden ldquoBurmese Rulers Releasing aDozen Political Prisonersrdquo The New York Times 26 April 1992

65 Sheryl WuDunn ldquoDissent by Burmese Only Brings More Repressionrdquo The New York Times25 November 1990


sanctions and isolation notes ldquothe SLORCSPDC [State Peace and Develop-ment Council as the SLORC was renamed in 1997] has generally appearedmore concerned about domestic stability than international respectabilityrdquoand the Western approach has reinforced the sense of siege prevalent amongthe countryʼs nationalistic military leadersmdashwithout substantially undercuttingthe stateʼs capacity for repression66

Not only did the Prize bolster regime hard-liners but it also mobilized pro-democratic forces in Myanmar giving the regime greater excuse to crack downand thus deepening the tragedy Many accounts emphasize that the award gavehope to beleaguered democracy activists One Yangon resident told journal-ists ldquoThis is the best news we have had for a long time It must make a differ-ence Not even the Burmese military can ignore the message conveyed by theNobel Prizerdquo67 On the very day the Prize was awarded to Suu Kyi in absentiastudents rallied against the SLORC in the largest anti-government demonstra-tion since 1988 when the regime had squashed the pro-democracy movementDozens of her supporters were arrested for hanging congratulatory noticesand perhaps 900 were ultimately arrested that month68

Computerized content analysis of global media also suggests that protestactivity in Myanmar was more intense in fall 1991 and that government repres-sion was especially severe toward the end of 1991 and especially in 1992 TheIDEA database lists no ldquoprotest demonstrationsrdquo in 1989ndash1990 or 1992ndash1993but it lists two such events in 1991 both in mid-October after the award hadbeen announced This source lists more arrests and detentions in 1992 espe-cially January and February than in surrounding years It cites also three timesas many military raids in 1992 especially in the mid-spring that year also sawfour major military mobilizations three in January69 The World Handbook ofPolitical Indicators IV records twice as many ldquogovernment violent actionsrdquo in1992 as in surrounding years and nearly twice as many ldquogovernment forcefulactionsrdquo More clearly targeted domestically are events that the database cat-egorizes as ldquocivil directrdquo ldquocivil violentrdquo and ldquocivil forcefulrdquo actions and thesealso reveal heightened activity in 199270 One should not rely too heavily on

66 Morten B Pedersen Promoting Human Rights in Burma A Critique of Western Sanctions Policy(Lanham MD Rowman amp Littlefield 2008) quote at 219 generally 221ndash233 See also Andrew SelthldquoBurmaʼs lsquoSaffron Revolutionʼ and the Limits of International Influencerdquo Australian Journal of In-ternational Affairs 62 (September 2008) 281ndash297

67 Neil Kelly and Tony Samstag ldquoNobel Peace Prize Gives Burma Hoperdquo The Times 15 October1991 See also Steinberg Burma 91

68 ldquoStudents Protest Burmaʼs Juntardquo Toronto Star 10 December 1991 Raymond Whitaker ldquoSuuKyiʼs Supporters lsquoArrestedʼ in Burmardquo Independent 10 December 1991 David E Sanger ldquoBurmeseDissidents Say 900 were Arrested in Crackdownrdquo The New York Times 19 December 1991

69 Integrated Data for Event Analysis available at wwwvranetcomidea Data compiled by AaronRapport August 2007

70 In the case of theWorld Handbook these data are especially preliminary according to its editorsin an April 2002 memo Data compiled by Aaron Rapport August 2007


such data since media access to Myanmar is highly restricted and coverage isnecessarily spotty71 But it is suggestive Some have argued that more broadlyWestern policy has sustained false hopes and an unrealistically hard lineamong the Burmese opposition and that the Nobel Peace Prize in particularmay have reduced Suu Kyiʼs room for maneuver compelling her to hew pub-licly to an uncompromising stance72

