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Emotions and Passions in the Discipline of International Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2014

JEAN-MARC COICAUD
JEAN-MARC COICAUD*
Affiliation:
Rutgers UniversityJeanmarc.coicaud@rutgers.edu
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Abstract

The article focuses on how emotions and passions – two related but somewhat different notions – are addressed in the field of international relations. As such it makes three main points. First, the article argues that, although presupposed in mainstream international relations, because of the influence of positivism emotions and passions have tended to be overlooked. Second, it makes the point that in recent years scholars with constructivist leanings have been increasingly interested in taking emotions and passions seriously as an academic area of research. Third, and finally, the article concludes that despite the progress made in the 2000s on the understanding of emotions and passions in international relations, more work remains to be done. As such it outlines future directions of research.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2014, pp. 485 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Emotions and passions, and the psychology associated with them, play a significant role in international politics. For this reason, if we want our understanding of international life to be as accurate and comprehensive as possible, this role has to be described and analyzed. However, in mainstream international relations, the tendency has been to overlook this aspect of the nature and dynamics of international affairs. Indeed, despite the fact that in the past 15 years a growing number of publications (articles and books) has been dedicated to exploring the emotive nature of international politics, and the place and function of emotions and passions in it, the study of emotions and passions in international relations remains a rather underdeveloped field, and one that is not really at the center of international affairs specialists’ preoccupations.

The objective of this article is to show how and explain why this is the case. It is comprised of three sections. The first one, building in particular on the recent neuroscience findings concerning emotions and passions, examines emotions and passions in general. The second reviews the state of emotions and passions studies in the area of international relations. In this regard, it shows that, as a discipline, international relations has been prone to give a biased account of psychology, emotions, and passions in international life. It also indicates that although significant progress has been made since the early 2000s to remedy this situation, there is still much work to be done to develop the social science study of emotions and passions in international relations. This is why, in the third section of the article, we suggest a number of ways to better analyze the role of emotions and passions in international politics.

1 General considerations on emotions and passions

Frequently, recent publications on the question of emotions in international affairs dedicate a section on the nature of emotions.Footnote 1 This is not surprising considering that more often than not emotions have been ignored or have had a bad reputation in the field of international relations if not in general. In addition, they constitute a complex reality which is not easy to pin down intellectually. Introducing them to the reader appears therefore as a natural first step. Although we try to keep here this first step to a minimum, it is also how we begin this article, by touching upon two points: first, we look into the nature of emotions themselves; second, we indicate that while emotions and passions are related and even overlap to some extent, they are also significantly different.

1.1 Emotions as hybrids

Emotions are part and parcel of human psychology. In this regard, since psychology, or the analysis of mental phenomena, did not exist as a distinct field of science before it emerged in Germany in the late nineteenth century, when Wilhelm Wundt began conducting experiments to understand the ways in which the mind works,Footnote 2 for a long time exploring emotions was essentially the monopoly of philosophy. Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, and Smith are for instance some of the philosophers who, in the Western tradition, have discussed at length the nature and role of emotions. Although philosophy prior to the nineteenth century was not in a position to benefit from the scientific support and breakthroughs that modern psychology has enjoyed in the past century and could only speculate on how the brain functions,Footnote 3 many of its intuitions concerning emotions and passionsFootnote 4 have provided critical insights into human nature that scientific psychology has often still not superseded.Footnote 5 After all, as Jon Elster puts it, ‘(a)lthough the pages of psychological journals testify to a great deal of concern with methodology, even the most sophisticated statistical analysis cannot compensate for the intrinsic limitations of laboratory studies on humans’.Footnote 6 This is all the more the case considering that in the development of modern psychology, the combination of the influential conception of emotions put forward by William James, presenting emotions as bodily sensations responding to particular environmental stimuli,Footnote 7 and of the fact that cognitive science and its various disciplines, such as philosophy of the mind, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, biology, computer science, and anthropology, which for a long time excluded that emotions were playing a significant role in the exercise of reason, contributed to the importance of emotions in the psychology and cognition of human beings to be overlooked. In recent years, this state of affairs has changed and scientists have come to increasingly recognize the relevance and centrality of emotions.

This evolution has been encouraged by work in neuroscience that is empirically confirming that emotions are a central part of what it is to be human. This work shows that emotions contribute to the fundamental definition of how we feel and therefore, among other things, of who we are in our own mind's eye as well as in the eyes of others. As Joseph Ledoux puts it, ‘capacity to have feelings is directly tied to the capacity to be consciously aware of one's self and the relations of oneself to the rest of the world’.Footnote 8 And if there is a domain in which this contribution of emotions to our humanity is at work, it is in the context of the mind, of how it works and relates individuals to themselves, others, and the environment in general.

As such, emotions are hybrids that incorporate three elements: bodily reactions, feelings, and cognitive elements. In emotions, there is not one of these elements without the others. They unfold and work hand in hand. First, concerning bodily reactions, emotions are physiological and even behavioral responses to stimuli coming from the environmentFootnote 9 – stimuli themselves wired or made meaningful, that is eliciting a response, by how the human body is made and designed to interact with the environment. Second, these bodily reactions are accompanied by feelings, by an experiential awareness that has certain tonality or color, that of the specific emotion that is experienced (sadness, joy, etc.) in the context of different situations.Footnote 10 Third, connected with the intrinsic biological functions of the nervous system that are rooted in an underlying mechanism that works, for the most part, unconsciously, emotions have a cognitive dimension, and this in two ways: they are associated with, at times even triggered by beliefs and values, themselves contributing, in part in relation with human biological needs and functions, to the interpretation of events and situations;Footnote 11 and they are conscious experiences in the sense that it is not only that we are feeling, it is also that we are feeling the feeling. In this regard, there are emotions, or states of emotions, that can be more susceptible to reflexivity or reflection than others. For instance, sadness, as an emotion or emotional state that tends to be more inwards, can be more reflexive and reflective than happiness, an emotion or emotional state that is prone to be more outwards.Footnote 12

Against this background, exploring how the underlying mechanism in which the biological functions of the nervous system are rooted contributes to the production of emotions, entails trying to understand how the human mind's operating system, which generates emotions, is made of various levels of evolutionary history, including to some extent evolutionary biology.

The most basic and fundamental of these levels is the need for human beings to satisfy certain conditions in order to survive and fulfill the life pressure to pass on their genes. At a minimum, this presupposes to obtain food and shelter, to protect oneself from bodily harm, and to procreate. Coming as a complement to and an influence on this are the accumulated layers of history (different over time and across cultures) and the changes that come with them to which individuals respond and, at times, adapt biologically, and emotionally.Footnote 13

Now, once emotions occur, they become powerful motivators of future behaviors, for example either to experience them again if they are pleasant, or to avoid experiencing them again if they are unpleasant. Ultimately, emotional hygiene and mental health, are about balancing negative and positive emotions in order to maintain functional interactions among the various selves which co-habit in the self (a functional self is one in which the various selves are by and large integrated), and between the self, others, and the environment.

When it comes to listing different emotions, much discussion has taken place. The discussion has entailed, for instance, disagreements over the list of emotions viewed as basic, (i.e., emotions considered as biologically produced and fairly constant in all peopleFootnote 14). It has also involved debates on whether there can be differences in the way basic emotions are labeled and expressed between cultures, or even between individuals within a culture. As a result, given the disparities existing among the lists of emotions that have been published, to come up with a consistent one is challenging, even if ‘many if not most of the lists include some version of fear, anger, disgust and joy’.Footnote 15 Moreover, where to draw the line between the so-called basic or fundamental emotions and non-basic emotions can be difficult. Often, there is a mixing or construction of basic emotions into ‘higher order emotions’ (for example, anticipation + fear = anxiety) that are more uniquely human.Footnote 16 The fact that the social dimension enters as well into play is here another source of complexity.Footnote 17

As far as they express how the individual reacts to and handles the environment, emotions contribute to revealing a significant aspect of a person's personality. This is to say that, while the biological make-up of human beings gives to emotions a rather objective dimension, and history gives them a contextual dimension, they are subjective as well: because of their specific life experience, individuals do not emotionally address a given situation exactly the same way. From this perspective, emotions are personal feelings indicating how the inner world of people and the outside environment interact and by extension, to some extent, shape one another.Footnote 18 Ultimately, in addition to being at the same time objective, contextual, and subjective, emotions are social. They are an inextricable aspect of the texture and flavor of all social relations, including the interactions among individual human beings, and are in part caused by how actors relate to themselvesFootnote 19 and to one another in their environment.

1.2 From emotions to passions

There is clearly a strong link between emotions and passions. This is to the point that for a long time, Western philosophy did not distinguish much between them when it sought to address and explain human affects. Although the notion of passion was more commonly used than the one of emotion, by and large they were treated interchangeably. In the process, in contrast with reason, viewed as stable and pure, and heralded as an ideal way of thinking and behaving, emotions/passions more often than not were described in negative terms. In particular, the fact that they were seen as subject to change and difficult to control led them to be considered as sources and expressions of individual and social ills, and, therefore, to be fought and overcome.Footnote 20 It would take the emergence of romanticism in nineteenth century Europe for emotions/passions to acquire a more positive connotation and be somewhat rehabilitated.

