The Power of Moral Agents in International Politics

Abstract

Moral Movements and Foreign Policy. By Joshua W. Busby Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 327 pp., $31.00 paperback (ISBN 978-0-521-12566-6). Over the last decade or more, the study of transnational movements has become a cottage industry, of sorts, in the field of international relations (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Price 1998; Bob 2005; Tarrow 2005). Yet, for everything this literature has taught us, important questions remain. We know movements can shape the policies of weak states, but do they matter against great powers, especially when compliance for these leading states is costly? Furthermore, do group dynamics (that is, agency) or policy context (that is, structure) matter more in determining movement impact? Finally, why do movements succeed in some cases but not others—in essence, what accounts for the many times activist groups fail? Some might see these kinds of questions as unalterable weaknesses and claim, as a result, that transnational movements really matter only at the margins of international politics. Others take the opposite perspective, viewing these gaps as opportunities to expand research into new and important domains (Price 2003; Walldorf 2010). Joshua W. Busby's Moral Movements and Foreign Policy falls squarely and impressively into the latter category. In an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study, Busby explores the impact of moral movements in the 1990s in a range of issue areas from debt relief to climate change to HIV/AIDS, and to the International Criminal …