Some observers acknowledged that one could not expect ldquothe Burmesemilitary with its xenophobic instincts and skill at repression suddenly to col-lapse or to feel very much shamerdquo but they hoped that the Prize might suffi-ciently embarrass Myanmarʼs neighbors that they would bring their leverage tobear73 In November 1991 perhaps because of the attention the Prize haddrawn Myanmarʼs neighbors stopped opposing a UN resolution rebukingthe SLORCmdasha resolution they had blocked a year beforemdashand even Chinaand Cuba which normally opposed any measure criticizing a countryʼs humanrights situation voted for the resolution which explicitly noted the Prize74

However this was hardly the norm Myanmarʼs neighbors with the notableexception of the Philippines generally offered little criticism and instead con-tinued to try to integrate the country into regional institutions Members of theAssociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) persisted in their approachof ldquoconstructive engagementrdquo and they continued to conduct lucrative tradein raw materials and arms with Myanmar75 Human rights groups singled outASEAN member states for their lack of cooperation in bringing pressure onthe SLORC76 For Myanmarʼs neighbors Nobel Peace Prize or not it was busi-ness as usual European countries gradually followed suit so that by 1995Myanmar had won ldquothe battle for global acceptancerdquo and even the US com-mitment to isolating the regime was wearing thin77

71 Another concern is that the data reflect actual events less than they do global media interestwhich increased after the Peace Prize However while coverage of Burma was greater from January1992mdashas much as 30 percent moremdashit seems unlikely that this can account for the even larger in-creases in reported events at times on the order of 200ndash300 percent

72 Pedersen Promoting Human Rights 232ndash233 25073 Steven Erlanger ldquoThe Power of the Peace Prize May be Lost onMyanmarrdquo The New York Times

20 October 199174 Paul Lewis ldquoUN Rebukes Burma Military for Refusing to Yield Powerrdquo The New York Times

30 November 199175 John Bray Burma The Politics of Constructive Engagement (London Royal Institute of Inter-

national Affairs 1995) chap 576 Lawyers Committee for Human Rights BurmamdashThe International Response to Continuing Hu-

man Rights Violations 10 February 1992 More generally see J Mohan Malik ldquoBurmaʼs Role inRegional Securityrdquo in Robert I Rotberg ed Burma Prospects for a Democratic Future (WashingtonDC Brookings Institution Press 1998) 121ndash123 Steinberg Burma 237ndash240

77 Barbara Bradley ldquoUS Slowly Loses Fight to Isolate Regime Over Rights Abusesrdquo ChristianScience Monitor 4 January 1995


2003 Shirin Ebadi

In awarding the Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi of Iran the Nobel Committeedeclared its ldquohope that the Prize will be an inspiration for all those who strug-gle for human rights and democracy in her country in the Moslem world andin all countries where the fight for human rights needs inspiration and sup-portrdquo78 While not all Iranians were enamored of the mullahs and while somewere attracted to the West liberal reformers like Ebadi were lonely voices inIranian society lacking grassroots support79 The Nobel Committee soughtthrough the prestigious award to bolster Ebadi and like-minded activists inIran and across the Muslim world to attract local support to their cause todraw international media attention and thereby to compel illiberal regimesto tolerate liberal oases in their midst We have already seen that the awarddid not draw more international media attention to the fate of reform in Iranbut that it did boost the profile of Ebadi relatively unknown before October2003 In the West Ebadi came to serve as a major if not the preeminent sym-bol of the struggle for liberalism in Iran and of the regimeʼs insecurity and itsrepressive tendencies80

However the Nobel Prize offered Ebadi and her fellow reformers scantprotection Not only did they make little headway but their political positionslipped as they tried to weather a relentless conservative assault Ebadi herselflamented in 2005 that ldquonothing has changed in Iran Those who were in powerare still in powerrdquo81 Reformers had confronted substantial obstacles before 2003conservatives led by Iranʼs supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneihad especially since the election of the reformist Mohammed Khatami as pres-ident in 1997 employed the repressive tools of the state as well as nonstateforces (ldquovigilantesrdquo) to beat back the reform challenge82 But the 2003 PeacePrize offered conservatives a new opening to intervene into Iranʼs constrainedyet still vaguely democratic politics In January 2004mdashjust three months afterthe Peace Prize announcementmdashthe powerful Guardian Council disqualifiedsome 3600 reformist candidates for Parliament nationwide including 80 in-cumbents and as many as 900 of 1700 candidates in Tehran alone This washardly more of the same the number of disqualifications in 2004 was morethan triple that of 2000 marking ldquoan aggressive reassertion of authority by


