The Duck of Minerva

Josh Busby

Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

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Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

Recent Posts

Leadership in the Climate Regime without the US Federal Government

by | 12 November, 2017 |

I am just back from the climate negotiations in Bonn where I organized a side event at the German Development Institute (DIE). The event was co-sponsored  by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). These are my opening and closing  remarks from the session. In subsequent days, I'll post additional interventions from some of the other panelists.  Panelists included Aimee Barnes, Senior Adviser to Governor Brown of California; Sander Chan of DIE; Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of CEEW, one of India's leading think tanks on energy and climate; Angel Hsu, of Yale-NUS campus; and Axel...

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Planet Politics and International Relations

Planet Politics and International Relations

by | 12 November, 2017 |

This is a guest post from Hannes Peltonen, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Tampere The State of the Discipline International Politics/Relations (IR) has allegedly failed, a claim publicized periodically. Barry Buzan and Richard Little began this millennium by highlighting the discipline’s intellectual failure in the journal Millennium. More recently, an influential 2013 forum in EJIR on IR theory, edited by Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen, and Colin Wight, concludes something similar. IR theorists seem to consider that IR has failed, because it has a one-way...

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Democratic Weakness and the Secessionist Impulse

Democratic Weakness and the Secessionist Impulse

by | 4 November, 2017 | , ,

This is a guest post from Katy Collin, who is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct instructor at American University's School of International Service. Her research is on the use of referendums in peace processes. In the last few weeks, international borders have been challenged around the world. Secessionists and great powers are undermining the norm of territorial integrity, or border fixity. In the Middle East, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and in Europe, international boundaries are being pushed from within and between states. Respect for...

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Free Access and the Future of Gated Publishing

by | 27 October, 2017 | ,

I am just back from the launch of the Texas National Security Review (TNSR), a new partnership with War on the Rocks and underwritten by my home institution. Forgive the quasi-promotional qualities of this post, as I think the new journal raises fundamental questions about the gated publishing model. TNSR promises to be disruptive to the traditional game of academic publishing in the security space in a few ways. First, all their content will be available for free. Second, the journal will include both peer-reviewed and straight-up policy pieces, sort of International Security meets Foreign...

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Entering the Global Multilogue – A Replique to the German ZEIT Manifesto

Entering the Global Multilogue – A Replique to the German ZEIT Manifesto

by | 24 October, 2017 | ,

This is a guest post, written by Antje Wiener, Professor of Political Science, especially Global Governance, University of Hamburg (Germany) and By-Fellow, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom); Sassan Gholiagha, postdoctoral research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (Germany); Jan Wilkens, Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the Chair of Political Science, especially Global Governance, University of Hamburg (Germany); and Amitav Acharya UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor of International Relations, American University,...

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Puerto Rico: What did the delay in the response to Hurricane Maria mean?

Puerto Rico: What did the delay in the response to Hurricane Maria mean?

by | 30 September, 2017 |

Last night, I tried to dig in and understand whether and how the response to Hurricane Maria was delayed. I wrote a Tweetstorm that I Storify-ed below. I wanted to see what evidence if any supported those claims and in what ways a swifter and larger response potentially could have addressed some of the specific problems that buffeted and continue to confront Puerto Rico. In the last 24 hours, we've seen news reports from the Washington Post that criticized the president's desultory response along with a plea for help from the Mayor of San Juan. President Trump, of course, responded in kind...

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Myanmar: The Responsibility to Protect is Working Exactly As It Was Supposed To

Myanmar: The Responsibility to Protect is Working Exactly As It Was Supposed To

by | 21 September, 2017 | ,

This is a guest post from Aidan Hehir, a Reader in International Relations at the University of Westminster. He has published widely in a number of academic journals including International Security, The Journal of Peace Research, Ethics and International Affairs, and Cooperation and Conflict. He is author/editor of a number of books including, Protecting Human Rights in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2017); Libya, The Responsibility to Protect, and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of...

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Duck Forum on extreme weather events and climate change

Duck Forum on extreme weather events and climate change

by | 14 September, 2017 |

This forum was edited by Jessica Green, an assistant professor in Environmental Studies Department at New York University. The one-two punch of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma has revived the conversation about the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events.   Views from the media and politicians range from calls for better climate and adaptation policies to skilled deflection. To provide some insights from political science, I asked experts Josh Busby, David Konisky, Neil Malholtra, Matto Mildenberger, Leah Stokes and Stacy VanDeveer to provide their thoughts on three...

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Welcome to New Guest Ducks!

Welcome to New Guest Ducks!

by | 31 August, 2017 |

We are pleased to welcome some new guest Ducks, including an exciting new partnership.  We also are pleased that guest bloggers, Lisa Gaufman,  Jeff Stacey, Jeremy Youde, and Will Winecoff will continue to blog for the Duck. We wanted to thank all the guest bloggers who contributed last year including Maryam Deloffre, Alexis Henshaw, Charles Martel, Raul Pacheco-Vega, and Mira Sucharov. Our first guest is a little different than the others. We are excited to partner with Bridging the Gap to leverage their network of policy-relevant scholars to write for the Duck periodically. So, under the...

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Should APSA and ISA have a “No Manels” Rule?

by | 26 August, 2017 |

The Financial Times just announced guidance that there will no longer be all male panels -- manels -- at any FT or partner events. It made me think whether APSA or ISA should adopt a similar policy. Pleased that @FT has established a "no manels" rule for FT panels and FT panellists as one of our diversity/inclusion initiatives. pic.twitter.com/6VZSuhlkEo — Andrew Hill (@andrewtghill) August 21, 2017 The Emerging Norm Against Manels In the past few years, we've seen a lot more attention directed towards the egregious presence of manels in international relations, particularly in events at...

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