The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and

Emotional Relationships

Neta C. Crawford

International Security, Volume 24, Number 4, Spring 2000, pp. 116-156 (Article)

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 The Passion of Neta C. Crawford
World Politics
Propositions on Emotion and
Emotional Relationships

Theories
of interna-
tional politics and security depend on assumptions about emotion that are
rarely articulated and which may not be correct. Deterrence theory may be
fundamentally ºawed because its assumptions and policy prescriptions do not
fully acknowledge and take into account reasonable human responses to threat
and fear. Similarly, liberal theories of cooperation under anarchy and the
formation of security communities that stress actors’ rational calculation of the
beneªts of communication and coordination are deªcient to the extent that
they do not include careful consideration of emotion and emotional relation-
ships. Further, it is no wonder that postconºict peacebuilding efforts too
frequently fail and wars reerupt because peace settlements and peacebuilding
policies play with emotional ªre that practitioners scarcely understand but
nevertheless seek to manipulate. Systematic analysis of emotion may have
important implications for international relations theory and the practices of
diplomacy, negotiation, and postconºict peacebuilding.
International relations theory has lately tended to ignore explicit considera-
tion of “the passions.”1 Even realists, who highlight insecurity (fear) and
nationalism (love and hate), have not systematically studied emotion. Why this
ostensible neglect?2 First, the assumption of rationality is ubiquitous in inter-

Neta C. Crawford teaches political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her most recent
book is Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, eds., How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa (New
York: St. Martin’s, 1999).

I thank Jill Breitbarth, Jacklyn Cock, Joshua Goldstein, Peter Katzenstein, Margaret Keane, Lily
Ling, Rose McDermott, Jonathan Mercer, Linda Miller, Peter Uvin, anonymous reviewers, and
respondents at a Brown University seminar for helpful comments. I am especially grateful to Lynn
Eden for her insightful suggestions.

1. An exception is an excellent paper by Jonathan Mercer entitled “Approaching Emotion in

International Politics,” presented at the International Studies Association Conference, San Diego,
California, April 25, 1996. Mercer argues that international relations theory ignores emotion. I think
emotion is implicit and ubiquitous, but undertheorized.
2. Other exceptions include L.H.M. Ling, “Global Passions within Global Interests: Race, Gender,
and Culture in Our Postcolonial Order,” in Ronen Palan, ed., Global Political Economy: Contemporary
Theories (London: Routledge, forthcoming); Nancy Sherman, “Empathy, Respect, and Humanitar-
ian Intervention,” Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 12 (1998), pp. 103–119; Robert Jervis, Perception

International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring 2000), pp. 116–156

© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

116
 The Passion of World Politics 117

national relations theory.3 As Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye say: “Both
realism and liberalism are consistent with the assumption that most state
behavior can be interpreted as rational, or at least intelligent activity.”4 James
Fearon, while granting the possibility of “emotional commitments,” concen-
trates on “the problem of explaining how war could occur between genuinely
rational, unitary states.”5 And although Kenneth Waltz argues that “one cannot
expect of political leaders the nicely calculated decisions that the word ‘ration-
ality’ suggests,” and Hans Morgenthau remarked that “the possibility of con-

and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 356–
381; Irving Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conºict, Choice, and
Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1977); Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of
Defense Intellectuals,” Signs, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Summer 1987), pp. 687–718; J. Ann Tickner, Gender in
International Relations: A Feminist Perspective on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992); James G. Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban
Missile Crisis (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littleªeld, 1990); Steven Kull, Minds at War: Nuclear
Reality and the Inner Conºicts of Defense Policymakers (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Ralph K. White,
Fearful Warriors: A Psychological Proªle of U.S.-Soviet Relations (New York: Free Press, 1984); Yaacov
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign
Policy Decisionmaking (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 176–180; Neta C.
Crawford, “Postmodern Ethical Conditions and a Critical Response,” Ethics & International Affairs,
Vol. 12 (1998), pp. 121–140; and Margaret Hermann, “One Field, Many Perspectives: Building the
Foundations for Dialogue,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4 (December 1998), pp. 605–
624. See also scholars of U.S. and Canadian politics: George E. Marcus and Michael B. MacKuen,
“Anxiety, Enthusiasm, and the Vote: The Emotional Underpinnings of Learning and Involvement
during Presidential Campaigns,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1993),
pp. 672–685; and Richard Nadeau, Richard G. Niemi, and Timothy Amato, “Emotions, Issue
Importance, and Political Learning,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 3 (August
1995), pp. 558–574. See also Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments
for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).
3. As Max Weber said, “The construction of a purely rational course of action . . . serves the
sociologist as a type. . . . By comparison with this it is possible to understand the ways in which
actual action is inºuenced by irrational factors of all sorts . . . in that they account for the deviation
from the line of conduct which would be expected on the hypothesis that the action was purely
rational.” Weber, trans. A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, The Theory of Social and Economic
Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 92. This view has deep philosophical
roots: since Kant, many philosophers have separated emotion from reason and banished passions
from careful consideration. An exception is Paul E. Grifªths, What Emotions Really Are: The Problem
of Psychological Categories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
4. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Power and Interdependence Revisited,” International
Organization, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Autumn 1987), pp. 725–753, at p. 728. Keohane says that “much of my
own work has deliberately adopted Realist assumptions of egoism, as well as rationality.” Keohane,
“Empathy and International Regimes,” in Jane J. Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 227–236, at p. 227.
5. James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 3
(Summer 1995), pp. 379–414, at pp. 393, 382. Even what is meant to be a devastating critique of
the formal rational approaches to security, Stephen M. Walt, “Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Rational
Choice and Security Studies,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 5–48, summa-
rizes but does not question assumptions of rationality held in formal models.
 International Security 24:4 118

structing, as it were, a counter-theory of irrational politics is worth exploring,”

those who investigate “irrational politics” tend to focus on cognitive biases and
bounded rationality.6
Second, where studying emotion seems most appropriate, analysis of foreign
policy decisionmaking has emphasized cognition.7 This focus is under-
standable given the interesting insights psychology has mined in the analysis
of “cold” cognitive processes, especially in highlighting the effects of cognitive
heuristics and information processing limits. Only more recently has psychol-
ogy begun to untangle emotion in a way that may be useful to scholars of
world politics.
Third, ironically the emotions that security scholars do accept as relevant—
fear and hate—seem self-evidently important and are unproblematized. This
taken-for-granted status, especially of fear, has particularly pernicious effects.
Nor have scholars carefully examined other emotions, such as empathy and
love.
Finally, there are methodological concerns: emotions seem ephemeral and
deeply internal; valid measures of emotions are not obvious; and it may be
difªcult to distinguish “genuine” emotions from their instrumental display.8
The ways that psychologists study emotion are not likely to be replicated
anytime soon in foreign policy decision settings, nor is it easy to use archives
to determine how actors felt versus what they argued.9 Further, there is wari-

6. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Reºections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics,” in

Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),
pp. 323–345, at p. 330; and Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and
Peace, 6th ed., rev. Kenneth W. Thompson (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 7. And though some have
championed “ideas,” their role is generally understood as “always a valuable supplement to
interest-based, rational actor models.” John Kurt Jacobsen, “Much Ado about Ideas: The Cognitive
Factor in Economic Policy,” World Politics, Vol. 47, No. 2 (January 1995), pp. 283–310, at p. 285
(emphasis in original).
7. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics; Deborah Welch Larson, The Origins of
Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); and
Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, with contributions by Patrick M. Morgan
and Jack L. Snyder, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1985).
8. There are of course ways to measure the physiological conditions associated with particular
emotions, such as elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration commonly associated with
fear.
9. Cognition is also difªcult, though not impossible, to observe and measure. Michael D. Young
and Mark Schafer, “Is There Method in Our Madness? Ways of Assessing Cognition in International
Relations,” Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 42, Supp. 1 (May 1998), pp. 63–96; and Richard
Herrmann, “The Empirical Challenge of the Cognitive Revolution: A Strategy for Drawing Infer-
ences about Perceptions,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 175–203.
 The Passion of World Politics 119

ness about generalizing from individual to group behavior and the attributes
of organizations, including states. These are formidable concerns but not nec-
essarily fatal to theorizing and empirical research.
Notwithstanding these issues, there are important reasons to study emotion,
not least of which is its fundamental, if mostly unexamined, role in realist
theories. The analysis of emotions has at least three implications for interna-
tional relations theory. First, the common understanding of the attributes of
agents would shift from regarding actors as primarily rational. Indeed, the
rational-irrational dichotomy in international relations theory may be under-
mined and potentially overturned as scholars take advantage of an “emotional
revolution” in psychology. Second, in terms of systemic processes, it might be
more accurate, as the early realists did, to attribute fear as the engine of
the security dilemma, rather than primarily structural characteristics or the
offense-defense balance. Fear and other emotions are not only attributes of
agents, they are institutionalized in the structures and processes of world
politics. Third, the processes and analysis of diplomacy, conªdence building,
and postconºict peacebuilding would more systematically take emotions into
account.
This article is intended to clear conceptual ground and review the literature
as preparation for formulating theories of emotion in world politics. I begin
by demonstrating that emotion is already part of theories of world politics,
although it is usually implicit and undertheorized. I then give a simple deªni-
tion of emotion, so that theorists of world politics can begin analysis from a
common starting point. Third, I describe several theories of emotion held in
other disciplines. Fourth, I suggest four sets of preliminary propositions about
emotions and emotional relationships in world politics. The ªrst set consists
of propositions about the incidence and variation of emotions; I argue that we
can expect to see emotions everywhere, but the expression and intensity of
emotions, and the behaviors associated with particular emotions, will vary. The
second set focuses on the effects of emotions on perceptions. I claim that the
perceptions of others and the attribution of their motives will depend on
actors’ preexisting emotions, and emotional relationships among actors. The
third set attacks the division between emotion and cognition, highlighting
the effects of emotions on cognition. The last set of propositions focuses on
the role of emotions in characteristic processes of world politics, namely
deterrence, peacebuilding, and adherence to normative prescriptions. Finally,
I brieºy return to methodological problems and propose a preliminary re-
 International Security 24:4 120

search agenda for studying emotion and emotional relationships in world

politics.

The Centrality of Emotion in Realist and Liberal Theories

Although their concepts need clariªcation, realists may have a head start in
thinking about emotion. Robert Gilpin argues that “as Thucydides put it, men
are motivated by honor, greed, and, above all, fear.”10 Indeed, fear is central
to Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War: “What made war inevitable
was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”11
Fear justiªes behaviors that might otherwise be difªcult to justify, while cour-
age, love of one’s country, and honor are also important to Thucydides.12
Emotions are also central to Hobbes in Leviathan, where passions are animal
appetites and aversions.13 Emotions (after the Latin root motions), or the pas-
sions, are natural and inescapable in Leviathan, and Hobbes considers several
emotions, from compassion, desire, honor, and love to contempt, envy, and
grief. Fear is vitally important for Hobbes’s account of politics. The state of
nature is fear and a war of all against all; fear brings people out of the state of
nature and into the state: “The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare
of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodius living; and a
Hope by their Industry to obtain them.”14 Uncontrollable passion makes us
insecure and explains why we cannot trust others to keep their word or the
peace.15 Clausewitz wrote about the importance of passion in war: “As a total
phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a paradoxical trinity—
composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded
as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the

10. Robert G. Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in Keohane, Neorealism
and Its Critics, pp. 301–321, at p. 305.
11. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Penguin, 1986),
p. 49.
12. “Fear of Persia was our chief motive: though afterwards we thought, too, of our own honour
and our own interest. . . . when tremendous dangers are involved no one can be blamed for looking
to his own interest.” Ibid., p. 80.
13. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin, 1986), pp. 118–130.
14. Ibid., p. 188.
15. “For he that performeth ªrst, has no assurance that the other will performe after; because the
bonds of words are too weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other Passions, without
the feare of some coercive Power; which in the condition of meer Nature, where all men are equall,
and judges of the justnesse of their own fears cannot possibly be supposed.” Ibid., p. 196. See also
p. 200.
 The Passion of World Politics 121

creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an

instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.”16
Realists and liberals wrote less of emotions in the twentieth century. Still,
passions have a role—for instance, in Quincy Wright’s arguments that mutual
fear is a cause of war, and that fear of war prompts citizens to keep even
undesirable rulers in power.17 Alfred Vagts suggests that “love of war, bellicos-
ity, is the counterpart of the love of peace; but militarism is more, and some-
times less, than the love of war. It covers every system of thinking and valuing
and every complex of feelings which rank military institutions and ways above
the ways of civilian life, carrying military mentality and modes of acting and
decision into the civilian sphere.”18 Love and hate are well encapsulated in the
idea of nationalism, which remains extremely important to contemporary
realist theory.19 Morgenthau claims that individual anxieties are the root of
nationalism: “Personal fears are thus transformed into anxiety for the na-
tion.”20 Further, it is widely believed that men will ªght for love of country,
and even more bravely out of their brotherly feelings for their comrades.21 In
a passage that conºates the emotion of fear with the colloquial use of “fear”
as reasonable expectation, Waltz argues that “a self-help system is one in which
those who do not help themselves, or who do so less effectively than others,
will fail to prosper, will lay themselves open to dangers, will suffer. Fear of
such unwanted consequences stimulates states to behave in ways that tend
toward the creation of balances of power.”22 Soldiers will be especially ruthless
if they can be taught to both fear and hate their enemy. John Dower’s War

16. Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 89.
17. Quincy Wright, A Study of War. Second Edition with a Commentary on War since 1942 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press [1942] 1965), pp. 1562, 1222.
18. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Meridian Books [1937] 1959), p. 17.
19. Barry R. Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,” International Security, Vol.
18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 80–124; and Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,”
International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 5–39.
20. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, p. 125. Morgenthau argues: “Qualitatively, the emotional
intensity of the identiªcation of the individual with his nation stands in inverse proportion to the
stability of the particular society as reºected in the sense of security of its members. The greater
the stability of society and the sense of security of its members, the smaller are the chances for
collective emotions to seek an outlet in aggressive nationalism, and vice versa.” Ibid., pp. 122–123.
21. For a discussion, see Anthony Kellet, “The Soldier in Battle: Motivational and Behavioral
Aspects of the Combat Experience,” in Betty Glad, ed., Psychological Dimensions of War (London:
Sage, 1990), pp. 215–235; and Joshua Goldstein, “War and Gender,” unpublished manuscript,
American University. On unit cohesion, see Elizabeth Kier, “Homosexuals in the U.S. Military:
Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 1998),
pp. 5–39.
22. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 118.
 International Security 24:4 122

without Mercy is a chilling account of how hatred was engendered and mobi-
lized by both sides in the Paciªc theater during World War II to both motivate
and justify atrocities, and may have prolonged the war.23
Among scholars of world politics, fear has translated into a belief in the fact
of insecurity. Harold Lasswell, one of the last international relations theorists
to write extensively about emotion and “emotional insecurities,” echoes the
conventional wisdom that passions are biologically based and uncontrollable,
and previews the frustration-aggression hypothesis:24 “The expectation that
violence will ultimately settle the clashing demands of nations and classes
means that every detail of social change tends to be assessed in terms of its
effect on ªghting effectiveness, divides participants in two conºicting camps,
segregates attitudes of friendliness and of hostility geographically, and creates
profound emotional insecurities in the process of rearranging the current
political alignment. . . . The ºight into danger becomes an insecurity to end
insecurity.”25
Emotion virtually dropped from the radar screen of international relations
theorists in the mid-twentieth century when the rational actor paradigm be-
came dominant.26 As Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink say: “Like law
and philosophy, affect and empathy have been swept under the carpet in recent
decades. . . . The result is politics without passion or principles which is hardly
the politics of the world in which we live.”27 Yet, despite the hegemony of
rationalist approaches, mention—if not systematic conceptualization and
analysis—of emotion and emotional relationships has lately increased. For
instance, Jonathan Mercer argues, “One way to test for the presence of norms
is to look for emotion.”28 Ronald Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter
Katzenstein say that there is an international cultural environment that in-

23. John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Paciªc War (New York: Pantheon, 1986).
Mercer, “Approaching Emotion in International Politics,” argues that hate prolonged the war.
24. John Dollard, Leonard W. Doob, Neal Miller, O.H. Mowret, and Robert R. Sears, in collabora-
tion with Clellend S. Ford, Carl Iver Hoverland, and Richard T. Sullenberger, Frustration and
Aggression (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 1939); and Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New
York: Bantam Press, 1967).
25. Harold Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 57.
Morgenthau, Vagts, and Lasswell did not necessarily suppose a dichotomy between emotion and
rationality, though Morgenthau did stress the assumption of rationality.
26. Although Herbert Simon distinguished “substantive” or ideal-type rational decisionmaking
from “procedural” rationality, emphasizing cognitive limits, emotion was not a part of the domi-
nant framework. Simon, “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political
Science,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 79, No. 2 (June 1985), pp. 293–304.
27. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political
Change,” International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Autumn 1998), pp. 887–917, at p. 916.
28. Mercer, “Approaching Emotion in International Politics,” p. 23.
 The Passion of World Politics 123

cludes emotional relationships, speciªcally “international patterns of amity

and enmity.”29 Keohane both takes empathy seriously and attempts to put it
into a rational actor framework. Speciªcally, Keohane argues that empathy and
empathetic interdependence play a “subordinate role” to rational interests, and
he suggests that “if government’s deªnitions of self-interest incorporate em-
pathy, they will be more able than otherwise to construct international regimes,
since shared interests will be greater.”30 Richard Rorty argues that empathy
inºuences respect for human rights: “The emergence of the human rights
culture seems to owe nothing to increased moral knowledge and everything
to hearing sad and sentimental stories.”31 These are potentially important
arguments; what remains is the development and evaluation of a coherent
account of passion’s role in world politics.

Deªning Emotion

While many believe that Charles Darwin was the ªrst to systematically study
emotion—he attempted to describe the expression of universal human emo-
tions and locate their antecedents in other species—scholars have long under-
taken to deªne and categorize emotion. Still, biologists, philosophers,
anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have not agreed on a single
deªnition of emotion. Moreover, there is disagreement about which “feelings”
count as emotion, argument about the biological components of emotion, and
even controversy about whether biological changes associated with emotion
(e.g., rapid breathing and heartbeat) precede or follow cognition. These dis-
agreements have deep historical roots.
Aristotle, Hippocrates, and other Greek philosophers and physicians spoke
of emotions, as does the Li Chi, a Chinese encyclopedia from the ªrst century
b.c. Aristotle deªned emotion as “those things by the alteration of which men differ
with regard to those judgments which pain and pleasure accompany.”32 The origins

29. Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture
in National Security,” in Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996), pp. 33–75, at p. 34.
30. Keohane, “Empathy and International Regimes,” p. 236.
31. Richard Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality,” in Stephen Shute and Susan
Hurley, eds., On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, 1993 (New York: Basic Books, 1993),
pp. 111–134, at p. 118. See also Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic
of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993).
32. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. with an introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred (New York:
Penguin, 1991), p. 141 (emphasis in original). Elsewhere Aristotle said: “For he is by nature a slave
who is capable of belonging to another (and that is why he does so belong), and who participates
in reason so far as to apprehend it but not to possess it; for the animals other than man are
 International Security 24:4 124

of the English word “emotion” are found in Latin and French expressions for
moving from one place to another, and exciting or stirring up. Emotion was
also used to describe political or social agitation and popular disturbance.
Contemporary dictionaries give deªnitions in phrases like “agitation of the
passions, or sensibilities, often involving physiological changes.” The second
edition of the Oxford English Dictionary describes emotion as a “mental ‘feeling’
or ‘affection’ (e.g., of pleasure or pain; desire or aversion, surprise, hope, or
fear, etc.) as distinguished from cognitive or volitional states of consciousness.”
“Affect” is described as “feeling, desire, or appetite, as opposed to reason.”
Such characterizations are vague, however, and simultaneously reproduce the
conventional view that emotions are unconscious, beyond an actor’s control,
and separate from cognition.
Further, as Jon Elster says, “The lack of agreement about what emotions are
is paralleled by lack of agreement on what emotions there are.”33 Aristotle,
discusses ten emotions: anger, fear, shame, indignation, envy, jealousy, calm,
friendship, favor, and pity. Darwin studied the expression of anxiety, grief,
dejection, despair, joy, love, devotion, ill temper, sulkiness, determination,
hatred, anger, deªance, contempt, disgust, guilt, pride, shame, and modesty.34
Although contemporary psychologists also do not agree on a list of emotions,
in recent years many have settled on “basic” emotional states including love,
fear, anger, joy, sadness, and shame.35
Difªculties in deªnition and categorization are even greater in a comparative
framework. Aristotle and Darwin argued that emotions were universally rec-
ognized and basically the same across cultures, and recent research has lent
strong support to this view.36 Other scholarship shows that emotions and
emotional categories are thought of both similarly and differently across cul-
tures.37 James Russell argues that differences suggest caution when speaking
of “universal” emotions: “Some writers assume that emotions have to be

subservient not to reason, but to feelings.” Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 23.
33. Jon Elster, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), p. 241.
34. Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press [1872] 1965). See also Paul Ekman, ed., Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in
Review (New York: Academic Press, 1973).
35. A short overview is Randolph R. Cornelius, The Science of Emotion: Research and Tradition in the
Psychology of Emotion (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996).
36. For example, Paul Ekman, The Face of Man: Expressions of Universal Emotions in a New Guinea
Village (New York: Garland STPM Press, 1980).
37. See Richard Shweder, “The Cultural Psychology of the Emotions,” in Michael Lewis and
Jeannette M. Haviland, eds., The Handbook of Emotions (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), pp. 417–
431.
 The Passion of World Politics 125

classiªed as we do in English—in terms of anger, fear, anxiety, depression, and

so on. If English language categories regarding emotion are not universal, then
we have no guarantee that emotion, anger, fear, and so on are labels for universal,
biologically ªxed categories of nature. Rather, they are hypotheses formulated
by our linguistic ancestors.”38
Disagreements on the deªnition of emotion, and whether there are basic and
universal emotions, go to deep questions of ontology, method, and theory. It
is thus impossible, in a short article, to propose and justify a deªnition of
emotion that covers all the ground required to develop a theory of emotion
for world politics. Instead, I offer a simple deªnition designed to be agnostic
about the sources and consequences of emotion. Emotions are the inner states
that individuals describe to others as feelings, and those feelings may be associated
with biological, cognitive, and behavioral states and changes. Thus emotions are ªrst
of all subjective experiences that also have physiological, intersubjective, and
cultural components. Feelings are internally experienced, but the meaning
attached to those feelings, the behaviors associated with them, and the recog-
nition of emotions in others are cognitively and culturally construed and
constructed. Further, humans have emotional relationships with one another
that are characterized by the type and degree of emotional involvement;
emotional relationships may be neutral or characterized by degrees of empathy
or antipathy and so on. Finally, there are different levels of emotional arousal.
This provisional deªnition should be debated and improved. After the follow-
ing review of biological, cognitive, psychodynamic, and social learning theo-
ries of emotion, the virtue of a simple deªnition containing few assumptions
should be apparent.

Conºicting Theories of Emotion

Theories of the sources, operation, and consequences of emotion are found all
over the disciplinary map. Aristotle, Machiavelli, Descartes, Spinoza, and
Hume are probably the most famous philosophers who discussed emotion.

38. James A. Russell, “Culture and the Categorization of Emotion,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 110,
No. 3 (November 1991), pp. 426–450, at p. 444 (emphasis in original). See also Russell, “Is There
Universal Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expression? A Review of the Cross-Cultural Stud-
ies,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 115, No. 1 (January 1994), pp. 102–141; Paul Ekman, “Strong
Evidence for Universals in Facial Expressions: A Reply to Russell’s Mistaken Critique,” Psychologi-
cal Bulletin, Vol. 115, No. 2 (March 1994), pp. 268–287; Carroll E. Izard, “Innate and Universal Facial
Expressions: Evidence from Development and Cross-Cultural Research,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol.
115, No. 2 (March 1994), pp. 288–299; and Linda Camras, Elizabeth A. Holland, and Mary Jill
Patterson, “Facial Expression,” in Lewis and Haviland, The Handbook of Emotions, pp. 199–208.
 International Security 24:4 126

Aristotle saw emotion as something that could be manipulated by rhetoric and

that would also affect the reception of arguments. Aristotle was also an early
cognitivist. For instance, he writes about fear as a “certain expectation of
undergoing some destructive experience.”39 René Descartes in Passions of the
Soul viewed emotions as both biological and cognitive, with emotion following
perception. And like Plato, Kant rejected a role for passion in reason, while
David Hume argued the opposite: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave
of the passions, and can never pretend to any other ofªce than to serve and
obey them.”40
Theories of emotion in psychology are distinguished by their assumptions
about the source and consequences of emotion.41 Despite the dominance of
cognitive approaches more generally in psychology during the latter half of
the twentieth century, biological or naturalist conceptions of emotion are the
oldest and the most durable, evolving from the ancient Greeks, who thought
emotions were caused by humours and black bile, to modern neurochemistry.
For William James, emotions were bodily sensations. Freud’s letter to Einstein
articulates a biological view of emotion when he asserted that war is a conse-
quence of an “active instinct for hatred and destruction” as opposed to the
“love instinct.”42
Darwin’s early work on emotion put emotions and emotional expressions
in an evolutionary biology perspective. His concern, using what he saw as the
continuity of emotional expressions between animals and humans, was to
show an evolutionary link between animal and human emotion. Contempo-
rary evolutionary biologists have continued to compare animal and human
emotions and behavior, arguing that emotions are functional or adaptive. For

39. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, p. 155.

40. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 415. See
also Robert C. Solomon, “The Philosophy of Emotions,” in Lewis and Haviland, The Handbook of
Emotions, pp. 3–15; and William Lyons, “An Introduction to the Philosophy of the Emotions,” in
K.T. Strongman, ed., International Review of Studies on Emotion, Vol. 2 (New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1992), pp. 295–313.
41. For more on deªnition and theories of emotion in psychology, see Paul Ekman and Richard J.
Davidson, The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);
and Carroll E. Izard, Jerome Kagan, and Robert B. Zajonc, eds., Emotions, Cognition, and Behavior
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
42. Sigmund Freud, “Why War?” in Leon Bramson and George W. Goethals, eds., War: Studies
from Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp. 71–80, at p. 76. See
also Anthony Stevens, The Roots of War: A Jungian Perspective (New York: Paragon House, 1989).
Those inºuenced by Freud see emotions and emotional relationships as a consequence of both
psychological development and relationship dynamics. For instance, see Vamik D. Volkan, De-
metrios A. Julius, and Joseph V. Montville, eds., The Psychodynamics of International Relationships,
Vol. 1, Concepts and Theories (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990).
 The Passion of World Politics 127

example, the function of fear, which includes physiological changes such as a

rapid heartbeat, is to prepare animals for ªghting or running away.43
Biological or naturalistic theories of emotion strongly inºuenced psychologi-
cal theories, moving many students of emotion to examine ever smaller physi-
cal structures (such as the hypothalamus, amygdala, and extended amygdala
in the human brain) and neurochemical (amino acids, hormones, and neuro-
modulators) processes within and between cells.44 For example, some re-
searchers believe that “pathological anxiety” (or fear that is exaggerated in
proportion to the fearful stimulus) is a stronger reaction of the same brain
circuits that are involved in normal fear responses. Such circuits, located in the
amygdala, may display heightened responses to fearful stimuli as a result of
psychological trauma or repeated exposure to stressful stimuli. This “hyper-
excitability” or “sensitization” of fear circuits is related to or caused by the
prior action of neuropeptides and hormones.45 Prior experiences, or trauma,
may change the biology of the brain, affecting later emotional (and cognitive)
reactions and behavior; the brain learns to be fearful having once or repeatedly
experienced great fear. Further, fear and anger are closely related at the bio-
logical level.
An example in international relations theory of a naturalistic approach to
emotion is to suppose that once kindled, ethnic or nationalist hatred are primal
and that little can be done, besides separating antagonists, to diffuse such
feeling. As John Mearsheimer and Stephen Van Evera argued with regard to a
possible settlement of the 1999 war in Kosovo: “President Clinton is still

43. See Robert Plutchik, “A General Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion,” in Plutchik and
Henry Kellerman, eds., Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience, Vol. 1, Theories of Emotion (New
York: Academic Press, 1980), pp. 3–33. Paul D. MacLean has described humans as having a “triune
brain” with reptilian, paleomammalian, and neomammalian structures. The paleomammalian part
of the brain, he argues, is an inheritance of lower mammals and the site of a hypothesized “limbic”
system, which some evolutionary biologists believe is the biological seat of emotion. MacLean,
“Sensory and Perceptive Factors in Emotional Functions of the Triune Brain,” in Amélie Oksenberg
Rorty, ed., Explaining Emotions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 9–36.
44. A short overview and synthesis is Ross Buck, “The Biological Affects: A Typology,” Psychological
Review, Vol. 106, No. 2 (April 1999), pp. 301–336. Humans with intact cognitive functions, but with
emotion-processing parts of their brain removed or damaged, do not make what we would
consider rational decisions. See Antonio P. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the
Human Brain (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1994).
45. Jeffrey B. Rosen and Jay Schulkin, “From Normal Fear to Pathological Anxiety,” Psychological
Review, Vol. 105, No. 2 (April 1998), pp. 325–350; Stephan G. Anagostaras, Michelle D. Craske, and
Michael S. Fanselow, “Anxiety: At the Intersection of Genes and Experience,” Nature Neuroscience,
Vol. 2, No. 9 (September 1999), pp. 780–782; and Ewe Frey and Richard G.M. Morris, “Synaptic
Tagging and Long-Term Potentiation,” Nature, February 6, 1997, pp. 533–536. Also Margaret Keane,
personal correspondence, May 18, 1999.
 International Security 24:4 128

clinging to his position that NATO should accept nothing less than a settlement
giving autonomy to the Albanian Kosovars inside Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.
But this goal is not only unattainable, it’s also undesirable. Does anyone
seriously believe the Albanian Kosovars and Serbs can live together again?”
They continued, “Now Kosovo is consumed by a war that stems from hatreds
born of great cruelties that Albanians and Serbs have inºicted on each other
in the past. This war could have been avoided if they had been separated by
political partition at some earlier point.”46
Conversely, cognitive psychology regards emotions as a result of thoughts
and beliefs:47 “Learning, memory, perception, and thought—in short cognitive
activity—are always key causal aspects of the emotional response pattern.”48
Further, commitments, goals, and values—motivation—also inºuence emo-
tional response and are related to another critical aspect of the cognitive
approach, the idea of appraisal, where emotional responses are in part based
on a person’s evaluation of an event’s signiªcance for their well-being. Magda
Arnold argued that humans are constantly deliberating or appraising, and this
inºuences emotional responses such as fear: “We remember what happened to
us in the past, how this thing has affected us and what we did about it. Then
we imagine how it will affect us this time and estimate whether it will be
harmful.”49 Social learning theory suggests that emotions, and behaviors asso-
ciated with emotions (e.g., aggression), are not “natural” but learned and
reinforced through social interactions.50 Emotions are amenable to revision by
cognitive means. Cognitive psychology also explores the reverse association—
how emotions inºuence cognition.
Social constructivist theories in psychology stress cultural and contextual
variations in emotions and conclude that emotions are not entirely or even
primarily natural. Rather, “weak” constructivists contend that there is a con-
tinuum from the natural to the social—speciªcally, that much of what is
considered to be emotion is socially constructed. James Averill argues that

46. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Van Evera, “Redraw the Map, Stop the Killing,” New York
Times, April 19, 1999, p. A23.
47. For reviews, see Richard S. Lazarus, “Progress on a Cognitive-Motivational-Relational Theory
of Emotion,” American Psychologist, Vol. 46, No. 8 (August 1991), pp. 819–834; and Lazarus, Allen
D. Kanner, and Susan Folkman, “Emotions: A Cognitive-Phenomenological Analysis,” in Plutchik
and Kellerman, Emotion, pp. 189–217.
48. Lazarus, Kanner, and Folkman, “Emotions,” p. 192.
49. Quoted in June Crawford, Susan Kippax, Jenny Onyx, Una Gault, and Pam Benton, Emotion
and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory (London: Sage, 1992), p. 24 (emphasis in original).
50. Albert Bandura, Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1973).
 The Passion of World Politics 129

“emotions are responses that have been institutionalized by society as a means

of resolving conºicts which exist within social systems.”51 “Strong” construc-
tivists such as Rom Harré suggest that “emotions can exist only in the recip-
rocal exchanges of a social encounter” and that emotions may only be
understood in their social context, speciªcally their place in the “local moral
order.”52 Claire Armon-Jones outlines four elements to the argument that
emotions are “socioculturally” constituted. First, “emotions are characterized
by attitudes such as beliefs, judgments, and desires, the contents of which are
not natural, but are determined by the systems of cultural belief, value, and
moral value of particular communities.” Second, the attitudes that characterize
emotions are learned, not innate. Third, emotions are context-sensitive shared
expectations prescribed by social groups for speciªc social situations. Fourth,
“emotions are constituted in order to serve sociocultural functions. . . . to
restrain undesirable attitudes and behaviour, and to sustain and endorse cul-
tural values.”53 Theories of nationalism that stress the social construction of
nations and nationalist sentiments are analogous in their assumptions to the
social constructivist school of emotion.
In sum, naturalist or biological theories of emotion are dominant in Western
culture and psychology. Further, clinical psychiatry appears to offer support
for biological theories of emotion. On the other hand, evidence from cognitive
psychology supports the argument that emotions and behavioral responses to
emotions are learned, and that both feelings and behavior are inºuenced by
how individuals think about events. Further, social contructivists highlight the
cross-cultural variation and the social functions of emotions. Cognitive and
social constructivist theories are usually opposed to biological theories, al-
though these approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive; biological,
cognitive, and social constructivist approaches to emotion account for ªndings
at different levels (cellular, behavioral, social, etc.) and explain different
ªndings altogether. Speciªcally, as the research on pathological fear suggests,
no one theoretical approach will likely be able to account for the complex
relationships between experience, perception, cognition, culture, and biology.

51. James R. Averill, “Emotion and Anxiety: Sociocultural, Biological, and Psychological Determi-
nants,” in Rorty, Explaining Emotions, pp. 37–72, at p. 37. Social constructivist theories of emotion
are in some senses functional theories and subject to all the critiques appropriate to any functional
account.
52. Rom Harré, “An Outline of the Social Constructionist Viewpoint,” in Harré, ed., The Social
Construction of Emotions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 2–14, at pp. 5, 6.
53. Claire Armon-Jones, “The Thesis of Constructionism,” in ibid., pp. 32–55, at pp. 33–34.
 International Security 24:4 130

Propositions on Emotion in World Politics

The time is ripe for addressing emotion in world politics and, at the same time,
the politically consequential situations of international relations may contrib-
ute insights and evidence to work on emotion undertaken in other disciplines.
Much more basic work would be required before a comprehensive theory of
emotion in world politics could be constructed and ªnd support. Nevertheless,
with appropriate humility, I suggest propositions on the incidence and vari-
ation of emotion, as well as emotions’ effects on perception, cognition, and
processes or behavior in world politics that realist, liberal, constructivist, and
poststructuralist scholars may investigate. Several of the propositions articulate
assertions about emotions that are implicit in international relations theory. In
other instances, I draw on insights from other ªelds, applying them to the
problems of foreign policy decisionmaking, war, peace, and diplomacy. In
articulating these propositions, I do not assume a sharp division between
cognition and emotion, nor do I assume that biological, cognitive, or construc-
tivist approaches are correct. Rather, I am agnostic about theoretical ap-
proaches for the reasons given above.

incidence and variation of emotion

The theoretical approaches to emotion described above suggest that emotions
are ubiquitous even as the level of feeling, the type of emotional expression,
and the behaviors associated with speciªc emotions vary within and across
cultures. And obviously, individuals also vary in their emotions, emotional
expression, and behavior over time and in different settings. Further, cognitive
and social constructivist theories of emotion suggest that emotions are malle-
able depending on context and social learning.
expression. Biological theories of emotion suggest that emotions will be
universally expressed, although their expression and effects will vary in inten-
sity. Emotions are a human (or more generally, animal) characteristic. Strong
cultural taboos against expressing particular emotions may make it difªcult,
however, to notice and study emotions. So, to analyze emotions, researchers
may need to ask different questions than are generally asked by scholars of
world politics and engage in cross-cultural comparisons during crisis and
“normal” decisionmaking periods.
Even though emotions are ubiquitous, they are most likely to be articulated
and noticed in a crisis. Cuban missile crisis participants, for example, spoke of
both their fear and the potential for escalation to conventional and nuclear war.
 The Passion of World Politics 131