In any case, if emotions and passions are connected, it is because emotions give to passions their emotive content. In other words, passions are built and developed on the basis of emotions. They are part and parcel of emotions. In a general sense, this makes emotions more fundamental than passions, and passions, a sub-category of emotions.Footnote 21 That said, the overlap between emotions and passions is not so complete that they would be identical and that the latter would be entirely absorbed in the former. Between them there is more than a simple of difference of language. Passions are a distinct form of emotions. Furthermore, what makes passions different from emotions is also what makes them important, especially in a social and political context.

From our standpoint, as distinct forms of emotions, passions are different from regular emotions in at least six ways.

First, passions, rather than being principally reactions, tend to have a willful character. We could say that they constitute an enthusiasm or desire for something, or someone. Take for instance the expression ‘having a passion for justice’. It conveys the idea that a person is taking seriously the notion of justice and is dedicated to trying to make it, as much as possible, part of reality. This is distinct from simply feeling or experiencing emotionally a situation as just or unjust. As such, passions are a type of investment and engagement. In extreme situations, actors experiencing them can be more invested and engaged by them than invested and engaged in them. In this regard, when someone is so passionate about something or someone to the point of being more possessed than in control, this can undermine the willful aspect of passions and contribute to give them a bad reputation. Traditionally, this is one of the scenarios of passions that has been highlighted and has led them to be seen in negative terms.

Second, the willful character of passions carries the idea that they have an active and purposeful dimension. To be sure, certain emotions entail this characteristic as well. This is for example the case for revenge, which amounts to a real commitment to harm the person who has harmed the one seeking revenge. But this active pursuit of an effect is not a specific aspect of most emotions. On the other hand, it is a feature of passions in the way we understand them here. As such, more than being a mere state of mind, passions are animated by the desire and intention to act and achieve an objective in the outside world.

Third, the commitment to action that passions have must be understood in connection with what is valued and thus desirable. The drive behind passions is to realize valuable goals, themselves identified in these terms on the basis of values that are seen as essential. It is indeed the fact that some values are perceived as fundamental, or more fundamental than others, that makes them engines and objects of passions as well as generators or passions for certain objects, people, beliefs, etc. By the same token, key values are placed in a commanding position for the production of emotions and passions. They have this power because they give meaning to aspects of human and social reality and motivate their pursuit. This is especially the case for key values reflecting basic and fundamental needs, like the ones associated with survival. But it applies also to values more geared towards reflecting the ideals of life. This is for instance the case of justice and love. Because they bring about a qualitative meaning to life and are difficult to attain, these values tend to be sought after by actors and are the source of positive emotions and passions when realized reasonably, and of much emotional upheaval and misery when not achieved.

Fourth, as elements eager to produce effects in the world in connection with ends highly valued, passions are prone to call for and introduce change. When this is the case, the pursuit of change that motivates passions has the tendency not to be for the sake of change itself. It is about seeking to produce what is viewed as a more satisfactory situation. In the end, this more satisfactory situation is always about people finding a better fit and greater comfort in how they relate to themselves, one another, and their environment. Importantly, the emotional adjustment that is aimed at by the passions pursuing change does not necessarily imply progress. Surely, if this mechanism is at work in the context of positive or inclusive emotions/passions, genuine improvement can happen. But when it takes place in the context of negative or exclusionary emotions/passions, rather than helping to move the world and people forward and upward, rather than helping to generate a healthy overcoming of the tensions that previously existed and reconciliation, the contrary happens. As we allude to elsewhere, the dynamics of emotional resentment at the heart of Nazism is, among others, a case in point.Footnote 22

Fifth, the call for change and the emotional adjustment sought after, that the dynamics of passions entails, show that passions, while deriving from emotions, are not necessarily a ‘one-way street’ or strict relationship of dependence vis-à-vis emotions. Passions can nourish and shape emotions. It is from this perspective that, for example, fulfilling a passion can make an individual happy, while failing to do so can create unhappiness. This is part of the interactive relationship and mutual influence that brings together emotions and passions.

Sixth, passions are prone to go public and wind up on public display. The process of being shared with others, in public is a significant element of the nature and dynamics of passions. As a matter of fact, the tendency of passions to have a public character, i.e., among other things, to be visible if not loud and dramatic, has led to the perception of them being particularly intense. Moreover, it has led to the perception that they have a higher level of emotional intensity than emotions which are not expressed publicly. Of course, this is not the case by definition. After all, more often than not, the deepest emotions are the ones about which people, for better or for worse, are the most private and quiet about – such as the emotions generated by traumatic experiences.

We show in another article how these characteristics of passions and the emotions on which they build and develop are at the heart of the role they play in international politics.Footnote 23 In yet another publication, we allude to how passions can be capitalized on in a positive fashion in order to nurture more peaceful international affairs.Footnote 24 But, for now, in the second section of this article, we will focus on the state of the literature on emotions and passions in the discipline of international relations.

2 Emotions and passions in the discipline of international relations

Here we make two main points. First, we argue that, traditionally, in the mainstream discipline of international relations, emotions and passions have not been handled or accounted for very well. Second, we indicate that in recent years the role of emotions and passions in international politics is taken more seriously, including by some of the international relations scholars of the new generation.

2.1 Emotions and passions in mainstream international relations

International relations have long been a topic of study, especially in the context of diplomatic history. But international relations as a discipline of the social sciences is one of the youngest. It is perhaps one of the least intellectually established as well. It emerged relatively late, although not all agree on when this precisely happened. One view, conceivably the more conventional one, is that it started in the early part of the twentieth century, with the formation of the first department devoted to the discipline at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, in 1919.Footnote 25 Another one contends that it appeared in the United States, in the aftermath of World War II.Footnote 26 What is sure is that America is where it has developed the most, to the point that it is frequently seen as, first and foremost, a U.S. social science.Footnote 27 Compared to international relations in other countries, its large size, role in producing theory, and overall influence internationally make American international relations a global force with which it is difficult to compete. In this regard, while some believe that U.S. scholarship in international relations is quite diverse,Footnote 28 others argue that it is less pluralistic than in other parts of the world, such as in the United Kingdom.Footnote 29

In any case, what cannot be contested is that in the United States, more than anywhere else, the desire to be taken seriously led the discipline of international relations, echoing in this a major trend in social sciences,Footnote 30 to give a lot of importance to the model of analysis of reality pioneered in the natural sciences. The adoption of this model, and of the positivist methodological and epistemological assumptions that come with it, has certainly helped international relations to produce good analyses of international reality. However, it has also come at a price. In particular, it has played a significant role in having the discipline of international relations unable to acknowledge properly the role of emotions and passions, and, more generally, psychology in international life. As a result, dominant paradigms of international relations, such as the neo-realist approach and rational choice, have had the tendency, when referring to psychological considerations, emotions, passions and their place in international politics, to be misled and misleading.

Positivism and the marginalization of the study of emotions and passions in international relations

At the core of the positivist approach and its variants that are part and parcel of the natural science model are epistemological and methodological assumptions. Considering what these assumptions are, it is not surprising that they have encouraged political science and, subsequently, international relations to ignore explanatory factors linked with emotions and passions because they tend not to fit the natural science criteria. Steve Smith offers a good summary of these assumptions:

The main epistemological assumptions (of the mainstream definition of international relations) are those of positivism, by which I mean: a belief in naturalism in the social world (that is to say that the social world is amenable to the same kind of analysis to those applicable to the natural world) . . . a commitment to uncovering patterns and regularities in the social world, patterns and regularities that exist apart from the methods used to uncover them; and, finally, a commitment to empiricism as the arbiter of what counts as knowledge . . . (These) theoretical assumptions are contained implicitly in (the) methodological (usually quantitative) and epistemological (nearly always empiricist) commitments . . . Together these define ‘proper’ social science and thereby serve as the gatekeepers for what counts as legitimate scholarship.Footnote 31

To be sure, over time, even the most committed to this agenda have come to recognize that it is extremely challenging to identify scientific laws, i.e. to assert that given certain initial conditions, an event of a given type (the cause) will always produce an event of another type (the effect) in the social world, including in international life. They did not give up altogether the quest for causal inferencesFootnote 32 and their predictive aim. But they were forced to acknowledge that what can be achieved in the natural worldFootnote 33 is much more problematic in a social environment.Footnote 34 This is the case because no matter how perfect the research design is and no matter how much data are collected, it is not possible in social science to know a causal inference for certain. In the social world, due to the importance of the contextFootnote 35 and the impossibility to experimentally manipulate the explanatory variablesFootnote 36 or rerun history to thoroughly test the nature of an event as a systematic cause for what happens,Footnote 37 the bounds of applicability of social science theories are limited.Footnote 38 Indeterminacy of explanation is high.

The realization that in social science the ambitions concerning causal inference had to be limited has not eliminated, however, the positivist bent of mainstream international relations. From this perspective, for the supporters of the natural science model and positivism continuing to dominate the discipline, to the extent that facts do not entirely fit the standards of scientific observation, measurement, verification, and falsification, among other things in terms of concretenessFootnote 39, they have little or no value. The disregard unfolds at three connected and mutually reinforcing levels. First, they are not taken seriously as part of reality, or they are not seen as part of serious reality, so to speak. Second, they are not considered as a source of valid knowledge. Third, they are not perceived as a legitimate object of study.