79 Assef Bayat Making Islam Democratic Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 2007) 134 Ali M Ansari ldquoContinuous Regime Change From WithinrdquoWashington Quarterly 26 (Fall 2003) 53ndash67 at 63

80 See for instance ldquoThe Woman the Mullahs Fearrdquo The New York Times 2 January 200981 Scott Peterson ldquoHow Iranʼs Reformers Lost Their Political Wayrdquo Christian Science Monitor

1 July 200582 See Bayat Making Islam Democratic 115ndash134 Human Rights Watch World Report 2003 Human

Rights Developments in Iran accessed at httpwwwhrworglegacywr2k3mideast3html 8 July 2009


conservativesrdquo83mdashaccording to some a ldquoconservative couprdquo With many urbanvoters disengaged from politics and with key reformers urging a boycottconservatives scored a large victory in the February elections the next yearwith reformers still sidelined Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president

Over the course of 2004 ldquothe once-robust reform movement hellip virtuallyevaporatedrdquo newspapers and magazines were shut down student activistswere jailed or at least harassed Human Rights Watch reported that ldquorespectfor basic human rights in Iran especially freedom of expression and opinionrdquowhile never strong had ldquodeterioratedrdquo torture and solitary confinement wereused ldquoroutinelyrdquo to punish dissidents independent websites were blocked So-called ldquoparallel institutionsrdquomdashparamilitary groups plainclothes intelligenceagents secret prisonsmdashldquobecame increasingly open in crushing student protestsdetaining activists writers and journalists hellip and threatening pro-democracyspeakers and audiences at public eventsrdquo84 One cannot discount the possibilitythat the regime might have pursued this path in 2004 regardless of the NobelCommitteeʼs decision in fall 2003 although Khatamiʼs election had put conser-vatives on the defensive they swiftly regrouped and Khatamiʼs presidency wasgenerally marked by the consolidation of conservativesʼ gains and by theenfeebling of the opposition85 Further the US victory in Iraq in spring2003 in which the ldquocoalition of the willingrdquo had easily defeated the strongestArab national army the reported US dismissal of Iranʼs sweeping diplomaticovertures shortly thereafter in May and the presence of huge numbers of UStroops on Iranʼs doorstepmdashall these left the Iranian regime feeling deeplyinsecure in the latter half of 2003 By one account in the wake of the Iraqwar ldquoin their 24-year reign the clerics had seldom felt so threatened and vul-nerablerdquo86 At the very least it gave them political cover to crack down at homeso as to counter foreign interference in Iranʼs affairs By awarding the Prize to aleading reformer on the heels of the Iraq war and of Iranʼs rejected ldquogrand bar-gainrdquo with the United States the Nobel Committee only added to the conser-vativesʼ fears of encirclement and bolstered their disinclination to give ground

83 Karl Vick ldquoIranian Reformers Protest Move Barring Many from Reelectionrdquo The New YorkTimes 12 January 2004

84 Robin Wright ldquoKeeping Faith in Reform and Islam in Iranrdquo The Washington Post 15 Decem-ber 2004 Human Rights Watch World Report 2005 Human Rights Overview Iran 2004 accessed atwwwhrworgenglishdocs20050113iran9803htm 8 July 2009

85 Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr Democracy in Iran History and the Quest for Liberty (OxfordOxford University Press 2006) 136ndash145 Fakhreddin Azimi The Quest for Democracy in Iran ACentury of Struggle Against Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 2008)380ndash399 and Elliot Hen-Tov ldquoUnderstanding Iranʼs New Authoritarianismrdquo Washington Quarterly30 (Winter 2006ndash2007) 163ndash179 esp 164ndash169 For a more generous assessment of the reformistsʼachievements and of Khatamiʼs leadership see Ervand Abrahamian A History of Modern Iran(Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2008) 186ndash191