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said, “We are fearful of these
MiG-21s” based in Cuba. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, “Mr. Khrushchev
. . . knows that we have a substantial nuclear superiority, but he also knows
that we don’t really live under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that
he has to live under fear of ours.”54 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
told President John F. Kennedy early in the crisis that he was “anxious,” and
he expressed empathy for the United States: “I feel very sorry for you and all
the troubles. I’ve been through them. I only want to tell you how much we
feel for you.”55 Members of the Executive Committee of the National Security
Council (ExComm) were concerned not to display fear of the Soviet Union.56
As National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy said, “We don’t want to look
as if we got scared off from anything.”57 On one of the most hectic days of the
crisis, Vice President Lyndon Johnson said: “Every damn place you go, there’s
fear. If you walk into Turkey, they’ve got to be insecure. Berlin. People feel it.
They don’t know why they feel it and how. But they feel it.”58 Only after the
Cuban missile crisis did some key U.S. decisionmakers stress their fear, if only
in some cases to say that some of their fear was “mistaken” and the dangers
of war were not so great.59 This example suggests that diaries, transcripts, and
where feasible, post hoc interviews with actors may help scholars understand
the role and consequences of emotions, paying attention to the subtle ways
emotions are expressed, managed, and denied, and what happens to those who
express emotions in decisionmaking settings.
variation. If emotions and emotional relationships are cognitive and so-
cially constructed, one can expect different expressions historically, within
societies, and across cultures. Emotions may have differing salience and be-
havioral components in different organizational and cultural settings. Cogni-
tive theories stress preexisting beliefs and social learning: what actors believe
about a situation will determine, at least in part, their emotional reaction,
including behavioral and even physiological components of emotional re-

54. Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the
Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 60.
55. Ibid., pp. 286–287. This raises the question of why leaders believe it important to express
empathy.
56. Ibid., p. 91.
57. Ibid., p. 238.
58. Quoted in ibid., p. 587.
59. A more sanguine view of danger and fear in the crisis is McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival:
Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 422; see also
pp. 453–458. For a sense of fear and intensity, see Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the
Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969).
 International Security 24:4 132

sponse. So there should be cross-cultural variations in the recognition, value,

and role of emotions in decisionmaking and action. Research shows both
similarities and differences in expression, recognition, value, and even physi-
ological associations with emotion across cultures.60 For example, apart from
the normative commitment to nonviolence that is usually characteristic of
peaceful societies, in some nonviolent societies, fear of others is associated with
retreat and reassurance, rather than hostility and aggression.61 What factors
inºuence the response to fear?
Particular emotions will likely have different salience and expression within
organizations, and small informal groups are more likely to be affected by
emotion and emotional relationships than larger organizations governed by
routines and characterized by impersonal contact. Indeed, some organizations
will stress certain emotions, if those feelings are considered useful to their
mission, while others may deemphasize emotions. Groups whose members
work without rigid lines of responsibility and authority, and groups that
depend on extreme self-sacriªce by individual members, may use positive
emotional appeals more often, and consequently come to rely more on such
appeals in the absence of developing a formal chain of authority or reducing
self-sacriªce.
learning. If emotions and emotional relationships are at least to some
degree determined cognitively and socially, then emotions are labile; emotions
can be learned and (with some difªculty) relearned, as can the behavioral
components of emotions. Social learning theories may help in understanding
how aggressive nationalist and ethnocentric beliefs and their associated emo-
tions are used to mobilize states’ populations for war. Speciªcally, not only are
beliefs socialized, so are emotions and emotional relationships. Further, the
level of emotion may be manipulated. Clausewitz argues that the “passions
that are to be kindled in war must already be inherent in the people.”62
Whether existing passions may, in any instance, be heightened depends on the
historical context; the existence of wartime public relations (propaganda) de-
partments is a testament to the importance of both implanting and kindling
emotions in domestic populations to mobilize support and sacriªce for war.
Conversely, cognitivist and social constructivist understandings of how emo-

60. Batja Mesquita and Nico H. Frijda, “Cultural Variations in Emotions: A Review,” Psychological
Bulletin, Vol. 112, No. 2 (March 1992), pp. 179–204.
61. Bruce D. Bonta, “Cooperation and Competition in Peaceful Societies,” Psychological Bulletin,
Vol. 121, No. 2 (March 1997), pp. 299–320.
62. Clausewitz, On War, p. 89.
 The Passion of World Politics 133

tions may be shaped by learning implies that even beliefs and emotions that
are tightly linked may be relearned. This emphasis on learning has implica-
tions for helping policymakers who seek to contain or eliminate aggressive
nationalism.

emotion and perception

Diplomats as well as scholars of international relations have long understood
the importance of perception in world politics. For example, the concept of a
security dilemma pivots on perceptions of intention, not reality: what one
group does to defend itself may be percieved as aggressive by another group.
Emotions are part of perceptual processes.
interpretation. Like intentions, emotions may be misperceived. Cultural
distance or difference affects one’s ability to interpret others’ emotions. Differ-
ences between cultures, sexes, and groups’ attitudes toward emotion and its
expression are often stereotyped and exaggerated. Alternatively, differences are
also sometimes not taken into account. Individuals tend to view other group’s
emotions differently from members of that group’s own understanding of their
emotions, and cultural distance may determine the ability to decode emotion.63
Who has not heard statements that some other culture is “unemotional” and
does not value life the way the speaker’s culture does, or that some other
culture is “irrational“?64 Cultural distance may also be found within cultures.
Speciªcally, men and women in the West have stereotypes about the level and
kind of male versus female emotions. Yet “men and women do not differ
dramatically in their immediate reports of emotional experience, even in con-
texts that are differently relevant for men and women (control vs. intimacy).
This ªnding raises the possibility that women’s ‘greater emotionality’ is a
culturally constructed idea, based on observed differences in emotional expres-
sion—differences which are socialized from a very early age.”65 Scholars con-
cerned with perception ought to attend to the social construction of emotions

63. Jeffery Pittam, Cynthia Gallois, Saburo Iwawaki, and Pieter Kroonenberg, “Australian and
Japanese Concepts of Expressive Behavior,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 5
(September 1995), pp. 451–473.
64. George Kennan’s 1946 long telegram is an example. Kennan argues that the Soviet leadership
is “impervious to the logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to the logic of force.” Kennan also
describes the Soviet leadership and Russian people as fearful. “Moscow Embassy Telegram #511,”
in Thomas Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis, eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and
Strategy, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 50–63, at p. 61.
65. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Lucy Robin, Paula Pietromonaco, and Kristen M. Eyssell, “Are Women
the ’More Emotional’ Sex? Evidence from Emotional Experiences in Social Context,” Cognition and
Emotion, Vol. 12, No. 4 (July 1998), pp. 555–578, at p. 575.
 International Security 24:4 134

within and across groups. If one group consistently views another as hostile
rather than fearful—and this perception is reinforced by that group’s tendency
to issue bellicose statements when it feels threatened—spirals of mispercep-
tions seem more likely.
emotional relationships. Individuals and groups put their relationships
to others into emotional categories that inºuence their perceptions of the other,
especially how ambiguous actions and situations are interpreted. Because
many behaviors are ambiguous, foreign policy decisionmakers constantly at-
tribute causes and motives to others’ behavior. They must therefore assess
whether what others articulate as the reason for their actions is the true cause
or reason. Such assessments are vital to any understanding of a situation and
for determining who is a friend and who is a threat. Attribution may be “quite
rational” as Robert Jervis supposes, as decisionmakers analyze the behavior of
others “in a form something like an equation, assuming what the other expects
to gain from an action must be at least equal to the expected costs and risks.”66
More likely, however, the prior emotional relationship between groups may
inºuence the assignment of reasons and intentions (attributions) to others’
behavior.
Categories of emotional relationships may be neutral and detached, or more
likely they may be emotional—characterized, for example, by empathy, antipa-
thy, or hostility, and affected by ethnocentrism and nationalism. Mercer argues
that “the more we identify with our group, the more likely we are to discrimi-
nate against out-groups. . . . Group comparisons are not neutral.”67 A preexist-
ing feeling that a relationship is warm, or one that is characterized by
empathetic understanding with the other, may help actors frame ambiguous
behavior as neutral, positive, or motivated by circumstances rather than hostile
intentions. Conversely, fear and antipathy may promote negative evaluations

66. Robert Jervis, “Perceiving and Coping with Threat,” in Jervis, Lebow, and Stein, Psychology and
Deterrence, pp. 13–33, at p. 15. Policymakers may also attribute internal differences in policy
preferences to emotion. For example, ExComm members Paul Nitze and Douglas Dillon thought
that Robert McNamara and George Ball were overly cautious in the Cuban missile crisis. Dillon
said: “I didn’t understand then, and I don’t understand now, why people worried so much about
one limited, conventional action leading to nuclear war. The idea is preposterous! The only
explanation I can think of is that Ball’s (and McNamara’s) relative inexperience in these matters
caused them to draw unwarranted conclusions. I think they may have let their fears run away
with them, mainly because they had never been through anything like this before.” Quoted in
Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball, pp. 80–81.
67. Jonathan Mercer, “Anarchy and Identity,” International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring
1995), pp. 229–252, at p. 251.
 The Passion of World Politics 135

and make a neutral or positive reception of ambiguous behaviors and events

less likely. For example, despite indications that the U.S. bombing of China’s
embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 was a targeting error, of which there had
already been several, some Chinese ofªcials interpreted U.S. intentions in a
negative way.68 Had the bombing been of an embassy whose government had
more positive or neutral relations with the United States, a less sinister attri-
bution of hostile intention would have been more likely.
The emotional relationship between interlocutors almost certainly affects the
likelihood of reaching agreement during negotiations. Expressions of increased
empathy may lead to greater ºexibility in negotiations, whereas dehumaniza-
tion, demonization, and enmity may have the opposite consequences, fostering
harsher interactions and inºexibility. Marc Ross argues that as “empathy de-
velops, exchanges are more effective, parties are more open to a range of
options that speak to each party’s interests, and viable agreements become
more attractive to all.”69 Further, just as emotions are labile, emotional relation-
ships may be altered. So the categorization of a group’s emotional relationship
to another group, and therefore the behaviors a group deems normatively
obliged to enact, may change if empathy or antipathy are elicited through
contact.70

68. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said the embassy bombing “really chilled
relations for almost ªve months” and slowed U.S. negotiations with China on its entry into the
World Trade Organization. Quoted in “C.I.A.’s Gaffe? A Male Failing,” New York Times, November
3, 1999, p. A10.
69. Marc Howard Ross, The Management of Conºict: Interpretations and Interests in Comparative
Perspective (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 107–108. See also White, Fearful
Warriors; and Deborah Welch Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations during the Cold War
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997). The amount and kind of contact is important: greater
contact and knowledge of cross-group friendship may decrease negative attitudes toward others.
See Stephen C. Wright, Arthur Aaron, Tracy McLaughlin-Volpe, and Stacy Ropp, “The Extended
Contact Effect: Knowledge of Cross-Group Friendships and Prejudice,” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, Vol. 73, No. 1 (January 1997), pp. 73–90. See also Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil:
The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Eliciting empathy may be useful in conºict management. Psychologist Herbert Kelman has long
attempted to inºuence the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by putting the parties together in
nonthreatening, off-the-record circumstances to promote empathetic understanding among indi-
viduals in the two groups. See Kelman, “Interactive Problem Solving: The Uses and Limits of a
Therapeutic Model for the Resolution of International Conºicts,” in Vamik D. Volkan, Joseph V.
Montville, and Demetrios A. Julius, eds., The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, Vol. 2,
Unofªcial Diplomacy at Work (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1991), pp. 145–160.
70. Colonizers’ increased empathy toward the colonized explains in part the trend toward decolo-
nization in the mid-twentieth century. Neta C. Crawford, “Decolonization as an International
Norm: The Evolution of Practices, Arguments, and Beliefs,” in Laura Reed and Carl Kaysen, eds.,
 International Security 24:4 136

threat perception. Individuals are biased toward threat perception,

whether or not a threats exists, though threats are also cognitively processed
and their meaning is socially constructed. Evolutionary biology stresses the
adaptive function of emotions, suggesting that humans are hardwired to detect
threats so that they can increase the likelihood of surviving them. As Arne
Öhman argues: “The perceptual system is likely to be biased in the direction
of a low threshold for discovering threat. . . . the system is biased sometimes
to evoke defense in actually non-threatening contexts.”71 Threat perception,
which happens at a much faster rate than the cognitive processing of potential
threats, alerts the body to prepare to acquire more information and to respond
to the fearful stimulus. Öhman notes that it is “less costly to abort falsely
initialized defense responses than to fail to elicit one when the threat is real.”72
He further notes that “an anxious mood activates memory information cen-
tered on threat, which in turn facilitates processing of threat-related informa-
tion.”73 Institutionalized tension, as for example during cold wars and arms
races, may heighten the tendency to perceive threats.
Conversely, even though in the natural world some “threats” seem obvious,
much of what is considered “threatening” in the social world is cognitively
processed and socially constructed.74 For instance, even the Soviet missile sites
that the United States discovered in Cuba during October 1962 had to be
understood as threatening.75 Because the United States was already under the
threat of Soviet-based nuclear weapons, the question was whether Soviet
nuclear missiles based in Cuba created a qualitatively different state of affairs
requiring a U.S. response. As the president said, “You may say it doesn’t make
any difference if you get blown up by an ICBM ºying from the Soviet Union