The illustration and consequence of this state of affairs is how emotions and passions are dealt with negatively. The fact that, compared to physical nature, emotions and passions are viewed as hard to define, hard to operationalize, hard to measure, and hard to isolate from other factors, makes it all the more tempting. This attitude is at work at three levels. To begin with, the identification with the natural science model renders it easy to embrace the traditional labeling of emotions and passions as irrational, and therefore not something valid on which to rely. In addition, because material structures, such as the distribution of capability, are understood as the predominant origin of state behavior and are a major observable fact, there is little room for the incorporation in the scientific agenda of international relations of immaterial-looking phenomena, such as emotions and passions. Finally, the belief that international politics is anarchical, and consequently somewhat asocial, plays a role in facilitating the rejection of the social features and roles of emotions and passions.Footnote 40

Neo-realist and rational choice views of emotions and passions in international relations

The pervasiveness of this negative evaluation is shown by how neo-realism and rational choice – two paradigms which, in more ways than one, continue to be of great influence in contemporary international relations – consider emotions and passions in international affairs. Concerning neo-realism, although it de facto mobilizes a psychological dimension that includes emotions and passions in its conception and analysis of international politics, it tends to be in denial about it. As for rational choice, by draining emotions and passions from the psychology of the rational actor at the center of its approach, it puts forward a cognitive and instrumental model that has little to do with reality.

The neo-realist denial of emotions and passions

It is rather ironic that neo-realism, also called structural realism, in international relations is unwilling to acknowledge or take into account the measure of the role that emotions and passions play in international politics. After all, as part of the intellectual family of realism, it shares with classical realism many of its basic premises, like the ideas that power is the most important factor in international relations and that world politics is driven by competition among self-interested states fighting for their survival. Moreover, classical realism, unlike neo-realism, gives pride of place to emotions and passions – Thucydides, Thomas Hobbes, and Hans Morgenthau being among the most notable examples of this.

Thucydides,Footnote 41 to start with, while arguing in the History of the Peloponnesian War that concerns for self-interest make actors sensitive to their power standing, especially military power, vis-à-vis other actors, recognizes that the nature and understanding of interest cannot be disassociated from that of emotions and passions. This leads him to present the emotion of fear as a key motive, to the point that it is even evoked as a crucial reason for the war between Athens and Sparta: ‘What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.’Footnote 42 This also leads him to stress the significance of the value of honor both as a source and object of emotion and passion.Footnote 43 In the words of the Athenians: ‘We have done nothing extraordinary, nothing contrary to human nature in accepting an empire when it was offered to us and then in refusing to give it up. Three very powerful motives prevent us from doing so – security, honor and self-interest.’Footnote 44 This is to say that for Thucydides, emotions and passions cannot be minimized as motivations and explanations for how inter-states relations take place.

In his own way, Thomas Hobbes also gives much significance to emotions and passions in international politics. Influenced by the scientific ideas that were gaining ground in his day, he set out to create a science of politics.Footnote 45 But he did so in the context of a theory of man and society that put psychology, emotions, and passions front and center. For example, the value and passion of glory, which he views as one of the three principal causes of conflict,Footnote 46 constitutes an ‘exultation of the mind’Footnote 47 that is part of the larger system of ‘Appetites, Aversions, Hopes, and Fears’Footnote 48 which defines human nature. From this perspective, what stands in the foreground of his conception of politics, society, and the state is an account of men and women as the sum of emotions and passions, and of human reason as a calculating machine driven by the alternate pursuit and avoidance of appetites and aversions.Footnote 49 As such, his focus on actors’ need for self-preservation produces a theory that goes much beyond material considerations revolving around power and interest, and incorporates a psychological approach of social relations in which emotions and passions are essential. Furthermore, although the emotions most frequently flagged in Hobbes’ philosophy are the ones referring to the sense of insecurity that prevails when it is not mitigated by the benefits generated by political institutions, like fear, his psychology is not entirely pessimistic. Some degree of fellow-feeling exists among men, if only because, according to him, men respect others’ intention to protect their body and will not blame anybody who does so.Footnote 50

As for Hans J. Morgenthau, a key scholar for the development of realism in international relations (if not of the whole discipline of international relationsFootnote 51) in the United States in the aftermath of World War II, he sees the psychology of human nature, and the emotions and passions it entails, as a basic cause of the dynamics of international affairs. Believing that ‘(i)nternational politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power’Footnote 52 and that ‘politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature’,Footnote 53 he thought that human nature contains a will to power that is without limit. This effectively meant that for him the answer to the simple but important question, why do states want power?, resides in the never ending lust for power, particularly that of leaders in commanding positions who are moved by deep psychological forces and who are eager to dominate rivals.

In contrast, neo-realism decided that it was better off without emotions and passions. From this perspective, for neo- or structural realism, Kenneth N. Waltz to begin with, who first outlined this paradigm in 1979 in Theory of International Politics,Footnote 54 the question of why states want power has nothing to do with human beings and the various aspects of their psychology. Rejecting the classical realism's use of essentialist concepts such as ‘human nature’ and the human emotional dimension to explain international politics, it argues that it is the structure or architecture of the international system, treated as a material and by and large objective reality, which determines behavior in international relations and forces states to pursue power. As John J. Mearsheimer, another neo- or structural realist, puts it:

In a system where there is no higher authority that sits above the great powers, and where there is no guarantee that one will not attack another, it makes eminently good sense for each state to be powerful enough to protect itself in the event that it is attacked. In essence, great powers are trapped in an iron cage where they have little choice but to compete with each other for power if they hope to survive.’Footnote 55

That said, the rejection by the neo-realist paradigm of a meaningful role for emotions and passions in international politics would be more convincing if it itself was consistent, that is if it did not have an ambiguous relationship with emotions and passions. This ambiguity is revealed by the fact that while considering emotions and passions and the psychology associated with them as irrelevant, it cannot help but presuppose their existence.Footnote 56 More than anything else, this can be seen in the centrality that, like classical realism, it assigns to the survival and security of state-actors, reveals. For this centrality, which is totally understandable, far from being empty of emotions and passions, carries them. It carries emotions associated with the sense of insecurity and the fears that the quest for security implies, and it triggers passions, like the elevation of security to an absolute and obsessive priority.Footnote 57

The flawed psychology of rational choice theory and international relations

Rational choice theory is the other most influential paradigm in the discipline of international relations and, like the neo-realist approach, it is dismissive of emotions and passions. Yet, also like neo-realism, although it disputes their validity and relevance, rational choice, in its own way, assumes and needs the existence of emotions and passions. The characteristics at the core of the rational choice theory and their limitations concerning human psychology help to understand this.

Building on key aspects of modern economics, viewed as the discipline to emulate,Footnote 58 rational choice argues that the actor, individual or collective, is central. It constitutes an atomistic and stand-alone agent prior to and independent from the social environment, including social structures.Footnote 59 In this regard, while the environment can influence the strategic choices of the actor (i.e., how it deliberates and acts concerning the pursuit and achievement of its goals), it does not shape its identity or interest.Footnote 60 More specifically, rational choice conceives the actor as a utility maximizer who mobilizes its cognitive power to identify the right means, based on cost–benefit calculations, to realize tangible and material results satisfying self-centered purposes. The concentration on oneself and self-interest is all the more required considering that according to rational choice theory competition never really ceases among actors. Even if they learn to cooperate, they do not come to identify with each other and, therefore, lowering one's guard and being less focused on one's interest is not an option. Ultimately, rational choice seeks to generate a series of well-grounded predictions regarding behavior on the basis of observed outcomes.Footnote 61

The predictive powers ambitioned by rational choice theory are however far from being achievable. To be sure, the rational choice model has some validity. After all, concerns for self-interest and cost–benefit matters are facts of life. This is partly why rational choice theory has been successful at becoming hegemonic in (American) social sciences, including in international relations as a sub-field of political science. But its pretension to serve as a universal model undermines its credibility because it simply does not embrace the whole of human and social reality. From this perspective, rational choice's disqualification of emotions and passions is an obstacle to a satisfactory description of human and social reality and the production of the type of causal explanation it aspires to. More specifically, its belief that emotions are only useful to explain mistakes or deviations from rationality and, consequently, that they are unable to account for accurate judgments, is problematic. Footnote 62In fine, combined with pride of place given to cognition, instrumental reason, and material considerations, this leads to the idea that rationality can and must be free of emotions. Nevertheless, a brief analysis of reality and rationality shows that this position is incorrect for at least four reasons.

First, recent research in the field of neuroscience is indicating that emotions are a constitutive part of cognition and rationality as well as of a socially functional behavior. For instance, Antonio Damasio makes the case that people without emotion may know what they should do but this knowledge is abstract and inert, and does not impact their decisions. As a result, they make mistakes, are not able to avoid making them, and do not learn from them.Footnote 63 In the words of Jonathan Mercer, writing on rationality and psychology in international politics:

Emotion is necessary to rationality and intrinsic to choice. Emotion precedes choice (by ranking one's preferences), emotion influences choice (because it directs one's attention and is the source of action), and emotion follows choice (which determines how one feels about one's choice and influences one's preferences).’Footnote 64

This reality is in contrast with the rational choice conception of decision-making which sees the cognitive process of deliberation and decision as void of emotions –emotions which are deemed to have all the more a negative influence that, in addition to being viewed as irrational, they are, because they are viewed as irrational, open to manipulation.