86 Trita Parsi rdquoThe Price of Not Talking to Iranrdquo World Policy Journal 23 (Winter 2006ndash2007)11ndash17 at 13 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for urging me to emphasize this context


to the domestic opposition There is some evidence that hard-liners under-stood the Prize precisely in this light as an attempt to interfere with the up-coming parliamentary elections87 It is at least plausible that the Nobel PeacePrize awarded to Shirin Ebadi contributed to perhaps even sparked and atleast facilitated the crackdown of 2004

Not only might the Prize have prompted the regime to silence its critics butthe critics seem to have silenced themselves Amnesty International claims thatthe 2003 award ldquocontributed to the growth and increasing self-confidence of civilsocietyrdquo but it provides no evidence to substantiate this assertion88 In fact con-servative efforts to delegitimize the award as a tool of Western interferencesucceeded in putting reformers on the defensive89 Immediately after the awardannouncement a close aide to Khatami told Reuters that Ebadiʼs winning thePrize was ldquovery good news for every Iranianrdquo but state-run media made littlemention of the award and Khatami himself subsequently dismissed the PeacePrize as ldquonot very importantrdquo compared to its counterparts in science and lit-erature90 Khatami thereby undercut a fellow reformer though it is unclearwhether this is because Ebadi represented a secularist break with his vision ofIran as still an Islamic republic91 or because ever the cautious politician he rec-ognized that any effort to use her prize to further the cause of reform wouldleave him vulnerable to conservative attack and thus politically hamstrung92

This has generally been the fate in Iran of criticism originating abroad nation-alist conservatives use it to bludgeon their reformist opponents and reformersfeel compelled to join their opponents in distancing themselves from the West93

The Nobel Committee like US ldquodemocracy promotionrdquo efforts in Iranhas adopted the view that pressure on the regime and moral as well as financialsupport for liberal Iranian civil society is the most effective way to promote

87 Mahmood Monshipouri ldquoThe Road to Globalization Runs Through Womenʼs Struggle Iranand the Impact of the Nobel Peace Prizerdquo World Affairs 167 (Summer 2004) 3ndash14 at 7

88 Amnesty International Report 2005 Iran89 For examples of conservative reaction see Parinoosh Arami and Parisa Hafezi ldquoNo Official

Fanfare for Nobel Win in Iranrdquo New Zealand Herald 11 October 2003 ldquoGathering Storm overIranianʼs Peace Prizerdquo Mercury 13 October 2003

90 Arami and Hafezi ldquoNo Official Fanfarerdquo ldquoTroubled Backdrop for Iranianʼs Nobel Awardrdquo TheFinancial Times 11 October 2003 Dan de Luce ldquoIranʼs President Derides Woman Lawyerʼs Nobel asUnimportantrdquo Guardian 15 October 2003

91 For this view see Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr ldquoIranʼs Democracy Debaterdquo Middle East Policy11 (Summer 2004) 94ndash106 at 103ndash104

92 For this interpretation of Khatamiʼs presidency on the whole see Jahangir Amuzegar ldquoKhatamiA Folk Hero in Search of Relevancerdquo Middle East Policy 11 (Summer 2004) 75ndash93

93 For more examples see Bahman Baktiari and Haleh Vaziri ldquoIran Doubting Reformrdquo CurrentHistory 102 (January 2003) 36ndash39 Jahangir Amuzegar ldquoIranʼs Crumbling Revolutionrdquo Foreign Af-fairs 82 (JanuaryFebruary 2003) 44ndash57 There is little evidence to support the International CrisisGroupʼs optimism in this regard see the ICGʼs ldquoIran Discontent and DisarrayrdquoMiddle East BriefingNo 11 15 October 2003 2 accessed at wwwcrisisgrouporglibrarydocumentsmiddle_east_north_africairan_discontent_disarraypdf 12 October 2009


