Joshua Busby

Crook Distinguished Scholar

Joshua Busby is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and a fellow with the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service as well as 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 UT, Dr. Busby was a research fellow at the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School (2005-2006), the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’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 M.A. in 2002.

He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled States of Grace: Moral Movements and Foreign Policy. In his book project, Busby seeks to explain why some countries are willing to take on new international commitments championed by principled advocacy groups and others are not. Substantively, he explores the politics of climate change, developing country debt relief, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court in selected country cases in the advanced industrialized world. He has also written extensively on transatlantic relations, both in international security and the climate change arena. In 2004, Busby and co-author Heiko Borchert won the Foreign Policy Association’s Transatlantic Essay Competition. His research interests also include U.S. grand strategy, energy security, and the foreign policy of advanced industrialized countries.

Busby is a Term Member in the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His works have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Current History, and Problems of Post-Communism, among other publications.

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 B.A. (with Honors) in Development Studies (1993-1995). He completed his first B.A. (with Highest Distinction) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Political Science and Biology.

Selected Research:

• "China's Arrival," Center for a New American Security, Sep 2009
• "Making Markets for Merit Goods:  The Political Economy of Antiretrovirals," Center for Global Development,  Aug 2009
• "Without Heirs? Assessing the Decline of Establishment Internationalism in U.S. Foreign Policy," Perspectives on Politics, September 2008
• "Who Cares About the Weather?: Climate Change and U.S. National Security," Security Studies, Jul 2008
• "Overcoming Political Barriers to Reform in Energy Policy," Center for a New American Security, Mar 2008
• "Climate Change and National Securiy: An Agenda for Action," Council on Foreign Relations, Dec 2007

Selected Commentary:

• Book Review: The Disaster Gypsies, Political Science Quarterly
• "Covering Climate Change As a National Security Issue," Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, Jul 2008
• "Insecure About Climate Change," Washington Post, Mar 2008
• "Climate Change and National Security: A Discussion with Joshua Busby," Woodrow Wilson Center, Jan 2008
• "Climate Change and National Security: An Agenda for Action," Council on Foreign Relations, Dec 2007
• "Engage India, China in forming climate policy," Kalinga Times, Dec 2007
• Climate change report coverage on Reuters Alert Net, Dec 2007 and Mongabay.com, Dec 2007
• "Climate Change Blues: Why the U.S. and Europe Just Can't Get Along," Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association, 2002