Second, rational choice postulates emotions, and emotional psychology, despite the fact that it claims to dismiss them in the name of rationality. This can be illustrated in four ways. To begin with, the preferences and goals associated with the optimization of self-interest are based on ranked emotions and values, and their interactive relations. For example, it can be that an actor prefers A to B because it suits better its values’ order and therefore ranks higher from an emotional standpoint, or because A is more emotionally fulfilling than B and consequently more valued, or because of a combination of both. In addition, valuing so much self-interest is a form of emotional psychology, one of self-centeredness. Furthermore, this is also a type of psychology that can be viewed as a-social, if not anti-social since human bonding is minimal and always driven by a conception of self-interest that underlines, even in the context of cooperation, the existence of a basic gap between actors. Finally, the psychology of separation and isolation that rational choice conveys is one in which actors experience emotions, and emotions of a specific kind; one amounting to limited trust in others, if not mistrust towards others and, more than anything else, to a sense of insecurity.

Third, the implicit or never fully acknowledged psychology of rational choice is only a partial and one-sided account of the various ways in which, in reality, actors think and interact with others and the environment. In particular, the notion of stand-alone individual self-interest, accompanying a conception of the self not relationally defined,Footnote 65 that rational choice puts forward is not universal but primarily modern-Western.Footnote 66 Moreover, it ignores the motivations, emotions, and passions that, at the individual and collective levels, are not necessarily shaped by instrumental and self-serving considerations. For instance, emotions of connectedness, such as empathy and compassion, love and friendship, generosity, altruism and justice, to name a few, are by and large absent from the rationalist approach. In addition, when they are mentioned by rational choice theorists, they tend to be reduced to the demands of cost–benefits and self-interest analyses.Footnote 67 Love of parents for children, for example, will be prone to be interpreted as fulfilling the parents’ need to have their genes and name continued beyond their death. From this perspective, the fact that love of parents can also be non-interested, inhabited by the loving desire to see children happy, regardless of the by-product benefits they may derive from it, will be overlooked. Take another example in the context of international affairs: while the pursuit of the national interest constitutes a central element of states’ foreign policy, occasionally they act on the basis of a genuine sense of solidarity towards strangers;Footnote 68 and the fact that this sense of solidarity can enhance the reputation and, consequently, the interest of states, should not lead to eliminate the significance of its non-interested dimension.

Fourth, rational choice is contradictory because it is a philosophy and psychology of interest-maximization and yet it is not necessarily the best way to achieve, on the individual and collective plans, the optimal it seeks to obtain and with which it identifies. First, from the qualities historically attributed to the notion of interest,Footnote 69 one cannot infer that it always generates a productive activity that brings together the individual and collective interest. The 2008 financial crisis, largely created by the self-serving practices of powerful market operators, is a case in point.Footnote 70 Second, focusing essentially on self-interest can backfire. In international politics, stable relations among countries require the ability to conceive of and implement one's interests in such a fashion that they are aware and respectful of others’ interests. In other words, give and take is a key aspect. Short of this, trust is likely to be missing, with the interests of each and every one ending up at stake. Third, selflessness, generosity, kindness, and openness sometimes trigger more virtuous circles and benefits individually and collectively than mere self-interested actions could ever do.

The challenge of descriptive and explanatory limitations

The positivist limitations at work in neo-realism and rational choice theory, like in most of the analytical frameworks of the other schoolsFootnote 71 and sub-fieldsFootnote 72 in mainstream international relations, take a significant descriptive and explanatory toll. As we have seen above, important aspects of international affairs are not factored in and accounted for. Let us add that in addition to these aspects, it is also extreme political phenomena and their projection in the international realm which cannot be addressed and analyzed properly, as is the case for Nazism, fascism, other totalitarian regimes, and terrorism. On them, mainstream paradigms of international relations have little to say, except perhaps, and not surprisingly, that they are more or less historical aberrations at odds with normal reality and the type of categories and knowledge required for studying it. It is therefore best to have them dealt with by psychology as the science of (irrational) emotions and passions.Footnote 73 But, considering the significance of these phenomena in modern international politics, it is difficult not to see them, and the fact that they tend to be beyond the analytical reach of mainstream international relations, as a serious epistemological and methodological challenge for positivist international relations.

2.2 Recent scholarship on emotions and passions in international relations: a step forward

In recent years, a number of scholars have addressed their shortcomings of mainstream international relations on emotions and passions and have factored them in their study of international affairs. In an intellectual production that is steadily growing on the topic,Footnote 74 especially the Anglo-Saxon literature, which is principally the one we refer to in this article, it is possible to identify at least four areas, at times overlapping, in which the research is developing: methodology and epistemology of the study of emotions and passions; analysis of situations and issues in relation with emotions and passions; the study of the role of one or several emotions in international affairs; and the attempt to provide a general theory of emotions and passions in international politics.

Concerning the methodology and epistemology of the study of emotions and passions in international relations, at least four authors have done significant work. There is Janice Gross Stein, a veteran expert of international relations mainly interested in conflict management and negotiation, who has been exploring in her more recent work the impact of the progress of neuroscience in connection with the role of emotions, away from rational choice theory, on the analysis of international conflict and decision-making.Footnote 75 Neta C. Crawford, who has been one of the first scholars to highlight the fact that international relations theory tended to ignore explicit considerations of emotions and passions,Footnote 76 continues to examine the importance of emotions and passions in international relations, including from a methodological and epistemological standpoint.Footnote 77 Jonathan Mercer, in a succession of articles, has done a lot to unveil the implicit assumptions of rational theory vis-à-vis emotions and psychology and their weaknesses and contradictions.Footnote 78 As for Rose McDermott, her work in this domain mobilizes the findings of neuroscience concerning emotions to improve the conceptualization of rationality and decision-making in international relations, and political science.Footnote 79

Regarding the analysis of situations and issues in relation to emotions and passions, we can mention the work done on logic of deterrence,Footnote 80 cooperation and the solution of collective action problems,Footnote 81 nuclear proliferation,Footnote 82 terrorism,Footnote 83 the War on Terror,Footnote 84 global justice,Footnote 85 and the financial crisis.Footnote 86

As for the study of one or several emotions and passions, in a list to which we could add more references the scholarship produced includes work on revenge, anger, humiliation and hatred as motives for war,Footnote 87 and patterns of ethnic and civil conflict,Footnote 88 conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation.Footnote 89

Finally, there are the efforts made to put forward what we could call a general theory of emotions and passions in international politics. In this regard, in France, the work of Pierre Hassner on the geopolitics of passions is especially notable. For him, there is no possible understanding of international relations without making sense of the key trilogy constituted by interests, ideas, and passions.Footnote 90 But the author who has done the most in this area is Richard Ned Lebow. After having highlighted over the years the limits of mainstream international relations in multiple articles and books, he is now engaged in the construction of a theory of international politics which accords prime of place to psychology, emotions, and passions.Footnote 91

That said, despite the quality of this growing scholarship on emotions and passions in international relations and the intellectual progress that it renders possible, this is only a first step. This is the case for two reasons. To begin with, much more research needs to be done. Even a body of work as ambitious and impressive as that of Richard Ned Lebow in the area of emotions and passions in international politics is probably prone to introduce more questions than to bring definitive answers.Footnote 92 For instance, the typology of emotions and passions that he offers in A Cultural Theory of International Relations and how they are said to contribute to shape inter-state actions is somewhat problematic. What appears to be the universal use of Greek historical categories is not entirely convincing. The other reason why the scholarship produced on emotions and passions in international relations in the past 15 years or so is no more than a first step is institutional: these intellectual efforts have not changed dramatically the landscape of mainstream international relations. Indeed, the bulk of international relations, especially in the academic departments of the most prestigious American universities, remains by and large under the influence of positivism, realism in one form or another, and rational choice, and of the methodological and epistemological assumptions at their heart. These assumptions are all the more difficult to dislodge because i) they tend to be implicit, as alluded to earlier by Steve Smith,Footnote 93 ii) they are not systematically theorized, and iii) they are in line with some of the key aspects of U.S. ideological formulations of social relations (regarding, among others, competition, interest, and self-help). This leads them to be taken for granted and, at the same time, create an illusion of science.Footnote 94

3 Conclusion: suggestions for a research program on emotions and passions in international politics

Mainstream scholarship on international relations has a lot of qualities. But quite a bit is also lost in the fact that it has been prone to, until recently, overlook emotions and passions.Footnote 95 In order to address this state of affairs and contribute to an improvement of the study of international relations, we make the following suggestions.

1. At the most general level, ensuring that emotions and passions become part and parcel of the research and, subsequently, teaching curriculum of international relations would require taking on board at least three elements. First, an examination more thorough than the one offered in this article of the limitations, including their hidden assumptions and contradictions, of the mainstream schools of international life concerning psychology, emotions, and passions, would be helpful. Second, the added value generated by factoring in emotions and passions in international politics would have to be demonstrated with the support of a compelling model of study. It would also have to be illustrated with the analysis of concrete issues and cases that up to now have been overlooked or not handled convincingly by mainstream international relations. Third, for the results of these orientations to be integrated in the production and transmission of knowledge related to international affairs, institutional change would have to take place. This could be an aspect of an organizational evolution in the field of international relations, designed to make it more adapted to present and future demands, especially from the intellectual, professional, and policy standpoints.