Emerging Norms of Justiªed Intervention (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sci-
ences, 1993), pp. 37–61.
71. Arne Öhman, “Fear and Anxiety as Emotional Phenomena: Clinical Phenomenology, Evolu-
tionary Perspectives, and Information Processing Mechanisms,” in Lewis and Haviland, The Hand-
book of Emotions, pp. 511–536, at p. 520.
72. Ibid., p. 521.
73. Ibid., p. 524.
74. Joe Tomaka, Jim Blascovich, Jeffrey Kibler, and John M. Ernst, “Cognitive and Physiological
Antecedents of Threat and Challenge Appraisal,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.
73, No. 1 (January 1997), pp. 63–72; and Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond
Duvall, “Introduction: Constructing Insecurity,” in Weldes, Laffey, Gusterson, and Duvall, eds.,
Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 1–33.
75. See Jutta Weldes, “The Cultural Production of Crises: U.S. Identity and Missiles in Cuba,” in
Weldes et al., Cultures of Insecurity, pp. 35–62.
 The Passion of World Politics 137

or one that was 90 miles away.”76 Gen. Maxwell Taylor saw the Soviet action
as threatening: “I think it was cold-blooded from their point of view, Mr.
President. You’re quite right in saying that these are just a few more missiles
targeted on the United States. However, they can become a very, a rather
important adjunct and reinforcement to the strike capability of the Soviet
Union. We have no idea how far they will go.”77 Undersecretary of State
George Ball argued that the Soviet weapons were “a trading ploy.”78 By
October 22, President Kennedy seems to have decided that the Soviets’ moves
in Cuba were linked to their desire to control all of Berlin.79 In sum, cognitive
processing and the social construction of meaning in this case helped decision-
makers to decide whether the United States was justiªed in seeing the Soviet
moves as threatening and whether the United States had reason to be afraid.

emotion and cognition

Cognition—in particular, information gathering; information processing; cal-
culation of cost, risk, and beneªt; use of analogy; and receptivity to argument—
is inºuenced by emotion.
information gathering and processing. Emotions inºuence the perfor-
mance and content of information gathering and processing by individuals
and groups. It is commonplace to acknowledge that moderate stress im-
proves cognitive performance, whereas too much stress impairs perfor-
mance, especially memory and information processing.80 Emotional arousal
may have analogous effects. Thus cognition and emotional relationships allow
and shape the identiªcation of threats, whereas emotion may inºuence the
ability to acquire, prioritize, and sort new information. This can work in several
ways.
First, mood inºuences information processing. Somewhat counterintuitively,
individuals in a “bad” or negative mood are more attentive to detail and
analytic than those in a “good” or positive mood. The cognitions of those who
are feeling bad are “characterized by considerable attention to detail, careful,
step-by-step analysis of available information, and a high degree of logical

76. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, pp. 90–91.

77. Ibid., p. 90.
78. Ibid., pp. 99, 100.
79. For instance, Kennedy states as much: “This is a probing action preceding Berlin, to see
whether we accept it or not.” See ibid., p. 235. He also implies this in his telephone conversation
with British Prime Minister Macmillan on October 22. See ibid., pp. 283–286.
80. Janis and Mann, Decision Making; and Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 178.
 International Security 24:4 138

consistency, although probably associated with a lack of creativity.” Further,

while those who feel good may be more creative, they are more likely to use
a “processing strategy that relies heavily on the use of simple heuristics, and
that is characterized by a lack of logical consistency and little attention to
detail,” resulting in lower performance on “tasks that require analytic, detail-
oriented strategies.”81
Second, high anxiety may result in individuals reducing information gath-
ering and processing, avoiding those pieces of information that make them feel
worse (or emphasizing what makes them feel better), or shutting down com-
pletely.82 Josef Stalin froze upon learning of the German invasion of the Soviet
Union in 1941, and believed that the attack was an unauthorized action by
German generals, not a betrayal. Others—for example, Kaiser Wilhelm on
learning about Russian mobilization in July 1914—emphasize a threatening
interpretation of events. Richard Ned Lebow writes:
The Kaiser actually appears to have suffered an acute anxiety reaction on July
30. He was withdrawn and irritable, and displayed a sense of helplessness. He
also exaggerated the gravity of the political situation and his own inability to
do anything about it. His incredible misinterpretation that morning of the
czar’s cable is illustrative of his impaired cognitive functioning. The message
merely repeated the already known fact that Russia had implemented military
preparations against Austria-Hungary, adding that these measures had com-
menced ªve days previously. Wilhelm misread the cable and concluded that
Russia had begun mobilizing against Germany ªve days earlier. The Kaiser
instantly reverted to a mood of profound despair and aggressiveness. He
dropped his interest in mediation and talked instead of mobilization in order
to prevent Russia from gaining the upper hand. “I cannot commit myself
to mediation any more,” he wrote on the telegram, “since the Czar, who
appealed for it, has at the same time been secretly mobilizing behind my back.
It is only a maneuver to keep us dangling and increase the lead he has already
gained over us. My task is at an end.”83
Conversely, moderate fear and anxiety, or a combination of fear and un-
avoidable responsibility, may induce individuals to gather more information
about perceived threats and to work hard to ªnd answers to difªcult dilemmas.
McGeorge Bundy argues that although the risk of nuclear war during the

81. Norbert Schwarz and Herbert Bless, “Happy and Mindless, but Sad and Smart? The Impact
of Affective States on Analytic Reasoning,” in Joseph P. Forgas, Emotion and Social Judgements (New
York: Pergamon Press, 1991), pp. 55–71, at p. 56.
82. See Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 115–118; and Janis and Mann, Decision Making.
83. Lebow, Between Peace and War, p. 142 (emphasis in original).
 The Passion of World Politics 139

Cuban missile crisis was “small,” the “nuclear danger was at least ten times
greater than either Kennedy or Khrushchev can have wished, and as I read the
record, this danger drove them both toward quick resolution.”84 Similarly,
James Blight argues that “fear played an adaptive role in the resolution of the
Cuban missile crisis.”85
What accounts for whether fear will lead to better or worse coping in
stressful situations? Blight suggests that foresight is important, as is responsi-
bility: “Whereas leaders in 1914 could not foresee the extent of the catastrophic
results of a war, the leaders of the nuclear superpowers can hardly fail to
imagine the catastrophic results of a nuclear World War III. This is ‘the crystal
ball effect’ that guarantees that no matter what situation leaders of the super-
powers may ªnd themselves in, they will, if they have not gone mad, see in
the crystal ball the same irremediable nuclear catastrophe.”86
But responsibility may cut both ways. Concentration of authority may create
a concentration of pressure that ampliªes anxiety. Left alone to make enor-
mously fateful decisions, decisionmakers may be overwhelmed by fear. In-
deed, if taking only emotions into account, one would expect better
decisionmaking in democracies or highly bureaucratized states, where there is
an effective division of labor, rather than in monarchies, oligarchies, and
authoritarian states. Informing people in advance that they will be held ac-
countable for their decisions can also increase the quality of their decisionmak-
ing; as Philip Tetlock and Jae Kim argue, “Accountability . . . may have created
an optimal level of arousal.”87
It may be that overall emotional context (optimistic or pessimistic) also
matters for coping. Speciªcally, “When there is hopelessness, no amount of
threat stimulates greater interest and learning. It is only when there is hope
that anxiety alters people’s views.”88 Further, an individual’s experience and

84. Bundy, Danger and Survival, p. 461.

85. Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball, p. 169.
86. Ibid., p. 98. Further, responsible individuals may believe that it is their role to ªnd solutions,
while prior personal experience of effective crisis decisionmaking may reinforce their conªdence.
Richard Neustadt recalls that “at the end of a TV interview he did in 1962, [President] Kennedy
said, ’The President bears the burden of the responsibility; advisors can move on to fresh advice.’”
Quoted in ibid., pp. 135–136.
87. Philip E. Tetlock and Jae Il Kim, “Accountability and Judgement Processes in a Personality
Prediction Task,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 52, No. 4 (April 1987), pp. 700–709,
at p. 707. See also Jennifer S. Lerner and Philip E. Tetlock, “Accounting for the Effects of Account-
ability,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 125, No. 2 (March 1999), pp. 255–275.
88. Nadeau, Niemi, and Amato, “Emotions, Issue Importance, and Political Learning,” p. 569.
Other emotions, such as sadness or a disappointing sense of betrayal, may contribute to an
individual’s sense of hopelessness: “Threat alone is not sufªcient because it may cause one to
 International Security 24:4 140

training may promote a sense of competence and hopefulness about their

ability to manage. As Jervis notes, “The presence or absence of instructions on
how to cope with danger and discussion of the effectiveness of countermea-
sures greatly affect the inºuence of fear.”89
Finally, emotions, particularly emotional relationships with others in the
decisionmaking group, can affect individual information processing in the
context of group decisionmaking. Thus Irving Janis noted cognitive, afªliative,
and egocentric constraints on “vigilant information processing.”90 To manage
these constraints, decisionmakers use cognitive heuristics, afªliative prac-
tices such as following the party line, concurrence seeking (groupthink)
and suppression of dissent, and egocentric practices such as defensive avoid-
ance.
evaluation. Emotions inºuence actors’ understanding of the past and
sense of what is possible in the future in four ways; emotions inºuence recall,
the use of analogy, the evaluation of past choices, and the consideration of
counterfactuals. The link between emotions and recall goes both ways: particu-
lar memories are linked to particular emotions and, conversely, current emo-
tions inºuence the recall of memories.91 For example, the experience of fear
may prompt memories focused on threat.92 On the other hand, thinking about

withdraw. Hope alone is insufªcient because it may lead to wishful thinking. Yet the combination
of perceiving a threat to one’s values or goals but having some hope of success can trigger
increased information gathering. It does so by increasing the perceived importance of the subject.”
Ibid., p. 570. See also Richard S. Lazarus, “Hope: An Emotion and a Vital Coping Resource against
Despair,” Social Research, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 653–678.
89. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, p. 374. But although drills, standard
operating procedures, and strict routines may help individuals ignore or productively use their
fear, these behaviors can also lead to inºexibility and overconªdence. So, for better crisis decision-
making, decisionmakers ought to be experienced but not too experienced, and if they are afraid,
hopeful.
90. Cognitive constraints (such as lack of time or preexisting beliefs) limit the amount and quality
of information processing; afªliative constraints, which arise in group contexts, include the needs
for power, acceptability, consensus, and social support; egocentric constraints arise from strong
personal motives, emotions, and needs. Irving Janis, Crucial Decisions: Leadership in Policy Making
and Crisis Management (New York: Free Press, 1989); and Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston:
Houghton Mifºin, 1972).
91. Gordon H. Bower, “Mood and Memory,” American Psychologist, Vol. 36, No. 2 (February 1981),
pp. 129–148; Susan Mineka and Kathleen Nugent, “Mood-Congruent Memory Biases in Anxiety
and Depression,” in Daniel L. Schacter, ed., Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies
Reconstruct the Past (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 173–193; and Stephan
B. Hamann, Timothy D. Ely, Scott T. Grafton, and Clinton D. Kilts, “Amygdala Activity Related to
Enhanced Memory for Pleasant and Aversive Stimuli,” Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 2, No. 3 (March
1999), pp. 289–293.
92. Öhman, “Fear and Anxiety as Emotional Phenomena,” p. 528.
 The Passion of World Politics 141

a past fearful event may cause a person to feel fearful in the present. And while
much of the research on emotional memories focuses on fear, other emotions
may alter neurochemistry and be similarly stored in the brain.
Analogical reasoning, an important aspect of foreign policy decisionmaking,
may be affected by emotion. Yuen Foong Khong, argues that “analogies are
cognitive devices that ‘help’ policy makers perform six diagnostic tasks central
to political decision-making. Analogies (1) help deªne the nature of the situ-
ation confronting the policymaker, (2) help assess the stakes, and (3) provide
prescriptions. They help evaluate options by (4) predicting their chances of
success, (5) evaluating their moral rightness, and (6) warning about dangers
associated with the options.”93 Individuals should use historical analogies that
ªt in terms of sharing important characteristics or causal features with the
present situation, yet analogies are often poorly chosen. Decisionmakers who
feel overwhelmed in unprecedented and dangerous situations may search for
analogies and try to apply the lessons of the past to the present crisis as a way
of coping with anxiety, yet it is not clear why some historical analogies are
chosen over others. Analogies may be chosen because they are salient or
available.
But why is one analogy more salient or available than another? Emotions
may help answer this question. Speciªcally, an individual’s emotions and
emotional states can be the basis of categorization: “Things that evoke fear, for
example, may be categorized together and be treated as the same kind of thing,
even when they are otherwise perceptually, functionally, and theoretically
diverse.”94 An individual or generation that has ªrsthand or bystander expe-
rience with a highly emotionally charged event will likely have strong emo-
tional memories of that event. Situations that evoke similar emotions will likely
bring to mind those historical events that deeply affected the participants, and

93. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions
of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 10. See also Dwain Mefford, “Analogi-
cal Reasoning and the Deªnition of the Situation: Back to Snyder for Concepts and Forward to
Artiªcial Intelligence for Method,” in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N.
Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (London: HarperCollins Academic, 1987),
pp. 221–244; Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, pp. 275–279; Vertzberger,
The World in Their Minds, pp. 296–341; and M.J. Peterson, “The Use of Analogies in Developing
Outer Space Law,” International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Spring 1997), pp. 245–274.
94. Paula M. Niedenthal, Jamin B. Halberstadt, and Åse H. Innes-Ker, “Emotional Response
Categorization,” Psychological Review, Vol. 106, No. 2 (April 1999), pp. 337–361, at p. 338. See also
Daniel L. Schacter, “The Seven Sins of Memory: Insights from Psychology and Cognitive Neuro-
science,” American Psychologist, Vol. 54, No. 3 (March 1999), pp. 182–203, at pp. 195–196.
 International Security 24:4 142

analogical reasoning (regardless of whether the historical event is similar in

important respects to the new situation) may follow.95 So just as there are
cognitive cues for priming, there are sometimes emotional cues—for example,
in the case of fear when, “as part of interrelated memory systems, memorial
representations of moods or emotional responses may prime memory areas
focused on threat.”96
Emotions may also inºuence decisionmakers’ evaluations of the efªcacy of
past choices. Speciªcally, regardless of their actual utility in a given situation,
policies associated with positive feelings in the past will probably be viewed
positively, whereas those policies associated with negative feelings may be seen
in a negative light, biasing the evaluation of policy options. Further, actors may
alter their assessments of events and actions so that they can allow themselves
and others to feel good about a preferred option or a choice they have already
made. Work on “positive illusions” in psychology suggests “that augmenting
positive emotions and avoiding negative ones can be the goals of cognitive
appraisals, and that events are interpreted and distorted in ways that enable
people to maintain or enhance their emotional well being.”97 Thus it may be
difªcult for actors to recall aspects of their decisionmaking process that they
feel negatively about, especially if the outcome did not meet the actor’s or
others’ expectations.
Counterfactual thinking may not only be useful for scholars’ understanding
of how outcomes may have been otherwise if conditions had been different,
thus highlighting which conditions or decisions were crucial; it can also help
policymakers learn how to improve decisionmaking.98 Rational actor and or-
ganization theory frameworks suggest that individuals and organizations of

95. The experience of surprise attack or quagmire may be widespread and associated with emo-
tional trauma for a whole generation, and situations that bring to mind the emotions associated
with those experiences may cause actors to use analogies from that era regardless of the cognitive
appropriateness of those analogies. For example, the Vietnam War evokes powerful emotional
associations for a generation of U.S. soldiers and citizens, and regardless of the lessons to be
learned from the war or its geopolitical signiªcance as an event in U.S. foreign policy, emotions
have made the lessons of that war a signiªcant factor in post-Vietnam foreign and military policy.
96. Öhman, “Fear and Anxiety as Emotional Phenomena,” p. 528. See also Khong, Analogies at
War, p. 226.
97. Shelley E. Taylor, Lisa G. Aspinwall, and Traci A. Giuliano, “Emotions as Psychological
Achievements,” in Stephanie H.M. van Goozen, Nanne E. Van de Poll, and Joseph A. Sergeant,
eds., Emotions: Essays on Emotion Theory (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994),
pp. 219–239, at p. 219.
98. See James D. Fearon, “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science,” World
Politics, Vol. 43, No. 2 (January 1991), pp. 169–195.
 The Passion of World Politics 143

record have little incentive to show how they may have done better in a
situation if this means they will be publicly blamed, subject to greater over-
sight, and/or sanctioned.99 In addition, there may be an emotional bias against
counterfactual thinking in foreign policy decisionmaking. Research on emotion
and counterfactuals suggests that counterfactual thinking generally causes
people to feel badly or even dismiss the analysis of individuals who engage
in post hoc analysis (frequently derided and discounted as “Monday morning
quarterbacking”). Thus a bias toward avoiding counterfactual thinking may be
overdetermined despite the potential positive consequences of counterfactual
analysis, which includes giving people a sense of control in otherwise stressful
situations.100 Institutionalization of counterfactual analysis could help remedy
organizational and emotional bias against counterfactuals, by guaranteeing
that counterfactual thinking is performed and insulating those who engage in
counterfactuals from the negative connotations often associated with it.
risk. The emotional status of decisionmakers will affect their assessments
of risk and their behavior in risky situations. Risk is an important element in
simple rational actor theory accounts of deterrence where actors are said to be
weighing costs, risks, and potential beneªts. Prospect and game theory simi-
larly include risk in their accounts of decisionmaking. Many factors can affect
risk assessment and behavior in risky situations, including how the situation
is framed and whether decisionmakers have complete or adequate informa-
tion. Mood also appears to frame the situation.
Mood inºuences assessments of likelihood and risk in situations of decision-
making under uncertainty or risk. Not surprisingly, policymakers with nega-
tive moods overestimate the likelihood of negative events and underestimate
the likelihood of positive events; those with positive moods overestimate the
likelihood of positive events and consistently underestimate the likelihood of
negative events. More unexpected, actors with positive affect tend to be more
cautious in situations where a signiªcant loss is highly likely and more accept-

99. On cognitive and motivational biases in counterfactual thinking, see Philip E. Tetlock and
Aaron Belkin, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological,
and Psychological Perspectives,” and James M. Olson, Neal J. Roese, and Ronald J. Deibert,
“Psychological Biases in Counterfactual Thought Experiments,” in Tetlock and Belkin, eds., Coun-
terfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 3–38 and 296–300, respectively.
100. Neal J. Roese, “Counterfactual Thinking,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 121, No. 1 (January 1997),
pp. 133–148; and Suzanne Altobello Nasco and Kerry L. Marsh, “Gaining Control through Coun-
terfactual Thinking,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 5 (May 1999), pp. 556–
568.
 International Security 24:4 144

ing of risk if the perception of risk is low.101 Thomas Nygren notes that, in his
research, positive affect participants were “moderately, although consistently,
more risk averse in their gambling behavior than were negative affect partici-
pants in a high-risk environment, but they were relatively more risk accepting
in a low-risk environment.”102
What research on mood suggests for international relations theories is un-
clear because individual moods may be too ephemeral to make a difference in
foreign policy decisions, most of which occur within groups over long periods
of time as options are formulated and discussed. On the other hand, it is
possible that there are longer-term “moods” in governments. For instance, if a
state is in decline—for example, losing economic strength, political inºuence,
and international prestige—its leaders may make more cautious foreign policy
choices in low-risk situations than a state with rising gross national product,
political inºuence, and prestige.103
argument. Preexisting emotions inºuence receptivity to arguments. Con-
versely, arguments may trigger different emotions as part of their persuasive
appeal. Argument making, and attempts to persuade others that a particular
interpretation of events and proposed policy is the correct one, is ubiquitous
in world politics. When individuals are angry or hostile toward an interlocutor,
they will likely be less open to persuasion than if they are neutral or feeling
empathetic. Further, some arguments, such as those using historical analogy

101. Leon Mann, “Stress, Affect, and Risk Taking,” in J. Frank Yates, ed., Risk-Taking Behavior (New
York: John Wiley and Sons, 1992), pp. 201–230.
102. Thomas E. Nygren, “Reacting to Perceived High- and Low-Risk Win-Lose Opportunities in
a Risky Decision-Making Task: Is It Framing or Affect or Both?” Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 22,
No. 1 (March 1998), pp. 73–98, at p. 87.
103. An example may help illustrate this point. White South African leaders in the late 1980s may
have been in a negative mood after decades of international pressure and years of biting sanctions.
The leadership was faced with the choice of whether to negotiate with the African National
Congress or continue to resist civil unrest, international sanctions, and the ANC’s sabotage cam-
paign. The ANC and other guerrilla movements never posed a great military threat to the
apartheid government. Were the apartheid government’s assessments of the likelihood and risk of
full-scale civil war higher because the white leadership felt negatively? Was it ultimately perceived
to be less risky to reverse decades of state policy—ending the war in Angola and the occupation
of Namibia, releasing Nelson Mandela, and removing the ban on the ANC—in a bid to ease
international sanctions and lighten the domestic economic burden of the trade and ªnancial
embargoes? Conversely, it is likely that after the 1994 transition, the “state” was in a better mood.
The new government was daring in foreign policy, with Mandela meeting Fidel Castro and
Muammar Qaddhaª in deªance of U.S. preferences, yet modest in economic policy, mostly
dropping even the mild socialism that had previously characterized the ANC’s economic outlook.
Were members of the new government more risk averse in this high stakes situation—unwilling
to antagonize international ªnance with even a slightly pink-tinged economic policy—because they
were in a good mood?
 The Passion of World Politics 145

and metaphor, may trigger feelings as well as thoughts. Historical analogies

are cognitively persuasive in arguments if they convince us that there are
similarities between one situation and another; the lesson learned in the pre-
vious situation ought therefore be applied to the new situation. Analogies may
also be emotionally persuasive: if the events “match” (are similar in respects
deemed signiªcant), individuals who belong to generations with direct expe-
rience of an event used in the analogy, or who have had contact with those
who experienced the event, will likely have a greater emotional reaction. Those
who wish to drive home a point may thus purposely bring emotions into play
by using emotionally charged analogies. For example, saying that “we all
remember the dangers of a Pearl Harbor” or that “this could be another
Munich and we must not be afraid to stand ªrm” is to use emotionally charged
analogies.
So both cognition and emotion inºuence persuasiveness, but the effects are
not straightforward and completely independent. First, consistent with work
on information processing, persuasiveness that depends on careful cognition
may be impaired by positive moods. Second, attempts in complex negotiations
to evoke emotions, such as fear, may backªre because “the kind of arguments
used in fear appeals appear to disrupt careful evaluation of message con-
tent.”104 On the other hand, arguments that evoke fear may have positive
consequences when one desires fearful decisionmakers not to pay close atten-
tion to logic and evidence.

emotion and process or behavior

Characteristic processes of world politics—including deterrence, persuasion,
postconºict peacebuilding, and norm following—are usually considered from
the perspective of rationality. Emotions are also important in these and other
processes, whether actors are attempting to manipulate emotions and sub-
sequent behavior or whether the role of emotion is unrecognized.
deterrence. Rational deterrence theories, to the extent that they under-
theorize emotions, especially fear, are seriously deªcient. Policies of deterrence
(and compellence) fail in cases where “rational actors” with good information

104. Francine Rosselli, John J. Skelly, and Diane M. Mackie, “Processing Rational and Emotional
Messages: The Cognitive and Affective Mediation of Persuasion,” Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March 1995), pp. 163–190, at p. 167. See also Richard E. Petty, Faith
Gleicher, and Sara M. Baker, “Multiple Roles for Affect in Persuasion,” and Diane M. Mackie and
Leila T. Worth, “Feeling Good, but Not Thinking Straight: The Impact of Positive Mood on
Persuasion,” in Forgas, Emotion & Social Judgements, pp. 181–200 and 201–219, respectively.
 International Security 24:4 146

would be deterred (or compelled) because of emotional factors. Although

deterrence and compellence theories presume rationality—because as Thomas
Schelling says, “the assumption of rationality is a productive one”—they also
stress threat and fear.105 But the use of the terms “threat” and “fear” are
dangerously fuzzy. In some cases, deterrence theorists use “fear” in the sense
of expectation; in other cases, they mean the emotion of fear. Similarly, “threat”
is sometimes merely the communication of a promise or commitment to carry
out a certain act; whereas at other times a threat is an attempt to produce fear
in its expectational or emotional sense. Take, for example, Bernard Brodie’s
argument that “when we consider the special requirements of deterrence, with
its emphasis on the punitive aspect of retaliation, we may ªnd a need for even
super-dirty [nuclear] bombs. Since the emphasis must be on making certain
that the enemy will fear even the smallest number of bombs that might be sent
in retaliation, one wants these bombs to be, and thus to appear before the
event, as horrendous as possible.”106
Simply put, deterrence should work if potential aggressors believe that their
actions will likely fail or that even if they achieve their goals, the costs will be
unacceptably high. Deterrence depends on actors clearly communicating
threats, appearing credible, and having the capacity to carry out threats. Ag-
gressors will be (rationally) deterred if the costs and risks of action outweigh
the beneªts. Rational deterrence could fail for any number of nonemotional
reasons, including imperfect knowledge of the costs and risks associated with
an action or an actor’s failure to communicate resolve for carrying out its
threats. When one considers emotions, however, deterrence theory looks
ºawed because, despite the ambiguous ways that fear and threat are used in
the deterrence literature, the consequence of most deterrent threats is likely to
be fear in an emotional sense; and contrary to rational deterrence theories, the
deliberate production of fear is extremely risky for several reasons.
First, deterrence can fail because threats that produce fear instigate perverse
cognitive effects.107 As noted above, fearful actors tend to make less careful

105. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conºict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1960), p. 4.
106. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959),
p. 295.
107. As Schelling notes in a discussion of the reciprocal fear of surprise attack: “If surprise carries
an advantage, it is worth while to avert it by striking ªrst. Fear that the other may be about to
strike in a mistaken belief that we are about to strike gives us a motive for striking, and so justiªes
the other’s motive. But if the gains from even successful surprise are less desired than no war at
all, there is no ’fundamental’ basis for attack on either side. Nevertheless, it looks as though a
 The Passion of World Politics 147

decisions that rely on cognitive heuristics rather than integrative complexity.

