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

Mechanical Turk and Experiments in the Social Sciences

Mechanical Turk and Experiments in the Social Sciences

by Josh Busby | 23 July, 2013 |

Amazon created a platform called Mechanical Turk that allows Requesters to create small tasks (Human Intelligence Tasks or HITs) that Workers can perform for an extremely modest fee such as 25 or 50 cents per task.* Because the site can be used to collect survey data, it has become a boon for social scientists interested in an experimental design to test causal mechanisms of interest (see Adam Berinsky's short description here). The advantage of Mechanical Turk is the cost. For a fraction of the expense it costs to field a survey with Knowledge Networks/GfK, Qualtrics, or other survey...

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Thursday Afternoon Linkage

Thursday Afternoon Linkage

by Josh Busby | 18 July, 2013 |

Before posting some mid-Thursday afternoon linkage, here is a little musing on not overstating the influence of social media on entertainment and politics. For a moment this week, the horribleness that was the SyFy Channel's Sharknado set off a mini-Twitter storm that resulted in: a bunch of tweets but still dismal ratings for the made for TV movie. This reminded me of the fleeting victory in Texas for supporters of abortion rights: while State Senator Wendy Davis' filibuster scored 200,000 live-stream viewers on the Texas Tribune website and netted her $1 million for a future gubernatorial...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 11 July, 2013 |

“Of course this is risky,” Mr. Logulov said, “but risk is everywhere in life. A brick could fall on your head in the street, for example. And this is just a small risk.” - on the practice of having Russian children take their pictures with circus animals (WTF!?) Here is your morning linkage with a return to form, conservation concerns and pollution in Asia loom large: Worries about China's resumption of the trade in tiger parts Yao Ming urges Chinese to give up on shark fin soup And good news, big drop in demand for shark fin soup record 4,000 missing in recent India floods Massive flooding...

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July 4 Linkage

July 4 Linkage

by Josh Busby | 4 July, 2013 |

In the spirit of the dramatic events of yesterday, we at the Duck want to bring your morning linkage with news of the Zimmerman trial. Err, scratch that, we'll leave that to CNN. Lots of attention being directed to the dramatic events in Egypt, plus some obligatory posts below about conservation, including reports that Joseph Kony has turned to poaching elephants (what unsavory s--t will that guy not do?). On Egypt, for me the requisite judgment is, at this stage, ambivalence. I can't see how the events unfold in a positive way. You have the ouster of a democratically elected leader but one...

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Graduate School After Peace Corps

Graduate School After Peace Corps

by Josh Busby | 29 June, 2013 |

In 1998, while I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, I decided to apply for a PhD program in political science. I had no idea what I was doing. Though I had majored in political science at UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating in 1993, I had a limited understanding of the "discipline." I barely knew what journals were. I had limited access to information about programs, with no access to the internet on a regular basis (I had a dial-up connection once a month or so if I took a two hour bus ride). In the end, two of the four programs I applied to required prior Master's and I didn't get in to those...

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Thursday Climate Change Special Linkage

by Josh Busby | 27 June, 2013 |

Aside from some abortion rights Texas senate filibuster coverage, this week's morning linkage is all about climate change and President Obama's Tuesday speech at Georgetown University. The announced plan aims to use existing executive branch authority, including the EPA's ability to regulate pollutants under the Clean Air Act, to initiate measures to control carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases. This move obviates the need for additional legislative action, which isn't going to happen with this Congress. Beyond the headline announcement for new controls on power plants, the plan has a...

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The Whole of Government Needs a Game Changer

The Whole of Government Needs a Game Changer

by Josh Busby | 22 June, 2013 |

Here are some recent phrases that entered the policy lexicon in the last few years that I absolutely hate – “whole of government” and “game changer.” There is a faddishness to tropes in the policy arena that proliferate, that capture a certain sentiment of the moment that soon become over-used. Earlier, it was “tipping point.” I kind of hated that one too. These words are useful short-hand. Ah yes, a game-changer, that which changes the game, a dramatic development that upends our understanding of what will transpire. Yet, strung together with other stock phrases, you end up with policy...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 20 June, 2013 |

Above, I've posted another photo of the crack Duck blogging team (that's me upper left, my dissertation advisor is lower right). Right now, I'm en route to a conference in Norway so my 22 month old son has prepared the following post of Thursday Morning Linkage. (Well, if he had, there would be lots of posts about dogs. He loves dogs.) In any case, you're stuck with my persistent interest in conservation, energy, and health issues. More polio vaccination workers killed in Pakistan, twenty this year A long expose on poaching, even more troubling news about the criminal syndicates involved in...

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So Should Policy Schools Have PhD Programs?

So Should Policy Schools Have PhD Programs?

by Josh Busby | 18 June, 2013 |

So, I teach at a policy school, and though our core pedagogical enterprise is the MA program, we have a small PhD program that is a mix of political science, economics, and maybe a dash of public administration. Though I have not worked closely with that many PhD students, the ones I have worked have been superb. Still, the job market being as it is, it is always tough for graduates of our program, like any other, to land an academic job. The thing I wonder is: Is it harder for PhD graduates of policy schools to get a job compared to those who graduate from disciplinary programs? Our...

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Is There a Right Way to Do Development?

Is There a Right Way to Do Development?

by Josh Busby | 15 June, 2013 |

In our newish MA program in Global Policy Studies, it turns out "International Development" is the most popular concentration. Now, many of our students who are interested in this "specialization" have what I call a distinct project-based approach to development. They think of international development as projects foreigners go out and do. Since most of our students are from the United States, they envision themselves doing development the same way I did as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador where I served from 1997-1999 (the photo above is of a quinoa export project I worked on with some...

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