2. A model of study able to factor in emotions and passions and show the additional value attached to doing so would entail proposing a more sophisticated conception and analysis of the social character of international life than the one endorsed by traditional international politics scholarship. Bottom line self-interest and prevailing over others may be elements of the reality of international affairs but they are too narrow to be the whole of it.Footnote 96 There is certainly more than this to international relations. Indeed, although international life does not have the high level of socialization found within groups, it is not a socially bare land. This is all the more the case considering that the growing complexity of societies over time has engendered a growing complexity of relations among societies. This applies to the various aspects of international politics, including emotions and passions.

With this in mind, an analysis aimed at understanding emotions and passions in symbiosis with other key characteristics of international affairs could entail a three layered approach. The first layer (a) could stress and explain that societies and their members are prone to interact internationally through a system of values, norms, emotions and passions. The second one (b) would unpack inter- and intra-states relations. The third one (c) would focus on the study of the nexus of time, memory, emotions, and passions in the international realm.

(a) First layer: Examining international relations as part of a system would constitute a step toward a socially comprehensive and, consequently, more satisfactory conception and analysis of international politics. This could take place in four steps. First, it could show how the modalities of international actors’ emotions and passions, and the interactions that go with them, are set by values, norms, laws, power distribution, and organization that, when connected in a system, outline standards of behavior, thinking, and feeling. Second, this could lead to indicate how emotions, passions, and their corresponding actions, including collective and individual and public and private ones, are related to a dominating international culture. Third, it could be demonstrated that this culture has the tendency to be associated with the culture of the hegemonic power(s) of the period. Fourth, the approach could study how all this can evolve, introducing in the process changes in a given system or even a change of system/paradigm in international relations.

Interestingly, conceiving and examining how the different pieces (emotions, passions, values, norms, laws, power distribution and organization) work and fit together in a social system that has also a paradigmatic value (i.e. generates standards) would not be a new approach. Take for example the European thinkers at the roots of Western modern democratic politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To be sure, as part of their battle against the old order, they put a premium on agency, be it the individual in the national context or the state in the international one. But even the most committed to it did not endorse a fully atomic, self-sustained and contained, and all-powerful conception of agency. They did not assume that actors function and should function, nationally and internationally (in specific ways at each level) in a ‘social no-man's land’. While putting agency front and center, they argued that it takes place in a social system. They envisioned an enabling process, designed to set, regulate, and monitor empowerment, going both ways. On the one hand, agency was meant for actors (from the national point of view, individuals, and from the international one, states) to be able to contribute to the identification and implementation of the right, i.e. also optimal, overall social system and its sub-systems, and their institutions, including economic, civil, legal, and political institutions. On the other hand, the right social system and the institutions were intended to make it feasible for agency (individual and state) to be realized as much as possible, including in its role toward the optimization of the social system and the institutions in the service of agency. Hence, nationally and internationally, their approach of agency and social reality in their diverse aspects was done in an encompassing and holistic fashion;Footnote 97 and hence, also, their twin concerns for anthropological and social considerations. In particular, issues regarding individual agency, such as what it is to be a human being, what it should be all about, and how a human being should relate to oneself, others, and the world, were echoed by and dovetailed with questions focusing on the right social system and institutions.Footnote 98

(b) Second layer: In order for this to take place, a systematic examination of inter- and intra-state relations would be required. This could be done through a three-layered approach.

First, it could happen at the level of inter-state relations. Here a review of the emotions and passions concerning interactions among state-actors could be used as a starting point for drawing a list and, more ambitiously, a typology of the regimes of emotions and passions internationally.Footnote 99 This would have two advantages. To start with, it would show that the feelings associated with the values and meanings with which states and their members identify and which, as such, aid to motivate and guide their thinking and behavior in the international realm, are wide and rich. More specifically, it would show that they are wider and richer than the ones mainstream international relations proposes around the notions of interest and quest for security. In addition, it could help to show that the types of emotions and passions among state-actors and their members vary and evolve over time. For instance, it could be shown that they are distinct based on the forms of political regimes (for example, modern or not, Western or not, democratic or not) and on the nature (friends, allies, or enemies, of similar power or not, etc.) and the timing of their relationship (peace or war).

Second, at the intra-state level, a list and typology of emotions and passions could be established. This could be done in two ways. One could be to map for a given society the regimes of emotions and passions connected with its overall organization and its sub-components, including social groups and their members.Footnote 100 Another one could be to compare societies of various kinds and at different stages of their life (for instance rise, maturity, and decline). This double approach could lead to the identification of how regimes of emotions and passions, private and public, correspond to regimes of rights, private and public, and, ultimately, to types of societies and their social, economic, and political regimes.Footnote 101

Third, as a complementary orientation, it would be logical to bring together inter- and intra-state relations and analyze them in a dynamic manner. Studying the interactions between international and national regimes of emotions and passions would help, for example, to assess the importance of their mutual influenceFootnote 102 and how this influence accounts for their evolution. The inquiry could be pursued at three levels. One could examine how domestic elements enter into the fabric of the relationships that a country has with the ‘other’, inside and outside its borders. This could be done by analyzing how the emotions and passions associated with the individual and collective sense of self (and their matching values, rights, laws, etc.) existing in a country domestically contribute to shape the interactions with, in the words of Alexander Wendt, ‘significant Others’,Footnote 103 internally,Footnote 104 and in the context of its foreign policy.Footnote 105 Another approach could be, focusing on countries that are central to the international distribution of power, studying their impact on the international realm. A case study could be how Western regimes of rights – national (sovereignty), economic, and individual rights – and the regimes of emotions and passions related to them transformed the international landscape, including its emotional dimension.Footnote 106 This could lead to exploring also how countries at the receiving end of history are affected and how they respond in emotional and other ways to this state of affairs.Footnote 107

(c) Third layer: The last layer that could support a better conception and analysis of international life in connection with psychology concerns the nexus of time, memory, emotions, and passions. Indeed, taking seriously the social setting of international politics and the role emotions and passions play in it would have the benefit of introducing and forcing examination of an important aspect of international relations: time, and consequently also memory since there is no time awareness without the constitution and perspective of temporality (past, present, and future) that memory makes possible. In this regard, while quite a bit of attention has been given to this problematic at the national level from the historicalFootnote 108 and, more broadly, philosophicalFootnote 109 and sociologicalFootnote 110 points of view, very little has been done at the international level. Yet, the dynamics at the core of the nexus of time, memory, emotions, and passions is a key component of how actors (state-actors to begin with), based on the pressures of the international, see and interact with themselves, one another, and their environment. Thus, studying this nexus would be a welcome addition to our understanding of international life. This could be done in at least two ways. The first one could take the national realm as a starting point. It could show that remembering or not the past, and which past, and how, influence the present and future of the identity, emotions, and passions (for instance either by heightening or lessening them), and actions and reactions of actors, and that this is especially relevant in the domestic ‘management’ of relations with other nations. One way to illustrate this state of affairs would be to show that the memorialization, or not, of past crimes and humiliations endured by countries decades, if not centuries, ago can continue to influence their feelings, thinking, and behavior nationally and internationally.Footnote 111 A second way could be exploring how the power, social and value systems (paradigm) around which international politics is built are selective because their cultivation of the past, including their emotional cultivation of the past, tends to emanate from a situation of power hegemony reflecting the concerns of the hegemon. Furthermore, it could be possible to examine how this can affect in the present and the future the stability and instability of actors, their relations in the community of nations, and the international system as a whole.

3. Not surprisingly, the three layers on the basis of which a model of analysis could try to bring clarity on emotions and passions in international affairs would require political science and international relations scholars to modify their research and teaching theories and practices. At a minimum, they would have to make room for six changes they have so far resisted. To begin with, they would have to cease being captive of the domestic analogy and the beliefs that come with it (the idea of anarchy in the international sphere being one of them). For it is not because the modalities and the level of socialization of international relations differ from the ones of the national realm that they do not exist. Moreover, they would have to view agency, particularly state-agency, more than is the case today as a piece of the social puzzle, one embedded in it and difficult to understand short of studying it in a holistic and systemic fashion. In addition, political science and international relations specialists would have to value psychology, and a type of psychology not suffering from the biases and reductionist tendencies we have alluded to in the article. Furthermore, they would have to factor in a more historical and context-sensitive analysis of international life. In turn, making this possible would call for adopting an intellectually flexible and versatile approach to the problems at hand. Finally, this would presuppose a mini-institutional revolution. A more interdisciplinary organization of international relations as an academic field, both in terms of research and teaching, would be part of it. Without this, and since old habits die hard, it is unlikely that the transformations needed will ever take place.