change The aims are well-meaning but the strategy is misguided As a TeheranUniversity political scientist explained ldquoThe more pressure the reformists feelmdashespecially if the pressure is coming from outsidemdashthe greater the negative im-pact on their capacity to mobilize especially in domestic politicsrdquo94 Unlessthey are already very weak insecure regimes like Iranʼs are more likely tostand firm than to bend let alone break Iranʼs relative isolation from the in-ternational community and its oil wealth have insulated hard-liners from muchinternational and domestic pressure95 but the example of Myanmar suggeststhat even a poor regime normally has the capabilities to impose its will at homeSince 2003 Iranʼs domestic milieu has become even more repressive and in-creased overt US support for reform epitomized by the establishment of anIran democracy fund bears at least some of the blame By 2007 the regimehad undertaken ldquoone of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in yearsrdquomdashdetaining as many as 150000 for wearing un-Islamic clothing in the spring ar-resting womenʼs rights advocates and student protesters banning news storieson all sensitive topics closing and forcing underground liberal civil society or-ganizations and according to one critic fostering ldquoan atmosphere of absoluteterrorrdquo It is revealing that the Westʼs ideological allies in Iran activists likeShirin Ebadi are among the US democracy fundʼs most vociferous critics96

CONCLUSION

Only the most pollyannaish would expect the Nobel Peace Prize to markedlyand directly promote peace democracy and human rights Yet the award de-mands a scholarly analysismdashpartly because it is always accompanied by a me-dia frenzy that presumes the awardʼs significance but more importantlybecause both the recipients and their political opponents take the award veryseriously and factor it into their calculations97 This article presents evidence inabundance that the realist dismissal of such prizes does not accord with thebehavior of opposition activists and regime leaders realists may be right thatthe Prize is the product of a blinkered liberal internationalism that fails to takeinto account the realities of power politics but they are wrong to think that theseprizes have no impact on the dynamics of international and especially domesticpolitics At the same time however this article has found little support for thePrizeʼs advocatesʼ chief hope that the Prize substantially boosts internationalmedia coverage of the recipient and his or her cause

94 Karl Vick ldquoIranian Hard-Liners Block Reform Billrdquo The Washington Post 4 June 200395 BayatMaking Islam Democratic 13396 Neil MacFarquhar ldquoIran Cracks Down on Dissentrdquo The New York Times 24 June 2007 Negar

Azimi ldquoHard Realities of Soft Powerrdquo New York Times Magazine 24 June 200797 The sparse existing scholarly literature has rather different purposes than those of this article

See Bulloch ldquoFor Whom Nobel Tollsrdquo Richard T Kinnier Jerry L Kernes Jessie Wetherbe HaymanPatricia N Flynn Elia Simon and Laura A Kilian ldquoValues Most Extolled in Nobel Peace PrizeSpeechesrdquo Journal of Psychology 141 (November 2007) 581ndash587


More perplexingly from the standpoint of both realists and Prize advocatesin some circumstances the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize has a real effecton politics but to the detriment of human rights and democracy when awardedto promote domestic change as it has been more often in recent years it in factmobilizes the forces opposed to change and impedes liberalization At the sametime it oftenmdashas the Nobel Committee hopesmdashboosts the spirits of liberal re-formers The result is to leave these reformers exposed precisely at the momentwhen leaders are feeling most vulnerable and thus most likely to apply thestateʼs power to repressive ends In short in such cases the Nobel Peace Prizebrings few benefits and substantial costs The Nobel Committeeʼs intentions areoften noble but the noblest of intentions can result in tragic consequences Thatoutcomes often depart from actorsʼ intentions is of course something that re-alists have long observed about politics and so this analysis marries a realistʼsstructural and pessimistic sensibility to a liberalʼs appreciation of process

