Mixed Signals

Few scholars have argued as persuasively for the power of principled ideas and global civil society in shaping world politics as Kathryn Sikkink. This excellent book provides yet another sophisticated and cogent analysis of how global networks of principled individuals and groups have changed the world. It demonstrates convincingly that the human rights transnational advocacy network played a crucial role in changing the foreign policy of the world's most powerful state and the human rights practices of states throughout the Americas.

~Latin American Politics and Society

Mixed Signals is an excellent account of the development of U.S. human rights policy, with a special emphasis on Latin America. It is impressive in its empirical scope, careful documentation, and analytic subtlety. It will prove useful to scholars and students.

~Perspectives on Politics

Sikkink adds to her important work on nongovernmental organizations and advocacy networks with this illuminating account of how persistent policy entrepreneurs armed with fresh ideas inserted and then institutionalized human rights promotion into inter-American relations. The stakes in their 60-year-long struggle have been high, in terms of both American self-identity and Latin American lives, and Sikkink supplements recently released U.S. government documents with interviews of lower-level officials to condemn Henry Kissinger for signaling 'green lights' to vicious repression in Chile and Argentina and Ronald Reagan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick for their careless embrace of bloody Central American dictators.

~Foreign Affairs

Sikkink's work is an original and significant contribution to the literature. It is superbly organized, clear, concise, yet filled with the detail, authority, theoretical grasp, and practical understanding of the legislative and international agendas on the subject. Mixed Signals will stand as a benchmark in the field for some time.

~International History Review