4. When these steps will have been taken, significant progress will have been made toward a better international political theory. Along with improving our understanding of emotions and passions in international affairs, this is especially required. After all, political theory is an enterprise that up until now has been conducted essentially at and for the purposes of the national level. This can be seen in the fact that political philosophy has been first and foremost about identifying and encouraging the realization of justice – of social, political, economic, cultural, and other types of justice internally. In these circumstances, international justice, let alone global justice have been, at best, a secondary preoccupation. This may have been good enough in the past. However, as societies, following globalization, are becoming increasingly interdependent and intertwined, this is less and less tenable. The fact that fewer problems can now be tackled on the sole national plane and that, consequently, the demands for addressing issues at the global level are getting more pressing, illustrates this situation. Moreover, with countries less and less self-contained and the mixing and hybridization of the national and international realms growing, the dynamics of emotions and passions is becoming more active and strategic. This state of affairs not only brings more emotions and passions to the fore but enhances as well their importance and the need to understand them.

Indeed, it is not as if the growing role of emotions and passions internationally due to globalization was pointing in only one direction, and an exclusively positive one. Globalization generates at the same time more integration and more disintegration. The ambiguous track record of the various waves of globalization, including the present one, in the course of history is part of this process. As a result, today, more often than not, the world is torn between, on the one hand, inclusive emotions and passions such as the ones related to empathy, solidarity, respect for others, and peace, and, on the other hand, exclusionary ones such as those connected to discrimination and conflict. The oscillation between the two poles and all that rests in between is already unsettling. Nonetheless, as the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century show, the dangers associated with the possibility of the latter prevailing over the former are so grave that to underestimate the need to make sense of emotions and passions is perilous on its face. Overlooking the nature, role, and evolution of emotions and passions in international relations is not simply bad international political theory. It could lead to missing the chance to recognize what it takes for emotions and passions to – rather than turning exclusionary and lethal – contribute to the unyielding quest for peace. It could lead to the inability to nurture emotions and passions of inclusiveness, and to combat the ones of exclusion.Footnote 112

About the author

Jean-Marc Coicaud joined Rutgers University in 2011. He is Professor of Law and Global Affairs, and Director of the Division of Global Affairs. He is also a Global Ethics Fellow with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. In the spring of 2013, he served as the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University. Jean-Marc Coicaud has 14 published books (single-authored, co-authored and co-edited), and more than 70 chapters and articles in the fields of comparative politics, political and legal theory, international relations, and international law. His latest book published is Fault Lines of International Legitimacy, co-edited by Hilary Charlesworth and Jean-Marc Coicaud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Currently Dr Coicaud is working on a book titled International Legitimacy and Global Justice, for which he is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Footnotes

1 For articles, refer for example to Jeffery, Renee, ‘Reason, Emotion, and the Problem of World Poverty: Moral Sentiments Theory and International Ethics’, International Theory, 3 (1) (2011); Mercer, Jonathan, ‘Emotional Beliefs’, International Organization, 64 (1) (2010): 1–31; Fattah, Khaled and Fierke, K. M.. ‘A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East’, European Journal of International Relations, 15 (1) (2009), Ross, Andrew G., ‘Coming in from the Cold: Constructivism and Emotions’, European Journal of International Relations, 12 (2) (2006): 197–222; McDermott, Rose, ‘The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Science’, Perspective on Politics, 2 (4) (2004); Crawford, Neta C., ‘The Passions of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships’, International Security, 24 (4) (2000).

2 See Ledoux, Joseph, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 305; Ledoux, Joseph, Synaptic Self: How our Brains Become Who We are (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2002), p. 22.

3 This is not to say that we now understand everything concerning the brain and its functions, far from it. Despite the scientific progress made, modern psychology and the relevant fields of research, such as neuroscience, are still trying to figure out how the brain works.

4 Nussbaum, Martha, Upheavals of Thoughts: The Intelligence of Emotions (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

5 Refer for instance to Kingston, Rebecca and Ferry, Leonard (eds.), Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia Press, 2008). See also Kingston, Rebecca, Public Passion: Rethinking the Grounds for Political Justice (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011).

6 Elster, Jon, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 50.

7 James, William, ‘What Is an Emotion?’, in Georg Lange, Carl and James, William (eds.), The Emotions (New York, NY: Hafner Publishing Company, 1967), pp. 11–30.

8 Ledoux, The Emotional Brain, p. 125 (supra Footnote note 2).

9 ‘Feelings of fear . . . occur as part of the overall reaction to danger and are no more or less central to the reaction than the behavioral and physiological responses that also occur, such as trembling, running away, sweating, and heart palpitations.’ See Ledoux, The Emotional Brain, p. 18 (supra Footnote note 2).

10 Regarding emotions and feelings, Antonio Damasio presents the distinction in the following terms: ‘While emotions are actions accompanied by ideas and certain modes of thinking, emotional feelings are mostly perceptions of what our bodies do during the emoting, along with perceptions of our state of mind during that same period of time.’ See Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2010), p. 110.

11 A number of authors argue that certain primal emotions such as fear are capable of arising without any cognitive processing but that most emotional reactions have an immediate cognitive antecedent. Damasio, Consult Antonio, Descartes's Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York, NY: Penguin, 1994), pp. 130–9; and Jon Elster‘s assertion that ‘First, we form the belief that the world is such and such; and then we react emotionally to that belief.’ See Elster, Alchemies of the Mind, p. 408, as well as pp. 246–71 (supra Footnote note 6). We are less inclined than them to believe in the idea of cognitive antecedent. We are more prone to give to biology and its interactions with the environment a causality role in the production of emotions. But we do not see this causality as unique and fixed. Rather we tend to think that it comes with other historical factors and evolves in part under the influence of the interactions with the environment and its changes, over time (see below).

12 For a literary treatment of this issue, Zola, Emile, Doctor Pascal (North Hollywood, CA: Aegypan, translated by Mary Jane Serrano, 2006)

13 Jon Elster argues that the influence of culture on emotions is shown in three main ways: ‘in the labeling of emotions, in the evaluation of emotions, and in the determination of the behaviors that tend to trigger specific emotions’, Elster, Alchemies of the Mind, p. 412 (supra Footnote note 6).

14 Footnote Ibid., p. 117. For more on basic emotions theory, see for example Frijda, Nico, The Emotions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

15 Ledoux, The Emotional Brain, p. 121 (supra Footnote note 2). Refer also to Damasio, Descartes’ s Error, pp. 149–150 (supra Footnote note 11).

16 Ledoux, The Emotional Brain, p. 114 (supra Footnote note 2).

17 Elster, Alchemies of the Mind, pp. 141–5 (supra Footnote note 6). Let us note that Daniel M. Gross is critical of the distinction between emotions (and passions) that seen as socially constituted and those basic ones, which are not. In his view, emotions and passions are social all the way down. He also disagrees with a simple neurobiological explanation of the social component of emotions. Gross, Daniel M., The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), Chapter 1.

18 This leads to say that the ‘inner’ world is never fully ‘inner’, and that the ‘outside’ environment is never fully ‘outside’.

19 For example, a person who does not address, with the help of psychotherapy or simply by taking the bull by the horns and not running away, so to speak, her insecurities (themselves in part the product of patterns of interactions between the person, and herself others and the environment) will be emotionally, and existentially, in a very different place than if she had found ways to overcome them.

20 Meyer, Michel, Philosophy and the Passions: Towards a History of Human Nature (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, translated by Robert F. Barsky, 2000).

21 Not everybody agrees with this. Robert C. Solomon argues that emotions are one of the forms of passions: ‘There are three fundamental species of passions: (1) emotions, (2) moods, and (3) desires.’ See Solomon, Robert C., The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993), p. 70.

22 See Coicaud, Jean-Marc, ‘Crime, Justice, and Legitimacy: A Brief Theoretical Inquiry’, in Tankebe, Justice and Liebling, Alisson (eds.), Legitimacy and Criminal Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Jean-Marc Coicaud, ‘Towards an Integrated Theory of Rights, Values and Emotions/Passions in International Politics’, and A Brief Case Study of Germany and Japan: Emotions and Passions in the Making of World War II Japanese Journal of Political Science (forthcoming).

23 Coicaud, ‘Towards an Integrated Theory of Rights’ (supra Footnote note 22).

24 Coicaud, ‘Emotions and Passions in the Making of World War II’ (supra Footnote note 22).

25 Schmidt, Brian C., ‘Lessons from the Past: Reassessing the Interwar Disciplinary History of International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 42 (1998): 437.

26 Hoffmann, Stanley, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’, Daedalus, 106 (3) (1977).

27 Smith, Steve, ‘The Discipline of International Relations: Still an American Social Science?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2 (3) (2000): 399. See also Waever, Ole, ‘The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations’, International Organization, 52 (4) (1998).

28 Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney, ‘The International Relations Discipline, 1980–2006’ (text prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL: August/September 2007), p. 10.

29 Smith, ‘The Discipline of International Relations, p. 399 (supra Footnote note 27).

30 For an analysis of the impact of the natural sciences model on social sciences, see Coicaud, Jean-Marc, Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, translated by David Ames Curtis, 2002), Chapters 3 and 4.

31 Smith, ‘The Discipline of International Relations, p. 383 (supra Footnote note 27). Refer also to Kurki, Milja and Wight, Colin, ‘International Relations and Social Science’, in Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith, International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), for instance p. 21.

