Scorecard Diplomacy: Grading States to Influence their Reputation and Behavior

Judith G. Kelley

May 2017 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

What can the international community do when countries would rather ignore a thorny problem? Scorecard Diplomacy shows that, despite lacking traditional force, public grades are potent symbols that can evoke countries' concerns about their reputations and motivate them to address the problem. The book develops an unconventional but careful argument about the growing phenomenon of such ratings and rankings. It supports this by examining the United States' foreign policy on human trafficking using a global survey of NGOs, case studies, thousands of diplomatic cables, media stories, 90 interviews worldwide, and other documents. All of this is gathered together in a format that walks the reader through the mechanisms of scorecard diplomacy, including an assessment of the outcomes. Scorecard Diplomacy speaks both to those keen to understand the pros and cons of US policy on human trafficking and to those interested in the central question of influence in international relations. The book's companion website can be found at www.scorecarddiplomacy.org.

About the author

Judith G. Kelley is the Kevin D. Gorter Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University, North Carolina, as well as the Senior Associate Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy. A graduate of Stanford University, California and the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Massachusetts, at Duke University she writes on how the international community can promote democracy and human rights. Her last book, Monitoring Democracy: When International Election Monitoring Works and Why it Often Fails (2012) won the Chadwick F. Alger Prize for best book about international organization and multilateralism.