Moral Movements and Foreign Policy: (Series Number 116 Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

Why do advocacy campaigns succeed in some cases but fail in others? What conditions motivate states to accept commitments championed by principled advocacy movements? Joshua W. Busby sheds light on these core questions through an investigation of four cases - developing-country debt relief, climate change, AIDS, and the International Criminal Court - in the G-7 advanced industrialized countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Drawing on hundreds of interviews with policy practitioners, he employs qualitative, comparative case study methods, including process-tracing and typologies, and develops a framing/gatekeepers argument, emphasizing the ways in which advocacy campaigns use rhetoric to tap into the main cultural currents in the countries where they operate. Busby argues that when values and costs potentially pull in opposing directions, values will win if domestic gatekeepers who are able to block policy change believe that the values at stake are sufficiently important.

Table of Contents:
1. States of grace; 2. Movement success and state acceptance of normative commitments; 3. Bono made Jesse Helms cry: Jubilee 2000 and the campaign for developing country debt relief; 4. Climate change: the hardest problem in the world; 5. From God's mouth: messenger effects and donor responses to HIV/AIDS; 6. The search for justice and the International Criminal Court; 7. Conclusions and the future of principled advocacy.

About the Author :
Joshua W. Busby is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and a fellow in the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service as well as a Crook Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. He originally joined the LBJ School faculty in fall 2006 as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer. Prior to coming to the University of Texas, Dr Busby was a research fellow at the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School (2005–2006), the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's JFK School (2004–2005) and the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution (2003–2004). He defended his dissertation with distinction in summer 2004 from Georgetown University, where he also earned his MA in 2002. He has written extensively on transatlantic relations, both in international security and the climate change arena, and is the author of several studies on climate change, national security and energy policy from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution and CNAS. His research interests also include US grand strategy, energy security and the foreign policy of advanced industrialized countries. Dr Busby is a Term Member in the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and his works have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Current History and Problems of Post-Communism, among other publications. Dr Busby also has a regional interest in Latin America, having served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador (1997–1999), worked in Nicaragua (Summer 1994, Spring 1996) and consulted for the Inter-American Development Bank (2000). Prior to working with the Peace Corps, he was a Marshall Scholar at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England), where he completed a second BA (with Honors) in Development Studies (1993–1995). He completed his first BA

Review :
'This path-breaking book moves the study of transnational advocacy movements considerably further by identifying scope conditions for the success or failure of particular campaigns. Busby also advances the scholarly debate beyond sterile controversies about the relative importance of material interests versus moral values in international politics. A must read!' Thomas Risse, Freie Universität Berlin 'Joshua Busby's groundbreaking study illuminates the brave new work of transnational movements and American foreign policy. This book is a wonderful combination of sophisticated theory and empirical case study. The role and significance of non-governmental actors is one of the great questions of world politics today. Busby's study will be an indispensable guide to scholarship in this area for years to come.' G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University 'Joshua Busby argues that states' responses to demands by moral advocacy groups depend not only on material costs but also on the fit between advocates' values and local cultural traditions; the role of policy gatekeepers; and how the 'messengers' behave. Interests, values, political context, and agency all matter in this nuanced and disciplined account.' Robert O. Keohane, Princeton University 'This book makes a major contribution to the comparative study of advocacy movements by introducing the literature on gatekeepers/veto players. It is a variation on the political opportunity structure approach with special relevance to stable, democratic systems. The model provides a means by which to identify the individuals and agencies within a state that either prevent or promote moral action. The author is very disciplined and focused on advancing the main argument of the book … Thanks to its compelling research design, [it] advances our understanding of success and failure for transnational advocacy movements.' Nandini Deo, American Journal of Sociology