32 Causal inference can be defined as ‘learning about causal effects from the data observed’, in King, Gary, Keohane, Robert O., and Verba, Sidney, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Knowledge in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 8. See also: ‘Inference . . . is the ultimate goal of all good social science’ (ibid., p. 34);

33 ‘There may be no true universal theories, owing to conditions differing markedly through time and space; this is a possibility we cannot overlook. But even if this were so, science could still fulfill . . . many of its aims in giving us knowledge and true predictions about conditions in and around our spatio-temporal niche’, in O’Hear, Anthony, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 43.

34 As Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba put it in their influential book Designing Social Inquiry: ‘The scholar who searches for additional implications of a hypothesis is pursuing one of the most important achievements of all social science: explaining as much as possible with as little as possible. Good social science seeks to increase the significance of what is explained relative to the information used in the explanation. If we can accurately explain what at first appears to be a complicated effect with a single causal variable or a few variables, the leverage we have over a problem is very high. Conversely, if we can explain many effects on the basis of one or a few variables we also have high leverage. Leverage is low in the social sciences in general and even more so in particular subject areas . . . Explanation of anything seems to require a host of explanatory variables: we use a lot to explain a little’, in King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, p. 29 (supra Footnote note 32).

35 Keohane, Robert O., ‘International Institutions: Two Approaches’, International Studies Quarterly, 32 (4) (1988): 388.

36 King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 185–86 (supra Footnote note 32). They argue that political science and, therefore, international relations research is rarely experimental.

37 Footnote Ibid., p. 83.

38 These difficulties have led Jon Elster to view the ideal of law-like explanation in the social sciences as implausible and fragile, instead preferring the idea of a mechanism as intermediate between laws and descriptions. He describes mechanisms as ‘frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences’, Elster, Alchemies of the Mind, p. 1 (supra Footnote note 6).

39 King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 109–12 (supra Footnote note 32).

40 The paragraph builds on Jonathan Mercer, ‘Approaching Emotion in International Politics’, paper presented at the International Studies Association Conference (San Diego, CA, 25 April 1996), pp. 1–2.

41 For a discussion on the extent to which Thucydides is a realist, and what kind of realist, see Brown, Chris, Nardin, Terry, and Rengger, Nicholas, International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 20; Lebow, Richard Ned, Coercion, Cooperation and Ethics in International Relations (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), pp. 351–74; and Booth, Ken and Wheeler, Nicholas J., The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 13.

42 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (New York, NY: Penguin Books, translated by Rex Warner, 1972), Book I, 23, p. 49.

43 It generates self-esteem if an individual, or a country, abides by it, and shame if this is not the case. For self-esteem and shame in the Greek context, see Lebow, Richard Ned, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 63.

44 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, 76, p. 80.

45 Crawford Brough Macpherson, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 19. Refer also to Coicaud, Legitimacy and Politics, pp. 99–100 (supra Footnote note 30).

46 ‘So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation’, Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I, Chapter XIII, p. 185.

47 Footnote Ibid., Part I, Chapter VI, p. 125.

48 Footnote Ibid., Part I, Chapter VI, p. 127.

49 Smith, Michael Joseph, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), p. 13.

50 Richard Tuck argues that ‘this universal recognition by all men of the blamelessness of self-preservation is the practical foundation for Hobbes’ moral theory: his confidence that his theory was of general applicability rested on his confidence that all men displayed this fundamental moral agreement’, in Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 132.

51 Hoffmann, ‘An American Social Science’, pp. 44–5 (supra Footnote note 26). Other interesting articles on Hans J. Morgenthau's realism and its contribution to international relations are, for example, Jervis, Robert, ‘Hans Morgenthau, Realism, and the Scientific Study of International Relations’, Social Research, 61 (4) (1994); Scheuerman, William E., ‘The (classical) Realist Vision of Global Reform’, International Theory, 2 (2) (2010).

52 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 29.

53 Footnote Ibid., p. 4.

54 Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

55 John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Structural Realism’, in Dunne et al., International Relations Theories, p. 72 (supra Footnote note 31).

56 For a detailed discussion of this issue, especially in the context of Kenneth N. Walz's work and its views on human nature, refer to Crawford, Neta C., ‘Human Nature and World Politics: rethinking “Man”’, International Relations, 23 (2) (2009).

57 US foreign policy is not foreign to this mindset. Over time, America's feeling of vulnerability, which seems to have increased along with the growth of its power, has come to feed a passion for total security that is probably as illusory as illustrative of a tendency to paranoia. September 11, 2001, has only intensified this psychology.

58 Waever, ‘The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline’, pp. 714–15 (supra Footnote note 27), and Lebow, Coercion, Cooperation and Ethics in International Relations, p. 302 (supra Footnote note 41).

59 Diana Panke and Thomas Risse, ‘Liberalism’, in Dunne et al., International Relations Theories, p. 92 (supra Footnote note 31).

60 Footnote Ibid., p. 92. See also Milja Kurki and Colin Wight, ‘International Relations and Social Science’, in Dunne et al., International Relations Theories, p. 23 (supra Footnote note 31).

61 Footnote Ibid., p. 23.

62 Jonathan Mercer argues that this is part of the related and mutually reinforcing myths that rational choice theory carries about psychology. In addition to the myth stating that psychology only accounts for mistakes from rationality and cannot explain accurate judgments, there is the one indicating that psychological explanations need rational baselines, that is that we can only know what is not rational (the domain of psychology) after establishing what is rational. Mercer, Jonathan, ‘Rationality and Psychology in International Politics’, International Organization, 59 (2005): 78–9.

63 Damasio, Descartes’ s Error, for example Chapter 3 (supra Footnote note 11).

64 Mercer, ‘Rationality and Psychology in International Politics’, p. 94 (supra Footnote note 62). See also Janice Gross Stein: ‘(t)he evidence from psychological studies is now robust that people are not “rational actors”, except in the most trivial and uninteresting situations’, in ‘Psychological Explanations of International Conflicts’, in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons (eds.), Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage Publications, 2009), p. 302.

65 Lebow, Richard Ned, ‘Reason, Emotion and Cooperation’, International Politics, 42 (2005): 29.

66 Lebow, Coercion, Cooperation and Ethics in International Relations, p. 307 (supra Footnote note 41).

67 Becker, Gary S., Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), for instance Chapter 8. On the problematic application of the economic model and its conception of rationality and interest to a multiplicity of fields and objects, see Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, translated by Graham Burchell, 2008), Lecture 11.

68 Coicaud, Jean-Marc, Beyond the National Interest: The Future of UN Peacekeeping and Multilateralism in an Era of US Primacy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007).

69 Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).

70 Stiglitz, Joseph E., Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2010), Chapter 6.

71 For liberalism, for example, consult Diana Panke and Thomas Risse, ‘Liberalism’, in Dunne et al., International Relations Theories, p. 99 (supra Footnote note 31).

72 In the sub-field of decision-making studies, refer for instance to the book by Khong, Yuen Foong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 225: ‘The analysis so far has focused exclusively on what psychologists call “cold” cognitive processes . . . Little reference has been made to the role of “hot cognitions” such as affect, emotions, anxieties, and ego needs, nor have these “hot” factors been incorporated into my explanations. Although these “hot” factors are not unimportant for analogical reasoning . . . they have been omitted for two reasons. First, the role of affects or emotions in information-processing approaches is only beginning to be systematically explored by psychologists . . . The second reason for focusing on “cold” cognitive processes is theoretical parsimony. Insofar as “cold” factors are sufficient to explain most of our inferential failures and successes, there is only a residual need to resort to “hot” cognitive explanations.’

73 Incidentally, this commitment to the preservation of theoretical orthodoxy, even if it is at the expense of a better understanding of the world, illustrates how at times the professionalization of ideas can contribute to the impoverishment of the life of ideas.

74 A similar phenomenon is happening in other fields of the social sciences. For instance sociology is also paying more attention to emotions (see the bibliography mentioned in Bleiker, Roland and Hutchinson, Emma, ‘Fear No More: Emotions and World Politics’, Review of International Studies, 34 (Supplement S1): 123, Footnote note 40. Even criminal law is getting more interested in the question, for example with Karstedt, Suzanne, Loader, Ian, and Strang, Heather (eds.), Emotions, Crime and Justice (Oxford, UK: Hart, 2011)

75 Refer to Stein, Janice Gross, ‘Foreign Policy Decision Making: rational, Psychological, and Neurological Models’, in Smith, Steve, Hadfield, Amelia, and Dunne, Tim (eds.), Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), and ‘Psychological Explanations of International Conflict’, in Carlsnaes et al. (eds.), Handbook of International Relations (supra Footnote note 64).

76 Crawford, ‘The Passions of World Politics’ (supra Footnote note 1).

77 Crawford, ‘Human Nature and World Politics’ (supra Footnote note 56).

78 Mercer, ‘Rationality and Psychology in International Politics’ (supra Footnote note 62); Mercer, Jonathan, ‘Prospect Theory and Political Science’, Annual Review of Political Science (Annual Reviews), 8 (2005), ‘Human Nature and the First Image: Emotion in International Politics’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 9 (2006): 288–303, and ‘Emotional Beliefs’, International Organization, 64 (Winter) (2010): 1–31.

