Todd H. Hall has written a very good book that advances an important research agenda and will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in diverse substantive areas. The title of the book is appropriate. Whereas many existing treatments of emotion in international politics have investigated how emotions affect state behavior, such as with Hall’s other work, the emphasis here is on how states express emotions through their behavior. The author’s hypothesis is that states use coordinated efforts to project the image of a particular emotion to other states. This distinction between emotions as effects and emotion as strategy is a useful one and moves the discussion beyond whether states can have emotions (which is the subject of thriving debate at the moment) to ask how states can project emotions that they may, or may not, actually possess.
While the individual case studies involve emotional diplomacy, which Hall defines broadly as “coordinated state-level behavior that explicitly and officially projects the image of a particular emotional response toward other states” (p. 2), many of the theoretical and empirical insights are broadly applicable to a range of political situations and behaviors. At root, Hall has given us an Erving Goffman—inspired treatment of emotion projection as a form of social interaction that is applicable to a wide set of outcomes where bargaining theory, threats, and deterrence are found to be insufficient. In this way, the book is substantively about diplomacy, but it also offers a new take on strategic interaction.
Hall’s theory of emotional diplomacy has a number of important dimensions that are worth highlighting. First, emotional diplomacy is about coordination and expression, not necessarily sincerity. It is not critical that a state feel a particular way in order to express a particular emotion. Rather, what is crucial is the ability and desire of individuals in positions of power to mobilize and express a particular emotional image and message, regardless of their own individual mental states.
Second, the reason that states go through the trouble of expressing emotions is that there are problems that power or bargaining cannot easily solve. A state that aims at signaling that it is repentant—postwar Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) vis-à-vis the State of Israel, for example—may not find an obvious mechanism through the use of negotiation or simply by providing monetary aid. The expression of emotion gives additional meaning to those actions. Emotional expression is therefore strategic, instrumental, and may be seen as a form of signaling.
Third, drawing from Goffman, Hall suggests that the perception and reception of the expressive behavior matter. Expressive behaviors are only valuable if they are received in the manner intended. The diplomacy of sympathy, for example, is one in which expressing sympathy through linguistic devices is relatively easy, but maintaining a consistent image of sincerity, particularly a coordinated and cohesive singular image, may be difficult. Guilt and anger, the other two diplomacy logics explored, share similar properties: Guilt is only useful if the target believes that the sender is actually authentic in that expression.
Finally, Hall’s theory suggests that the expression of emotion occurs at various “levels.” States may superficially express sympathy after an attack or natural disaster, but the depth of the feeling may be quite shallow. Alternately, states and their composite policymakers may, at a very deep level, feel the emotion expressed. Expression might be productive as well: Actors might come to feel the emotion expressed by virtue of having expressed it.
Hall explores these dynamics in three main cases (in addition to some “mini-studies”) that focus on the diplomacy of the different emotions mentioned. Anger expressed during the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995–96 helps us to understand both the process and the outcome of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) military actions better than existing models of escalation and coercion. Conversely, sympathy in the responses of the Russian Federation (RF) and PRC to the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 makes sense of both states as defying “expectations that great powers should seek to hinder the military encroachment of other great powers in their neighborhoods” (p. 10). Lastly, guilt was expressed by the FRG to Israel as a way to “rehabilitate its image on the international stage” (p. 11) and helped to pave the way for meaningful reparations. The mini-studies that follow the cases look at the same emotional expressions of anger, sympathy, and guilt in different contextual settings, providing further support for the argument.
While each of the empirical treatments is well written and researched, Chapter 3, which investigates the emotional diplomacy toward the United States by the RF and PRC, is likely the most difficult for the argument, representing a hard case but also the most intriguing. Hall argues that RF and PRC support of certain U.S operations, both in linguistic terms and as “diplomatic backing, intelligence cooperation, and political assistance to facilitate U.S. and NATO entry into Central Asia” (p. 83), defies traditional statecraft expectations. Put simply, why would the RF want increased military presence in their region? Hall’s answer is that the overtures by Vladimir Putin and other policymakers were not mere rhetoric; rather, this was a strategy aimed at “reboot[ing]” (p. 100) the relationship between the United States and the RF. Putin and others wanted to signal that both countries were in the fight against terrorism together, forgoing bargaining that might have netted the RF concessions before cooperation. A skeptic might argue that Putin’s words were little more than diplomatic verbiage, stylized and read from the script in the diplomacy handbook, but such a claim misses Hall’s point: What were the costs, at the time, of not expressing sympathy? And how much sympathy is required? He convincingly shows that Putin and others could have stopped far shorter than they did, while perhaps fulfilling the requirements of the sympathy script.
Any good book raises a number of important questions for future research, which is the case here. As Hall notes, some forms of emotional diplomacy may be insincere or deceptive. Since much of the work in emotional diplomacy is done by language—the words and lexical configurations utilized—and conveyed through phone calls, public statements, and so forth, assessing sincerity is difficult. Goffman provides an answer in interpersonal social interaction, picking up on the subtle cues that are left on the face, the front-stage slip-ups that might provide glimpses to the backstage. What is the corollary for states that seek to discern the sincerity of emotional expression through statements? Costly signals are useful because they can help states to deduce fact from fiction, sincerity from insincerity. By what mechanisms can states draw similar conclusions with emotional diplomacy?
Another intriguing question is how individual differences matter to the analysis. Hall brings us away from the question of whether states have emotions to how emotions are expressed by states. This necessarily involves moving to individual policymakers who come up with the strategies of expressing anger, sympathy, and guilt. Studies in emotional intelligence tell us that individuals vary considerably in how well they are able to convey emotion and read it in others. The ramifications for emotional diplomacy might be profound. If certain types of policymakers are reliably less attuned to emotion, then presumably at least some expressions of emotion toward these individuals will be met not with the desired response but something else entirely. Relatedly, policymakers who are less likely to express emotions appropriately might find that creating a consolidated and coordinated expressive emotional message is difficult. Here, gaining a sense of what the individual policymakers are feeling, and to what degree, as they craft their strategies might be useful. Put another way, what types of individuals are more/less likely to express emotions through diplomacy, and what types of individuals are more/less likely to receive that emotional expression in the intended manner? Answering these questions would allow us to gain better leverage on predictions of when, and under what conditions, emotional diplomacy strategies will achieve their desired effects.
Finally, one major challenge that confronts anyone studying emotions is that they can be amorphous and rarely exist in isolation. “Humiliation,” “disrespect,” or “anger,” to take commonly discussed emotions in international relations, manifest as somewhat discrete physiological responses that we label as very discrete emotions. Put simply, it is often difficult to draw a bright line between emotions felt and expressed. Hall is right to point out that Putin expressed sympathy toward the United States in his initial telegram to President George W. Bush (p. 94), but he also expressed “resentment and indignation,” which some might read as an expression of anger, leading to the question of what to do with emotional diplomacy that is clearly emotional but where the discrete emotions expressed might not be readily identifiable. This is not a limitation of the book but, rather, a limitation in our understanding, and incorporation, of emotion and affect into the study of international politics. This excellent book has moved us significantly forward in refining and developing that understanding.
