Search

In the post-Cold War era, climate change, landmines, debt relief and a number of other issues emerged to re-shape the agenda of decision-makers in the advanced industrialized world. The primary advocates of these normative issues are motivated not by their own material self-interests but broader notions of right and wrong. What is the primary logic that contributes to the domestic acceptance of these moral commitments? International relations scholars identify persuasion as the primary way in which states are ‘convinced’ that a norm-based policy is worth accepting. How should we characterize this process of persuasion? Is this the right term to describe the actions of transnational protest movements? Through a case study of the Jubilee 2000 campaign for developing country debt relief, I offer an account of persuasion based on strategic framing by advocates to get the attention of decision-makers. This paper emphasizes the rhetorical and framing strategies that are used to try to tip the political balance in support of normative agendas but ultimately ascribes these a different character than either coercion or Habermasian communicative action. Such strategic but not narrowly self-interested activity allows weak actors to leverage existing value traditions to build broader coalitions of political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the response by rich industrialized countries to a subset of primarily moral and humanitarian issues that emanate from or disproportionately affect developing countries including debt relief, climate change, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court. Why were some of these issues—climate change, the ICC—so contentious while debt relief and HIV/AIDS were not? The basic argument of the paper is that where the U.S. fails to advance a constructive plan to address an issue and proves unwilling to bear the costs of leadership, this creates opportunities and incentives for European political grandstanding to placate domestic public opinion and buttress the institutional project of the European Union. Where the U.S. leads and does not abdicate in this class of issue areas, there are fewer opportunities and pressures for grandstanding, leading to less contention and politicization of the issue. The article also distinguishes grandstands from true moral stands, drawing on the literature on costly signaling, suggesting that the former involve cheap expressions of political outrage whereas the latter imply more substantial investments of political and physical capital. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]