On June 17, 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution requesting that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights investigate instances of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The resolution, passed on the basis of a 23–19 vote, is one of the first official efforts by an organ of the UN to combat such discrimination. One might assume that the resolution was proposed by a European or North American “good citizen.” In fact, the resolution was proposed by South Africa, a country that for many years violated the rights of a majority of its citizens. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, however, South Africa has stated that human rights form a key plank in its foreign policy. The resolution put South Africa in conflict with many of its African neighbors; countries such as Uganda (which voted against the resolution) have recently passed legislation making homosexuality illegal.

What explains this courageous foreign policy position by South Africa? Alison Brysk argues that South Africa, along with five other countries, is a Global Good Samaritan (GGS), a state that utilizes its foreign policy to promote human rights in regional and international contexts. She also includes a chapter explaining how states such as these, along with others, create purposeful interstate organizations devoted to the promotion and protection of human rights. The book concludes with an effort to identify how and why states become GGSs, along with an explicitly normative argument for why the world “needs more Canadas” (a quotation from former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan).

This is a very good book, one that will be an important resource for students of human rights, foreign policy, and international ethics. Brysk writes in a clear and engaging manner. The empirical chapters are detailed and informative, demonstrating research in multiple countries and drawing on a wide range of resources.

The theoretical argument begins by identifying four characteristics of states that can potentially lead to their becoming GGSs: participants in globalization, democratic political institutions, sufficiently developed economic orders, and “middle power” status in the international order. The author labels all countries according to these variables, highlighting those “most likely to succeed.” Her dependent variable is based on five foreign policy outputs: multilateral diplomacy that promotes human rights, bilateral relations that promote human rights, humanitarian assistance, participation in peacekeeping operations, and refugee reception.

In Chapter 2, Brysk draws upon these indicators to explain why some states become good citizens and others do not. She argues that GGSs have leaders that construct their national interest in accordance with human rights and humanitarian values. Drawing on the way in which constructivist scholars have linked norms with identity politics, she argues that successful GGSs do not lose their national identity to a vague cosmopolitan orientation but link their state's political discourses to human rights and humanitarianism. Employing constructivist logics, she argues that the agency of states and their leaders is a key factor in the ability to become a good citizen. This agency remains the prerogative of the foreign policy elites in most cases, although Brysk does try to include the importance of wider civil society dynamics in sustaining the commitment to human rights politics.

The six case studies include states traditionally identified as global good citizens—Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands—along with states not normally identified as such—Costa Rica, South Africa, and Japan. This mixed set of cases is one of the strong points of the book. The case of Costa Rica, for instance, demonstrates how a country that would be difficult to identify as a middle power and which is not well endowed with natural resources has, nevertheless, actively pursued foreign policies of global citizenship.

The indicators that Brysk uses reveal some interesting tensions as well. In almost every case, for instance, refugee reception becomes a contested issue. The Netherlands, a country that sees itself as the home of international law on the basis of both its favorite son, Hugo Grotius, and the presence of a large bulk of the international judiciary, has struggled with waves of immigration from Islamic countries in recent years. The author notes how tensions in Dutch civil society, resulting in the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and the assassination of the politician Pim Fortuyn, have strained the ability of the state to accept and integrate refugees. The ability to accept foreigners and assimilate them is indeed one of the most concrete ways in which a state can turn its foreign policy rhetoric into action.

While extremely well grounded in terms of its empirics, the book could use a bit more theoretical development. The explanation that Brysk develops for why those “most likely to succeed” do indeed become good global citizens remains a bit vague at points. While she draws upon constructivist ideas to emphasize the importance of agency, her conception of the identity of the agent and how agency functions could use further refinement.

Some constructivist accounts have argued that foreign policy arises through the construction of historical narratives that highlight normative agendas (Anthony F. Lang, Jr., Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention, 2002; Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations, 2008). For example, in the case of Japan, the foreign policy of promoting peace seems linked to the history of Japanese aggression in World War II and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Brysk does not develop this point, nor indeed mention it in this case. What might be interesting to pursue would be the hints that Brysk provides of the importance of religious traditions in Sweden and the Netherlands, countries that are no longer largely religious but in which this heritage seems to influence the discourses of rights and humanitarianism. How do foreign policy elites reinterpret these historical religious narratives in order to ground their policies in a state's identity and appeal to a largely secular population? Or do they draw on alternative narratives, perhaps new ones that rely on the idea of “Europe”? It would seem that the construction of historical narratives provides the agency that links foreign policy agendas to wider political discourses that would resonate in democratic civil societies and explain how foreign policy moves from the preserve of the elites to widely accepted policy agendas.

More broadly, Brysk might also have benefited from more care in the use of terms such as “cosmopolitanism” and even “good.” While these terms are employed to describe states that promote human rights, it is difficult to identify a foreign policy as cosmopolitan if the concept means the creation of a global political order in which state sovereignty is not the organizing principle. The idea that supporting human rights is necessarily “good” also needs a bit more qualification. Critics of more aggressive liberal internationalism have highlighted the problems with identifying all humanitarian interventions as good. When Brysk uses participation in peacekeeping operations as an indicator of being a GGS, the tensions that arise from using force to protect rights receive little attention.

Despite these quibbles, this is an excellent book. It deserves a wide readership, for both highlighting what states are doing to promote human rights and suggesting some explanations for how such policies can be fostered around the world. Brysk is to be congratulated on providing a corrective to the all-too-common realist refrain that ethical foreign policies are not possible. Let us hope that scholars, activists, and policymakers pay attention to its conclusions.