Silent Signaling

How do states adopt international human rights norms when doing so risks provoking domestic political backlash? This article advances a new theory of norm adoption—silent signaling—to explain how governments engage emerging international human rights norms through low-salience, internationally facing venues that minimize domestic political costs. Silent signaling involves symbolic and selective norm adoption designed to appeal to international audiences and enhance a state's human rights reputation without requiring comprehensive domestic policy change. We identify transitional justice mechanisms, particularly truth commissions, as a key institutional site for silent signaling and apply this framework to Ecuador's Comisión de la Verdad para Impedir la Impunidad (2007–2009). Ecuador's truth commission represents a significant deviation from international practice in its explicit inclusion of abuses against LGBTI populations, including rare documentation of gender-based violence against transgender individuals. We show that this inclusion functioned primarily as an international-facing gesture, while the government refrained from promoting LGBTI rights domestically or implementing the commission's recommendations. By foregrounding selective visibility and symbolic engagement, this article expands theories of norm diffusion and challenges assumptions about the domestic orientation of transitional justice.

Ecuador · gender-based violence · international human rights standards · LGBT rights · norm diffusion · Political Backlash · Transgender people · Transitional justice · truth commissions · Conflict, Peace, and Violence in Colombia · Political Conflict and Governance · War, Law, and Justice