AWARD DRAWS ATTENTION, BUT RARELY DRIVES LONG-TERM CHANGE

For over a century, the Nobel Peace Prize has been bestowed on champions of democracy and human rights who have stood up to autocrats and challenged some of the world's worst atrocities, from sexual violence to war crimes.

- STORY: PRANAV BASKAR / NYT

For Venezuela, a country marked by systematic human rights abuses and rigged elections, the question is how materially the prize recently awarded to opposition leader María Corina Machado will advance her cause.

In the past, winning the Peace Prize has propelled some laureates, helping them stage political campaigns or attracting the world's gaze to their causes for a period. Yet in many cases, scholars say, winners have stayed imprisoned by repressive governments or gained short-term attention that fizzles out.

"Domestic rights advocates very rarely get the boost from the Nobel Peace Prize that they hope for or expect," said Ronald Krebs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota in the US who has studied the effects of the famed prize. Winning, he added, can lead "repressive regimes to crack down more intensely".