In addition, the already fearful tend to gather information that is threat fo-
cused, thereby intensifying their fear in a feedback loop. Fearful actors also
tend to emphasize the short term rather than the long term, even if this
short-term bias is counterproductive.108 The careful weighing of costs, risks,
and beneªts that one expects, and indeed counts on in deterrence situations,
will become much more difªcult if decisionmakers are fearful. Further, when
threatened, decisionmakers may reasonably consider the threatener an enemy,
slipping into cognitive schemas and scripts that attribute malevolent intentions
to the other, rather than carefully evaluating the circumstances that may have
motivated the other’s behavior.109
Second, some efforts to make threats appear credible are counterproductive
if heightening credibility tends to produce more emotional fear, in addition to
fear in its expectational sense. Speciªcally, as Schelling emphasizes, it is both
difªcult and important in conºict situations to make threats and commitments
appear credible; difªcult because one actor must convince the other that it is
willing to pay the sometimes enormous costs associated with their actions, and
important because deterrence may fail without the appearance of credibility—
the other side may consider the threats a bluff. So, Schelling reasons, leaving
an option for escape makes one’s threats less credible; “throwing out the
steering wheel,” to give the impression that one has no choice but to carry out
a threat, helps to convince the other that you are committed. Schelling says:
“Brinkmanship is . . . the deliberate creation of a recognizable risk of war, a
risk that one does not completely control. It is a tactic of deliberately letting
the situation get somewhat out of hand, just because its being out of hand may
be intolerable to the other party and force his accommodation. It means

modest temptation on each side to sneak in a ªrst blow—a temptation too small by itself to
motivate an attack—might become compounded through a process of interacting expectations,
with additional motive for attack being produced by successive cycles of ’He thinks we think he
thinks we think . . . he thinks we think he’ll attack; so he thinks we shall; so he will; so we must.’”
Schelling, The Strategy of Conºict, p. 207.
108. “Given evolutionary selection and the near universal problem of extreme hazards, cognitive
processes should tend to emphasize immediate contingencies in threatening contexts and tempo-
rally extended contingencies in neutral contexts. . . . However, if a neutral context were miscon-
strued as threatening (giving rise to a negative emotional state), the normally adaptive heuristic
would nonetheless be activated and inappropriately bias the system toward immediate choices.”
Jeremy R. Gray, “A Bias toward Short-Term Thinking in Threat-Related Negative Emotional States,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January 1999), pp. 65–75, at p. 67.
109. See Richard K. Hermann and Michael P. Fisherkeller, “Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral
Model: Cognitive-Strategic Research after the Cold War,” International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 3
(Summer 1995), pp. 415–450.
 International Security 24:4 148

harassing and intimidating an adversary by exposing him to a shared risk, or

deterring him by showing that if he makes a contrary move he may disturb
us so that we slip over the brink whether we want to or not, carrying him with
us.”110 So attempts to bolster credibility may succeed, thus striking more
emotional fear in the adversary.
Third, heightening fear could be beneªcial for those practicing deterrence
and compellence if it induced others to back down. But retreat is not always
the reaction of someone who is fearful. As noted earlier, the naturalist theory
of emotions is that they are functional; fear prepares us for ºight or ªght. In
addition, the emotions of fear and anger are closely associated biologically
(sharing pathways in the brain) and often culturally.111 Thus a counterproduc-
tive effect of deliberate attempts to frighten others with threats may be that it
induces them to increase their resistance and bellicosity. Further, some evidence
suggests that “when reminded of their mortality, people become more favor-
able in their evaluations of those who support their worldview and more
unfavorable in their evaluations of those who challenge it.”112 Leaders may
discount or rationalize away evidence that shows capitulation to be wise at the
same time that pressures among decisionmakers for conformity to the aggres-
sive interpretations and policies preferred by fearful leaders may increase.
It might not be, for example, that Saddam Hussein was “irrational” in 1991
when he chose to ªght the overwhelming military coalition bent on removing
Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Nor did the coalition that Iraq faced fail in commu-
nicating its resolve to Iraq. Rather, it may be that the Iraqi leadership was duly
frightened (of both domestic and international situations), and ªghting was
the reasonable course in the short term. Similarly, Slobodan Milosevic may
have reasonably been frightened by the prospect of NATO bombing in 1998
and 1999, but the reaction was resistance, not capitulation. It is possible that
in neither case did the leaders of Iraq and Serbia have a theory of victory: they
were justiªably scared of the domestic and international forces arrayed against
them. While thus afraid, both leaders were pushed into ªghting mode, and
any advisers who recommended retreat may simply have been discounted.
In sum, deterrence theory relies on the deliberate generation of fear under
the assumption that the only “rational” option for the fearful is to back down.

110. Schelling, The Strategy of Conºict, pp. 199–200.

111. Debra Niehoff, The Biology of Violence: How Understanding the Brain, Behavior, and Environment
Can Break the Vicious Cycle of Aggresssion (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 50.
112. Jamie Arndt, Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pysczynski, and Linda Simon, “Suppres-
sion, Accessibility of Death-Related Thoughts, and Cultural Worldview Defense: Exploring the
Psychodynamics of Terror Management,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 73, No. 1
(January 1997), pp. 5–18, at p. 6. See also Kull, Minds at War, pp. 303–306.
 The Passion of World Politics 149

Yet deterrence theory depends on assumptions that may not hold if the emo-
tional effects of fear are taken into account.113 Threats may create a sense of
fear, but the outcome may just as often be resistance as capitulation: intentional
production of fear makes careful cognition less likely; making credible com-
mitments promotes more emotional fear in addition to fear in the sense of a
reasonable expectation; and deterrence threats may boomerang. What induces
retreat versus resistance? The emotion of fear, rather than real material or
structural imbalances, may be the trigger of security dilemma spirals and the
source of failures to deter.
persuasion. Political leaders, policymakers, and activists are aware, at least
naively, of the effects of emotion on information processing, risk assessment,
and receptivity to arguments, and they use emotion in their discourse to
inºuence those processes and motivate their audiences. Although Aristotle
mentions emotion in his study of rhetoric, there is little contemporary political
science research on the relationship of emotions to argument. Yet political
actors constantly evoke and manipulate emotions. Nationalist leaders promote
fear of outsiders and love of country. This is certainly because they believe
those things, but also because leaders recognize, as Barry Posen argues after
Clausewitz, that “nationalism increases the intensity of warfare, and spe-
ciªcally the ability of states to mobilize the creative energies and the spirit of
self-sacriªce of millions of soldiers.”114 Similarly, militaries promote fear of
outsiders and solidarity and pride among in-group members and exhort sol-
diers to act with courage. International and nongovernmental organizations
use guilt and empathy to prompt disaster relief, humanitarian intervention,
and foreign aid. Further, persuasive communicators use analogical arguments
and metaphors to evoke emotions and the cognitive schemas that match the
analogy. By consciously evoking pride, fear, hate, and other emotions, indi-
viduals hope to persuade others with their arguments.115 Emotional appeals
may be particularly effective when conºicts are represented in ethnic or racial
terms, when there is a reservoir of preexisting negative beliefs and feelings
toward out-groups, or where those beliefs and feelings can be manufactured
or nurtured. But emotions may also work to decrease bellicosity, such as when
antiwar arguments elicit compassion and empathy for the other or are, as in

113. Michael Walzer’s injunction to ªnd an “objective” standard for justiªed fears to legitimize
preemptive wars may thus be particularly difªcult for foreign policy decisionmakers to implement
unless they better understand fear. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical
Illustrations, 2d ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1992), pp. 74–85.
114. Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,” p. 81.
115. Jerome D. Frank, “The Role of Pride,” in Ralph K. White, ed., Psychology and the Prevention of
Nuclear War (New York: New York University Press, 1986), pp. 220–226.
 International Security 24:4 150

the case of the antinuclear weapons movements of the 1980s, an attempt to cut
through the dispassion of a technical discourse by direct emotional appeals.
Further, groupthink—when group members’ “striving for unanimity over-
rides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action”
leads to “deterioration in mental efªciency, reality testing, and moral judg-
ment”—may not be an inadvertent consequence of group dynamics during a
crisis.116 Rather, groupthink may be what leaders sometimes strive to achieve—
by using preexisting emotional relationships, framing situations as dangerous
and urgent, and relying on the desire of individuals to be liked and feel
good—to force their preferences onto a group.
postconflict peacebuilding. Ending wars, especially civil conºicts, may
be more difªcult than preventing war.117 This is probably for several reasons,
not least of which is the way emotions are at work in conºict and postconºict
situations. The desire for revenge, and the deep anxiety induced by long,
especially violent wars, may interfere with the process of peacebuilding long
after structural conditions that promote insecurity have been alleviated. These
emotions, and deep distrust, can reduce the receptivity of populations to
peacebuilding and may be why some wars recur. Kant recognized the danger
of lasting distrust, arguing that “no nation at war with another shall permit
such acts of war as shall make mutual trust impossible during some future
time of peace. . . . Some level of trust in the enemy’s way of thinking must be
preserved even in the midst of war, for otherwise no peace can ever be
concluded and the hostilities would become a war of extermination.”118 Posen
also argues that emotions are important: “Competing versions of history
should be reconciled if possible,” although “a few conferences will not, of
course, easily undo generations of hateful, politicized history, bolstered by
reams of more recent propaganda.”119 Both the usual and the more novel

116. Irving Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston: Houghton
Mifºin, 1982), p. 9. A thoughtful review, critique, and amendment of groupthink research is Ramon
J. Aldag and Sally Riggs Fuller, “Beyond Fiasco: A Reappraisal of the Groupthink Phenomenon
and a New Model of Group Decision Processes,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 113, No. 2 (May 1993),
pp. 533–552. See also Paul ’t Hart, Eric K. Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, eds., Beyond Groupthink:
Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy-making (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
117. Stephen John Stedman, Peacemaking in Civil War: International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974–
1980 (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1988); and Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War
Settlement,” International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Summer 1997), pp. 335–364.
118. Immanuel Kant, “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Kant, Perpetual Peace and
Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), pp. 109–110.
119. Barry Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conºict,” in Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic
Conºict and International Security (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 103–124,
at p. 120.
 The Passion of World Politics 151

approaches to ending wars and preventing their reeruption—deterrence, mili-

tary restructuring, truth commissions, and war crimes tribunals—depend on
different and in some instances clashing assumptions about emotion.120 These
assumptions are generally implicit and untested, however, and it is unclear
which approaches are best for particular contexts.
The model of postconºict peacebuilding through deterrence stresses fear.
Advocates of buildups for the purpose of deterrence assume that peace will
result in the long run by showing the other side intimidating military forces.
Buildup advocates assume a world where coercion works, where one can
frighten or compel others to do your will. These assumptions were questioned
above.
On the other hand, postconºict military and security force restructuring are
intended to reduce the structural causes of insecurity. Given that all are afraid,
the logic goes, and with war so fresh no one can reasonably be expected to
trust the other, military restructuring should reduce the capacity to act offen-
sively. Speciªcally, in the context of ending international wars, restructuring
consists of efforts to change military doctrine, force posture, and deploy-
ments—altering the way that militaries plan, train, and arm to conduct war—
so that armies are less offensive and therefore do not appear as threatening to
others. And restructuring sometimes includes setting up regional security
organizations, such as the Organ on Politics, Defense, and Security in Southern
Africa, so that there is greater transparency and, so the reasoning goes, former
adversaries have less to fear from each other.121 Advocates of military restruc-
turing, like advocates of buildup or deterrence approaches, assume that the
postwar relationship of former antagonists is characterized by fear, but that

