40 Xenakis S., Cheliotis L. example, are two moderately hard enforcement tools that can be used, respectively, by and within the Council of Europe and its member states to punish non-compliance with international and regional human rights standards. Such mechanisms are only used comparatively rarely to punish non-compliance [4, 11], however, and their sparse usage makes the breadth of the regime all the more perplexing. So-called ‘constructivist’ approaches to power have nonetheless long argued that influence in the international arena does not necessarily flow from material power alone or, indeed, at all [12]. Constructivists rather contend that ideational attractiveness – ‘soft’, co-optive dimensions of power, in other words – play a far more important role in state behaviour than is admitted by materialist accounts [13]. According to constructivists, international regimes are established by inter-state institutions and nongovernmental organisations alike, achieving compliance through socialisation, with soft, social mechanisms of control spanning persuasion, assistance, monitoring, and naming and shaming. Non-compliant states subjected to naming and shaming have been more susceptible to experiencing psychological reactions of shame to the extent that they have internalised the rules and values of the regime, on one hand, and have regarded the allegations of violations as accurate and legitimate, on the other. As Friman [12] details, however, shame is but one of several possible psychological reactions to public exposure, and may not necessarily lead to compliance in any case. It is clear, moreover, that for some states, actions such as ratifying human rights treaties or attaining membership of human rights bodies have been entirely cynical, strategic means to an end, whether that be membership of an institution coveted for its status and influence in world politics [14], or deflecting attention and criticism from their own abusive practices ([15, 16]). One of the most influential constructivist accounts of varying compliance with the international human rights regime, the five-stage ‘spiral model’ of Risse and Sikkink [17], presents a thesis of incremental regime development in which human rights norms and their implementation become embedded in state discourses, institutions and practices in contexts where normative as well as material international and domestic pressures successfully interweave. In Risse and Sikkink’s model, international institutions and transnational networks are thus flagged as key drivers of state compliance with human rights rules and norms. The significance of such pressures, it is suggested, is evidenced from the growth of the international human rights regime from the mid1980s to the mid-1990s, a period which saw the coincidental expansion of the regime across states home to very different institutional and political arrangements. The importance of international factors in driving the development of the human rights regime has been further supported by research suggesting that the very success of the regime over that timeframe generated a ‘bandwagonning’ effect, which sustained and increased its attractiveness [18].3 The credit given to international factors in accounts of national compliance with the international human rights regime has itself been subject to growing critique, however [11]. Longitudinal international comparative research has demonstrated the practice of naming and shaming non-compliant states to be a largely ineffective strategy to stimulate compliance [15], despite the fact that it may in some circumstances also 3 On the ideational appeal of the policies of powerful international actors, see further [19].