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.

Recent Posts

Tribute to Sean Kay

Tribute to Sean Kay

by Josh Busby | 9 February, 2021 |

Sean Kay, a much beloved international relations professor at Ohio Wesleyan, died suddenly of a heart attack in November. Though I blogged about Sean in December, we will be publishing a series of memorials to Sean from former students and colleagues over the remainder of this week. The post below is a guest post from Ahsan Butt, an Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center. Even two months after his death, Sean Kay’s passing still feels shocking. Sean was a vivacious, larger than life presence,...

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Gone Missing from Grand Strategy: Climate Change

Gone Missing from Grand Strategy: Climate Change

by Josh Busby | 2 February, 2021 | ,

This is a guest post from Jeff Colgan, Richard Holbrooke Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University. He is author of Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War, and tweets @JeffDColgan A slew of new books on grand strategy and international order signal the renaissance these topics are enjoying among scholars. Alas, most of the current thinking does not pay nearly enough attention to climate change—the world’s most important global challenge. Specifically, we are not thinking hard enough about the tradeoffs states face while pursuing the...

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Fare thee Well Sean Kay

Fare thee Well Sean Kay

by Josh Busby | 6 December, 2020 |

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKQ4-AHgFEs I opened up my twitter feed two weeks ago to some terrible news: our friend Sean Kay died suddenly. I literally cried out "Oh no" and wept for my friend. I had just guested in his class in October, and we had a number of conversations in recent months in the lead up to the election. We were both looking forward to a better future. The news of Sean's death was just another reminder that 2020 has been truly awful.Many knew Sean through his scholarship and policy work on NATO. I got to know him over the last few years through our common interests in...

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America’s Democratic Shortcomings and the “Liberal International Order”

America’s Democratic Shortcomings and the “Liberal International Order”

by Josh Busby | 10 November, 2020 | , ,

This is a guest post from Manuel Reinert, a PhD candidate in international relations at American University and consultant with the World Bank. As the COVID-19 crisis illustrates, international cooperation is crucial to address global issues. International organizations (IOs), created in the so-called rules-based “liberal international order” (LIO) after WWII, have been extensively involved in the response. The United Nations (UN) launched a global humanitarian response plan. UN’s agencies, principally the World Health Organization (WHO), have provided worldwide data, guidelines, and...

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COVID: An Extraordinary Crisis, but Ordinary Political Patterns

COVID: An Extraordinary Crisis, but Ordinary Political Patterns

by Josh Busby | 26 October, 2020 | ,

This is a guest post from Tana Johnson, an Associate Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Her publications include the book Organizational Progeny: Why Governments Are Losing Control over the Proliferating Structures of Global Governance. COVID-19, which disregards national borders and threatens all countries, is a “problem without a passport.”  The usual prescription is to 1) work through international organizations (IOs), 2) collaborate on collective long-term solutions, and 3) defer to experts.  Yet in 2020, countries defied...

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COVID and Fed Legitimacy

COVID and Fed Legitimacy

by Josh Busby | 11 October, 2020 | ,

This is a guest post from Walter James, a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Temple University with an interest in comparative political economy of financial regulation. The Federal Reserve has stood as a bulwark between COVID-19 and another Great Depression in the United States. But it must tread carefully to maintain its reputation and legitimacy once the crisis passes. Since COVID’s arrival in the United States, the Fed has acted with unprecedented speed by cutting its federal funds rate to close to 0%, purchasing massive amounts of securities, providing dollar...

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On Publishing and Open Access

On Publishing and Open Access

by Josh Busby | 19 September, 2020 |

Recently, I was asked by an interdisciplinary journal to edit a special section on climate governance, and I inquired whether it was an open access journal where authors have to pay to publish. It is, and I declined because asking others to contribute to a special issue that they then have to pay to publish in strikes me as unseemly. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this model of publishing, but I dislike the existing paywall mafia too. Pay to Publish?This is the third time I've had open access fees come up in the process of publishing in journals in the energy/science policy space. The other...

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Visualizing the Gender Publication Gap: 1999-2019

Visualizing the Gender Publication Gap: 1999-2019

by Josh Busby | 16 September, 2020 | ,

This is a guest post from Laura Breen, a PhD student with research interests in international law, global governance, and emerging technology; Gaea Morales, a PhD student with research interests in environmental security and global-local linkages; Joseph Saraceno, a PhD candidate with research interests in political institutions and quantitative methodology; and Kayla Wolf, a PhD student with research interests in gender, politics, and political socialization. All are completing the PhD program in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. It’s...

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Meet Our Guest Ducks (Again)

Meet Our Guest Ducks (Again)

by Josh Busby | 14 September, 2020 | ,

With the coronavirus, it has been hard for many of us to just keep going, let alone set aside time to blog (certainly not as much as we otherwise might!). So, we wanted to acknowledge that by giving our guest Ducks from last year an additional semester (at least!) to have this platform for talking about substantive issues in international relations and the academy. We are thrilled that folks have stayed on. Please read their work to date and be on the lookout for new posts. There are some really good ones on a range of topics. If you have an interest in becoming a guest contributor come...

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Teaching Race and International Politics: Notes from a Canadian Classroom

Teaching Race and International Politics: Notes from a Canadian Classroom

by Josh Busby | 8 September, 2020 | ,

Eric Van Rythoven (PhD) is an Instructor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.  His research focuses on the intersection between the politics of emotion, International Relations, and security.  His articles have been published in the Journal of Global Security Studies, the European Journal of International Relations, Security Dialogue, among others and he is the co-editor (with Mira Sucharov) of Methodology and Emotion in International Relations (Routledge, 2019).  You can learn more about his research and writing at his website. This...

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