120. See, for instance, Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after
Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon, 1998); Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and
the Law (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997); Aryeh Neier, War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide,
Terror, and the Struggle for Justice (New York: Random House, 1998); Harvey J. Langholtz, ed., The
Psychology of Peacekeeping (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998); and Nico H. Frijda, “The Lex Talionis:
On Vengeance,” and Robert C. Solomon, “Sympathy and Vengeance: The Role of Emotions in
Justice,” in van Goozen, Van de Poll, and Sergeant, Emotions, pp. 263–289 and 291–311, respectively.
The addition of rape to the agenda of war crimes tribunals after the slaughters in Bosnia and
Rwanda is a testimony to the salience of emotion. See Beverly Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden
Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
121. In the context of civil wars, restructuring usually involves disarming military forces of
antagonists and integrating militaries and police forces so that former antagonists belong to
security structures under civilian rule. Successful restructuring in domestic contexts is usually
accompanied by institutionalizing democratic practices so that no side needs to use force or fear
domination by the other. An interesting discussion is Barbara F. Walter, “Designing Transitions
from Civil War: Demobilization, Democratization, and Commitments to Peace,” International Secu-
rity, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 127–155.
 International Security 24:4 152

peace follows from reducing fear. Trust is not expected or necessary; fear and
the incentive to preempt can be lessened simply by reducing forces and
reconªguring militaries so they are not as physically threatening. But do these
structural changes actually reduce fear and anxiety and promote reassurance?
What would make the desired effect more likely?
Other models of postwar peacebuilding are more explicitly psychological
and emotional. Truth commissions attempt to “heal the wounds of the past”
for groups and societies that have experienced war in the hope that, once
healed, people can create peaceful relationships. In this model, victims of war
live in a world of remembered trauma and pain where they were isolated and
silenced; victims want truth because their truths were denied during the war.
What is needed here is recognition of victims’ pain, acknowledgment of
wrongdoing by perpetrators, and the truth about what happened. The emo-
tions supposedly aroused and manipulated by truth commissions are not those
of righteous anger and retribution, but of pain, and potentially of forgiveness
and empathy. The assumption is that there is something healing about truth,
something healing about speaking it in public. Yet war and civil unrest have
followed some truth commissions.122 When do truth commissions work?
War crimes tribunals are intended to serve the juridical functions of retribu-
tion and deterrence, assuming that a desire for retribution or revenge is often
the response of someone who has been harmed by another. Advocates of war
crimes tribunals assume a postwar world populated by miscreants and recidi-
vists; victims are vengeance seekers. Justice in the form of war crimes tribunals
brings peace because it both manages the impulse for revenge and deters
future criminal activity.123 Of course the promise of revenge may deter, but
after deterrence has failed, the desire for revenge may still be powerful. War
crimes tribunals may satisfy the urge for “justice” that is often part of the desire

122. For example, the Rwanda truth commission of 1992 was followed by genocide. See Patricia
Hayner, “Fifteen Truth Commissions—1974–1994: A Comparative Study,” Human Rights Quarterly,
Vol. 16, No. 4 (November 1994), pp. 597–655. Some of the assumptions are discussed in Alex
Boraine and Janet Levy, eds., The Healing of a Nation (Cape Town: Justice in Transition, 1995); and
Jeremy Sarkin, “The Necessity of Establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda,”
Vol. 21, No. 3 (August 1999), pp. 767–823. Some truth commissions are associated with subsequent
prosecution, others with potential for amnesty. Amnesty sometimes depends on the hope that
private forgiveness is possible. This view assumes that perpetrators are redeemable, their actions
are understandable in a proper context, and citizens recognize that there are truth and victims on
all sides of war. But truth commissions and amnesties may promote greater instability if they
frustrate and anger victims while leaving perpetrators who “got away with murder” on the loose.
123. This is a domestic analogy: criminal justice after civil and international war should work the
same as criminal justice within nonwarring states.
 The Passion of World Politics 153

for revenge. Richard Goldstone, a former chief prosecutor for the International
Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda says: “I have no
doubt that in order to achieve enduring peace, justice is essential.” He argues
that “in an area like the former Yugoslavia, the explanation for the cycles of
violence going back centuries is that previously justice was never achieved. . . .
The situation in Rwanda is no different. The cycles of violence continue be-
cause no one has yet been brought to account. . . . The tribunals may not work,
but I certainly know that there can be little hope of bringing some permanent
peace to the many areas of conºict around the world without pursuing jus-
tice.”124 Yet war crimes tribunals that fail to bring war criminals to justice may
cause new problems, because promising justice to victims and not delivering
it may exacerbate their feelings of resentment and continued vulnerability and
promote reprisals and revenge spirals.
It is not clear what accounts for successful postconºict peacebuilding. Be-
cause so much rides on postconºict peacebuilding, theorists and practitioners
ought to include as much attention to emotions as to technical details. For
example, cognitive and social construction theories of emotion suggest that
there may be ways to short-circuit cycles of revenge by structuring truth
commissions and war crimes tribunals so that contempt, fear, and hatred are
not stoked by these processes, but recognized and soothed.125 The recent
tendency by some to assume that war crimes tribunals or truth commissions
have correctly identiªed the emotions at stake in postwar contexts, and to
invest tremendous resources in mounting these practices as remedies and
prophylactic measures, ought to be counterbalanced with careful comparative
case studies and process-tracing analysis.
normative prescriptions. The desire of actors to feel good explains in part
why people follow normative prescriptions. Liberal institutionalists argue that
norm following may be rational, for instance, if it decreases the costs of
coordination. Realists argue that people follow behavioral norms out of habit
or because they want to avoid costly sanctions. Alternatively, individuals may
be persuaded by ethical arguments and come to believe that to follow a
normative prescription is good and right.

124. Richard Goldstone, “Conference Luncheon Address,” Transnational Law & Contemporary Prob-
lems, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp. 1–13, at p. 10.
125. The most successful reconciliation processes, such as in South Africa, had trained social
workers and therapists on hand for victims. Further, South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process
was embedded in a context that included a comprehensive rewriting of South African history, so
that it takes into account the perspectives of those who were traditionally not included in the
historical record.
 International Security 24:4 154

More recently, several scholars have argued that actors follow normative
prescriptions for emotional reasons, or as Elster says, “norms are sustained by
emotions.”126 Ethan Nadelmann states that “norms emerge and are promoted
because they reºect not only the economic and security interests of dominant
members of international society but also their moral interests and emotional
dispositions.”127 Gregory Raymond argues, “Norms have bite because they
trigger powerful emotions.”128 Arguing that foreign aid is not explained en-
tirely by strategic interests, David Lumsdaine says, “Principled refusals to do
wrong, and acts of love and compassion, are common, as are folly, unnecessary
hatred and domineering, and self-defeating behavior.”129 Similarly, the charac-
ter of emotional relationships between groups may account for resort to hu-
manitarian intervention.130
Further, people may follow normative prescriptions because they want to
feel good about themselves or want social approval for norm following—they
want others to feel good about them. Or, actors may follow prescriptions
because they want to avoid the bad feelings associated with violating norma-
tive injunctions. Elster believes that “sanctions—whether mild or severe—mat-
ter mainly because they are vehicles for the expression of feelings of anger,
disgust, and contempt. For most people, being the target of these emotions is
immensely unpleasant, much worse than what one suffers by mere material
deprivation.”131 Elster’s arguments, made in the context of economics, may be
more difªcult to sustain in the context of world politics unless and to the extent
that people within states believe that their states have roles, emotional rela-
tionships, and identities to enact and preserve.

126. Jon Elster, “Rationality and the Emotions,” Economic Journal, Vol. 106, No. 438 (September
1996), pp. 1386–1397, at p. 1390. Amartya K. Sen argues that sympathy is an important element of
decisionmaking and that to insist that humans are motivated only by self-interest is to miss
important aspects of decisionmaking: “The purely economic man is close to being a social moron.”
Sen, “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory,” in
Mansbridge, Beyond Self-Interest, pp. 25–43, at p. 37 (emphasis in original).
127. Ethan Nadelmann, “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International
Society,” International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Autumn 1990), pp. 479–525, at p. 524.
128. Gregory A. Raymond, “Problems and Prospects in the Study of International Norms,” Mer-
shon International Studies Review, Vol. 41, Supp. 2 (November 1997), pp. 205–245, at p. 234.
129. David Halloran Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime,
1949–1989 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 9. Lumsdaine seems not to distin-
guish morality from emotion.
130. Sherman, “Empathy, Respect, and Humanitarian Intervention”; and Crawford, “Postmodern
Ethical Conditions and a Critical Response,” pp. 133, 138–139.
131. Elster, “Rationality and the Emotions,” p. 1390. See also Raymond, “Problems and Prospects
in the Study of International Norms”; and Mercer, “Approaching Emotion in International Politics.”
 The Passion of World Politics 155

Conclusions and Research Agenda

It is premature to offer a comprehensive theory of emotion in world politics.

Still, it is not too early to examine the ways that emotion and emotional
relationships affect individuals’ and groups’ ways of perceiving, thinking, and
acting. At a minimum, implicit assumptions about emotion held by realists and
liberals warrant articulation and investigation. Fear, anger, and empathy, at
least, deserve more systematic attention by scholars of world politics.132 Sys-
tematic attention to emotion will also allow more propositions to be generated,
and some of the propositions articulated above will be better speciªed or
proven wrong.
I am not convinced that the methodological problems raised at the outset of
this article must be overcome before serious attention is given to emotion and
emotional relationships in world politics. Nevertheless, methodological ques-
tions are important. Speciªcally, although it is not obvious how to devise valid
measures of emotions, psychologists have been working on this problem for
decades, and international relations theorists may be able to usefully borrow
from their work. Further, as I suggested from the outset, it may be difªcult to
distinguish “genuine” emotions from the instrumental display of emotion. This
may be so, but the fact that individuals feel it advisable to display emotion for
some instrumental purpose highlights the perceived utility of the display. Even
the “manipulator” believes that others think emotions are important and is
constrained by emotion to a certain extent.133
Deªnitional issues are not easily resolved. Rather, one’s deªnition of emotion
is deeply intertwined with the ontological and epistemological divergence one
sees among the biological, cognitive, and social constructivist approaches to
emotion. At this juncture, rather than foreclosing any avenue, it may be worth-
while to pursue the research agendas implied by all three approaches, with the
likelihood that some will prove more proªtable than others. What of the
problem of generalization from individual attributes to the behavior of groups?
The link may be that fear and other emotions not only are attributes of agents,
but are institutionalized in the structures and processes of world politics.
Further, conceptualizations of emotions and emotional relationships have
discursive effects in international relations theory, closing off some areas of

132. Space does not allow, for example, discussion of propositions about empathy, or emotions
and identity in alliances, security regimes, and security communities.
133. This is similar to belief “blowback” as discussed in Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic
Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 41–42.
 International Security 24:4 156

inquiry and opening up others. To the extent that scholars of world politics are
inclined to make the discipline itself an object of study, they may ªnd that
realist and idealist discourse about emotions—what has been said and not said
about anger, fear, hate, love, empathy, the desire for revenge, and so on—has
shaped the discipline in important respects. Liberals have perhaps stressed
rationality too much, while realists have favored fear without fully examining
their assumptions about fear and other emotions. Meanwhile, the power of our
passions is an explanation, or perhaps excuse, for the place of ethics in world
politics.
Finally, research on emotion may lead to a fundamental reconceptualization
of agents and agency in world politics. Neither individuals or groups are
rational in the utility-maximizing, unemotional way supposed by most theo-
ries of world politics. Nor are decisionmakers necessarily irrational if they are
not rational in a classical sense. Rather, humans reason; humans make deci-
sions that are always both classically self-interested and emotional. Although
it is not uncommon to conºate reason and rationality and indeed to use the
words interchangeably,134 theorizing would be enhanced if the words “reason”
and “rationality” were used with more precision, with rational decisionmaking
a subset of the reasoning process. Reasoning includes practical inference,
analogy, rational utility maximizing and, as Mercer says, “Emotion is essential
to reason.”135

134. See, for instance, Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1993); and Miles Kahler, “Rationality in International Relations,” International Organization,
Vol. 52, No. 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 919–941.
135. Mercer, “Approaching Emotion in International Politics,” p. 17.