In most recently honoring President Obama the Nobel Committee clearlyhoped to encourage his administration to further distance itself from the uni-lateralist tendencies confrontational bearing dismissive rhetoric and disen-gaged posture of the George W Bush years Whether the Prize will have thiseffect remains to be seen but as this articleʼs analysis might suggest there isreason for skepticism Obama is hardly a vulnerable liberal activist in an authori-tarian regime but he must worry about how his Peace Prize will reverberate inAmericaʼs domestic politics To those (more conservative) Americans less en-thralled with Obama the Peace Prize may be seen as a warning sign that Obamaperhaps shares the Nobel Committeeʼs international agenda (ultra-liberal as theysee it) and perhaps cares more deeply about advancing the common interestsof the international community than about promoting the interests of the UnitedStates The Nobel Peace Prize may thus prove a political liability for Obama andmay compel him in a political environment still deeply shaped by the legacy ofSeptember 11 to take steps to counteract the impression that he is some inter-nationalist peacenik Rather than release his inner dove the Nobel Peace Prizemay force him to brandish his public hawkHemay even feel required to part wayswith the international community just to bolster his credentials as a defender ofAmerican interests98 If this comes to pass the Nobel Peace Prize may once againhelp produce a world at odds with the Committeeʼs intent and vision

Insofar as the Nobel Peace Prize rewards accomplishment it can be wel-comed for its performative value reproducing and thereby reaffirming liberalideals But insofar as the Prize is bestowed for actorsʼ aspirations and insofar asit seeks to promote democratic political change winners beware

98 This paragraph draws on Ronald Krebs ldquoWinning the Prize Losing the Peacerdquo The WashingtonPost 11 October 2009

For helpful comments on earlier versions of this article the author is grateful to David EdelsteinAaron Rapport and the anonymous reviewers for PSQ Thanks to Aaron Rapport for excellent re-search without which this article would not have been possible For financial support of this researchthe author acknowledges the McKnight Foundation through the University of Minnesota


APPENDIX

Nobel Peace Prize Winners 1901ndash2009

Yeara Winnerb CategorycAccomplishment or

Aspiration

1901 Henry Dunant H Accomplishment1901 Freacutedeacuteric Passy PD Aspiration1902 Eacutelie Ducommun PD Aspiration1902 Albert Gobat PD Aspiration1903 Randal Cremer PD Aspiration1904 Institute of International Law ORG-PD Aspiration1905 Bertha von Suttner PD Aspiration1906 Theodore Roosevelt PP Accomplishment1907 Ernesto Teodoro Moneta PD Aspiration1907 Louis Renault PD Aspiration1908 Klas Pontus Arnoldson PD Aspiration1908 Fredrik Bajer PD Aspiration1909 Auguste Beernaert PD Aspiration1909 Paul Henri dʼEstournelles de Constant PD Aspiration1910 Permanent International Peace Bureau ORG-PD Aspiration1911 Tobias Asser PD Aspiration1911 Alfred Fried PD Aspiration1912 Elihu Root PP Accomplishment1913 Henri La Fontaine PD Aspiration1917 International Committee of the Red Cross ORG-H Accomplishment1919 Woodrow Wilson PD Aspiration1920 Leacuteon Bourgeois PD Aspiration1921 Hjalmar Branting PD Accomplishment1921 Christian Lange PD Aspiration1922 Fridtjof Nansen H Accomplishment1925 Sir Austen Chamberlain PP Accomplishment1925 Charles G Dawes PP Accomplishment1926 Aristide Briand PD Accomplishment1926 Gustav Stresemann PD Accomplishment1927 Ludwig Quidde PD Aspiration1927 Ferdinand Buisson PD Aspiration1929 Frank B Kellogg PD Aspiration1930 Nathan Soumlderblom PD Aspiration1931 Jane Addams PD Aspiration1931 Nicholas Murray Butler PD Aspiration1933 Sir Norman Angell PD Aspiration1934 Arthur Henderson PD Aspiration1935 Carl von Ossietzky DC Aspiration1936 Carlos Saavedra Lamas PD Accomplishment1937 Robert Cecil PD Accomplishment1938 Nansen International Office for Refugees ORG-H Accomplishment1944 International Committee of the Red Cross ORG-H Accomplishment1945 Cordell Hull PD Aspiration1946 Emily Greene Balch PD Accomplishment1946 John R Mott PD Accomplishment1947 Friends Service Council American