79 McDermott, Rose, Political Psychology in International Relations (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), ‘Prospect Theory in Political Science’, Political Psychology, 25(2) (2004), ‘The Psychological Ideas of Amos Tversky and their Relevance for Political Science’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 13(1) (2001), ‘The Feeling of Rationality’ (supra Footnote note 1).

80 Jonathan Mercer, ‘Prospect Theory and Political Science’ (supra Footnote note 78) and ‘Emotional Beliefs’ (supra Footnote note 1).

81 Rilling, J., Gutman, D., Zeh, T., Pagnoni, G., Berns, G., and Kilts, C., ‘A Neural Basis for Cooperation’, Neuron, 35 (2002), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12160756, and Mercer, ‘Rationality and Psychology in International Politics’ (supra Footnote note 62).

82 Hymans, Jacques E. C., The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

83 Fierke, K. M., ‘Agents of Death: The Structural Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Martyrdom’, International Theory, 1 (1) (2009); Hutchinson, Emma, ‘Trauma and the Politics of Emotions: Constituting Identity – Security and Community after the Bali Bombing’, International Relations, 24 (2010).

84 Bennett, William John, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003); Saurette, Paul, ‘You Dismiss Me? Humiliation and Post-9/11 Global Politics’, Review of International Studies, 32 (2006); Bleiker and Hutchinson, ‘Fear no More’ (supra Footnote note 74); Bleiker, Roland and Leet, Martin, ‘From the Sublime to the Subliminal: Fear, Awe and Wonder in International Politics’, Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 34 (2006); Crawford, ‘Human Nature and World Politics’ (supra Footnote note 56); Fattah, Khaled and Fierke, K. M., ‘A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East’, European Journal of International Relations, 15 (2009).

85 Linklater, Andrew, ‘Distant Suffering and Cosmopolitan Obligations’, International Politics, 44(January 2007); Jeffery, Renee, ‘Reason, Emotion, and the Problem of World Poverty: Moral Sentiment Theory and International Ethics’, International Theory, 3 (1) (2011).

86 Widmaier, Wesley W., ‘Emotions before Paradigms: Elite Anxiety and Populist Resentment from the Asian to Subprime Crisis’, Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (2010).

87 Gries, Peter Hays, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), Saurette, ‘You Dismiss me?’ (supra Footnote note 84); Saurette, Paul, The Kantian Imperative: Humiliation, Common Sense, Politics (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2005), Moïsi, Dominique, The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2010), and Löwenheim, Oded and Heimann, Gadi, ‘Revenge in International Politics’, Security Studies, 17 (4) (2008).

88 Kaufman, Stuart J., Modern Hatred: The Symbolics Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).

89 Edkins, Jenny, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Hutchinson, Emma and Bleiker, Roland ‘Emotional Reconciliation: Reconstituting Identity and Community After Trauma’, European Journal of Social Theory, 11 (2008).

90 Hassner, Pierre, La terreur et l’empire: La violence et la paix II (Paris: Seuil, 2003), for example pp. 383–402, and ‘La revanche des passions’, Commentaire, 110 (summer 2005).

91 Lebow, Richard Ned, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Why Nations Fight: Past and Future Motives for War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

92 Concerning Richard Ned Lebow, see Symposium on A Cultural Theory of International Relations, guest editor, David A. Welch. David A. Welch, ‘A Cultural Theory Meets Cultures of Theory’, Nicholas Rengger, ‘Remember the Aeneid? Why International Theory Should Beware Greek Gifts’, Jacques E. C. Hymans, ‘The Arrival of Psychological Constructivism’, William C. Wohlforth, ‘A Matter of Honor’, James D. Morrow, ‘Eight Questions for A Cultural Theory of International Relations’, James Der Derian ‘Reading Lebow: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Oracles’, and Lebow, Richard Ned, ‘Motives, Evidence, Identity: Engaging my Critics’, International Theory, 2 (3) (2010).

93 Footnote 31 in this article.

94 The lack of thorough analysis of the ideological dimensions of a science makes it easier for ideology to pass for science, and much more difficult for scientific pretentions to truly qualify as science. This is particularly true for the discipline of international relations in the United States.

95 Incidentally, descriptive and explanatory misgivings have a negative practical effect as well. For if it is true that valid knowledge of how the world works makes it easier, at least in principle, to know how to change it and change it for the better, the contrary is also true. The lack of comprehensive analysis of social reality renders more difficult the task of knowing how to improve it, and of effectively improving it.

96 As Albert O. Hirschman puts it: ‘(F)or the only certain and predictable feature of human affairs is. . . the futility to reduce human action to a single motive –such as interest’, Hirschman, Albert O., Rival Views on Market Society and Other Recent Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 53.

97 Refer in particular to Kant, Immanuel, To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, translated by Ted Humphrey, 1985), and the remarks by Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Lecture 3 (supra Footnote note 67).

98 Over time, especially in the American social sciences, as we have seen in this article in the context of international relations, this understanding and analysis of agency as socially embedded were more or less disregarded. In international relations, the lower degree of integration compared to the national level facilitated this orientation. The notions of (national) interest and of the state as a more or less stand-alone actor came to illustrate and, in fact, assist the spread of a somewhat de-socialized, if not de-socializing conception and analysis of international politics.

99 Richard Ned Lebow offers a typology of emotions and passions in A Cultural Theory of International Relations (supra Footnote note 43), but, as we mentioned earlier in the article, notwithstanding the formidable character of his theory, what seems to be his universal use of Greek categories is problematic.

100 Bourdieu's, Pierre work, such as Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, translated by Richard Nice, 1987) and The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Fields of Power (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, translated by Lauretta C. Clough, 1998), despite its often sociologically one-sided and deterministic orientation, offers insights on which to build. The work of Norbert Elias would also be very useful.

101 Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, and Alexis de Tocqueville, among others, allude to the significance of these considerations. See Coicaud, Jean-Marc, ‘Quelques considérations introductives sur la psychologie et l’étude des relations internationales’, in de Senarclens, Pierre (ed.), Les frontières dans tous leurs états: les relations internationales au défi de la mondialisation (Brussels: Bruylant, 2009), pp. 280–2.

102 Alexander Wendt gives an example of how significant it can be: ‘Collective self-esteem refers to a group's need to feel good about itself, for respect or status. Self-esteem is a basic human need of individuals, and one of the things that individuals seek in group membership. As expressions of this desire groups acquire the need as well. Like other national interests it can be expressed in different ways. A key factor is whether collective self-images are positive or negative, which will depend in part on relationships to significant Others, since it is by taking the perspective of the Other that the Self sees itself. Negative self-images tend to emerge from perceived disregard or humiliation by other states, and as such may occur frequently in highly competitive international environments (the Germans after World War I? The Russians today?). Since groups cannot long tolerate such images if they are to meet the self-esteem needs of their members, they will compensate by self-assertion and/or devaluation and aggression toward the Other. Positive self-images, in contrast, tend to emerge from mutual respect and cooperation’, Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 236–7.

103 Footnote Ibid., p. 236.

104 The politics and policies of naturalization are part of this story. For instance, countries of immigration, and the possibility of naturalization they can entail (for example in Europe and the United States), are likely to have another vision of the ‘other’ than countries where immigration is marginalized and naturalization not an option. Such differences in the national culture of countries are expressions of different visions of the world, and it is probable that they have some impact on the foreign policy of countries. At a time when the international distribution of power is somewhat shifting beyond the West, this type of issue could have interesting consequences on the future.

105 Consult for example Elias, Norbert, The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, translated from the German by Eric Dunning and Stephen Mennell, 1996), for example Part III.

106 At the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, the international repercussions of revolutionary upheaval in France are an illustration of this situation. The emotions and passions at the core of the French Revolution, internally, became part and parcel of the international scene and contributed to redrawing it. See Bukovansky, Mlada, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), and, more generally on these types of issues, see Allott, Philip, Eunomia: New Order for a New World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990), for instance Chapter 15.

107 Berman, Nathaniel, Passions et Ambivalences: le colonialisme, le nationalisme et le droit international (Paris: Editions Pedonne, 2008); Anghie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

108 For instance, in the French context, Rousso, Henry, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer, 1994), and Conan, Eric and Rousso, Henry, Vichy: An Ever-Present Past (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, Translated from the French by Nathan Bracher, 1998).

109 Ricoeur, Paul, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago, IL: translated from the French by Kathleen Blamey and david Pellauer, University of Chicago Press, 2006), and Margalit, Avishai, The Ethics of Memory(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

110 Halbwachs, Maurice, On Collective Memory (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, translated by Lewis A. Coser, 1992).

111 Peter Hays Gries addresses this issue for China in China's New Nationalism (supra Footnote note 87).

112 It is the very human and social need to nurture the emotions and passions of inclusiveness and to combat exclusionary ones that has triggered the interest of the author in the question of emotions and passions.

note 2
note 2
note 6
note 6
Ibid.
note 2
note 11
note 2
note 6
note 22
note 22
note 27
note 27
note 32
note 32
Ibid.
note 6
note 32
note 30
Ibid.
Ibid.
note 26
Ibid.
note 31
note 27
note 41
note 31
Ibid.
note 31
Ibid.
note 11
note 62
note 41
note 31
note 40
note 64
note 1
note 56
note 62
note 1
note 78
note 1
note 62
note 74
note 56
note 84
note 67
note 43
Ibid.
note 87