Do states and decision-makers ever act for moral reasons? And if they
do, is it only when it is convenient or relatively costless for them to do
so? A number of advocacy movementsFon developing country debt
relief, climate change, landmines, and other issuesFemerged in the
1990s to ask decision-makers to make foreign policy decisions on that
basis. The primary advocates were motivated not by their own material
interests but broader notions of right and wrong. What contributes to
the domestic acceptance of these moral commitments? Why do some
advocacy efforts succeed where others fail? Through a case study of the
Jubilee 2000 campaign for developing country debt relief, this article
offers an account of persuasion based on strategic framing by advocates
to get the attention of decision-makers. Such strategic but not narrowly
self-interested activity allows weak actors to leverage existing value and/
or ideational traditions to build broader political coalitions. This article,
through case studies of debt relief in the United States and Japan, also
links the emerging literature on strategic framing to the domestic institutional
context and the ways veto players or ‘‘policy gatekeepers’’
evaluate trade-offs between costs and valuesLBJ School of Public Affair