Friends Service CommitteeORG-H Accomplishment

1949 Lord Boyd Orr H Accomplishment

(Continued)


Appendix Continued

Year a Winnerb CategorycAccomplishment or

Aspiration

1950 Ralph Bunche PP Accomplishment1951 Leacuteon Jouhaux PD Accomplishment1952 Albert Schweitzer H Accomplishment1953 George C Marshall PD Accomplishment1954 Office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for RefugeesORG-H Accomplishment

1957 Lester Bowles Pearson PP Accomplishment1958 Georges Pire H Accomplishment1959 Philip Noel-Baker PD Aspiration1960 Albert Lutuli DC Aspiration1961 Dag Hammarskjoumlld PP Aspiration1962 Linus Pauling PD Aspiration1963 International Committee of the Red Cross

League of Red Cross SocietiesORG-H Accomplishment

1964 Martin Luther King Jr DC Accomplishment1965 United Nations Childrenʼs Fund ORG-H Accomplishment1968 Reneacute Cassin H Accomplishment1969 International Labour Organization ORG-H Accomplishment1970 Norman Borlaug H Accomplishment1971 Willy Brandt PP Accomplishment1973 Henry Kissinger PP Accomplishment1973 Le Duc Tho PP Accomplishment1974 Seaacuten MacBride H Accomplishment1974 Eisaku Sato PD PP Accomplishment1975 Andrei Sakharov PD H Aspiration1976 Betty Williams DC Aspiration1976 Mairead Corrigan DC Aspiration1977 Amnesty International H Accomplishment1978 Anwar al-Sadat PP Accomplishment1978 Menachem Begin PP Accomplishment1979 Mother Teresa H Accomplishment1980 Adolfo Peacuterez Esquivel H Aspiration1981 Office of the United Nations High


1982 Alva Myrdal PD Accomplishment1982 Alfonso Garciacutea Robles PD Accomplishment1983 Lech Walesa DC Accomplishment1984 Desmond Tutu DC Aspiration1985 International Physicians for the

Prevention of Nuclear WarPD Aspiration

1986 Elie Wiesel O Accomplishment1987 Oscar Arias Saacutenchez PP Aspiration1988 United Nations Peacekeeping Forces ORG-PD Accomplishment1989 The 14th Dalai Lama DC Aspiration1990 Mikhail Gorbachev PD Accomplishment1991 Aung San Suu Kyi DC Aspiration1992 Rigoberta Menchuacute Tum DC Aspiration1993 Nelson Mandela DC Aspiration1993 FW de Klerk DC Aspiration1994 Yasser Arafat PP Aspiration1994 Shimon Peres PP Aspiration

(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration

1994 Yitzhak Rabin PP Aspiration1995 Joseph Rotblat Pugwash Conferences

on Science and World AffairsPD Accomplishment

1996 Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo PP Aspiration1996 Joseacute Ramos-Horta PP Aspiration1997 International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Jody WilliamsORG-PD Aspiration

1998 John Hume PP Aspiration1998 David Trimble PP Aspiration1999 Meacutedecins Sans Frontiegraveres ORG-H Accomplishment2000 Kim Dae-jung PP Aspiration2001 United Nations Kofi Annan ORG-PD Aspiration2002 Jimmy Carter PP Accomplishment2003 Shirin Ebadi DC Aspiration2004 Wangari Maathai O Aspiration2005 International Atomic Energy Agency

Mohamed ElBaradeiORG-PD Aspiration

2006 Muhammad Yunus Grameen Bank O Accomplishment2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change O Aspiration2007 Al Gore O Aspiration2008 Martti Ahtisaari PP Accomplishment2009 Barack Obama PD Aspiration

Source httpnobelprizeorgnobel_prizespeacelaureatesaFor various reasons a prize was not given in every year Those years are excluded from this listbIn years with multiple prize winners winners are generally listed separately except in those cases in which the

winners are inseparable (for example leader and organization multiple arms of same organization)cAssignment based on the Nobel Committeeʼs cited reason for the award Categories of award general peace

disarmament (PD) humanitarian (H) intervention in specific peace process (PP) domestic change (DC) orga-nization (ORG) other (O)


more rarely than its advocates hope it draws attention to ignored problemsbut sometimes the award has also produced unexpected and unwantedoutcomesmdashundermining organizational competence and sparking repressivestate action Such rarely recognized perverse consequences have become morecommon in recent years since the SovietndashUS deacutetente and especially sincethe end of the Cold War as the Peace Prize has increasingly been given topromote domestic liberalization It is precisely in this prominent category ofcases that the good intentions of the Prize Committee have gone awry Inthe short-to-medium run the Peace Prize has more often brought the heavyhand of the state down on dissidents and has impeded rather than promotedconflict-free liberalization If the Nobel Committee wishes to foster peacefulconflict resolutionmdasha goal it has not been shy about endorsingmdashit should bemore cognizant of the awardʼs unintended consequences

This article is heavily empirical with clear normative implications but italso has relevance to theoretical debates that animate international relationsscholarship Its argument and findings part ways with both a rigid realism aswell as conventional institutionalism falling into and furthering the family ofapproaches that bridging between these two schools has elsewhere beentermed ldquorealist institutionalistrdquo3 Whereas realists generally see internationalinstitutions as epiphenomenal as reflections of power politics4 this articleclaims in line with institutionalist logic and findings that the Nobel PeacePrize which might be seen as a kind of international institution can have anindependent causal impact on state behavior5 However whereas so-calledneoliberals focus on how international institutions promote cooperation6 thisarticle shows that the bestowal of the Prize can contrary to neoliberal expec-tations exacerbate conflict and prompt intensified state repression generatingdynamics and consequences that are the opposite of the Nobel Committeeʼspurpose The article thus also reflects realist proclivities typical of the realistʼspessimistic worldview it is skeptical that human efforts to effect progressivechange in global politics work in straightforward ways to yield such outcomesand it is sensitive to the possibility and reality of unintended consequences incomplex political systems7 As Lisa Martin and Beth Simmons argued over a

3 On ldquorealist institutionalismrdquo see Ronald R Krebs ldquoPerverse Institutionalism NATO and theGreco-Turkish Conflictrdquo International Organization 53 (Spring 1999) 343ndash377 See also Victor DCha ldquoAbandonment Entrapment and Neoclassical Realism in Asia The US Japan and KoreardquoInternational Studies Quarterly 44 (June 2000) 261ndash291

4 John J Mearsheimer ldquoThe False Promise of International Institutionsrdquo International Security19 (Winter 1994) 5ndash49

5 On this central axis of debate among IR theorists see Robert Jervis ldquoRealism Neoliberalismand Cooperation Understanding the Debaterdquo International Security 24 (Summer 1999) 42ndash63

6 For the seminal work see Robert O Keohane After Hegemony Cooperation and Discord in theWorld Political Economy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1984)

7 On pessimism and the realist worldview see Robert Gilpin ldquoThe Richness of the Realist Traditionrdquoin Robert O Keohane ed Neorealism and Its Critics (New York Columbia University Press 1986)304 On unintended consequences and realism see Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics


































































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration












































































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration



































































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration



























































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration






















































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration













































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration






































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration
































MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration


























MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration



















MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration












MEDIA IMPACT









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration














































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration









































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration


































































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration





























































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration






















































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration
















































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration































































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration
























































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration
















































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration






































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration
































2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration























2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration












2003 Shirin Ebadi





























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration
































CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration

























CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration













CONCLUSION












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration


















APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration












APPENDIX



Aspiration




(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration












Appendix Continued


Aspiration










(Continued)


Appendix Continued


Aspiration












Appendix Continued


Aspiration












Documents

The False Promise of the Nobel Peace Prize · The Nobel Peace Prize Committee initially remained true to Alfred Nobel s charge. Of the 19 prizes awarded between 1901 and 1914, almost