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The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships Author(s): Neta C.

Crawford Reviewed work(s): Source: International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring, 2000), pp. 116-156 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539317 . Accessed: 24/01/2013 17:45
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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 flawed 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 benefits of communication and coordination are deficient to the extent that they do not include careful consideration of emotion and emotional relationships. Further, it is no wonder that postconflict peacebuilding efforts too frequently fail and wars reerupt because peace settlements and peacebuilding policies play with emotional fire 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 postconflict peacebuilding. International relations theory has lately tended to ignore explicit consideration of "the passions."' 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 interNeta C. Crawfordteaches political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her most recent bookis Neta C. Crawfordand 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., GlobalPolitical Economy:Contemporary Theories (London: Routledge, forthcoming); Nancy Sherman, "Empathy, Respect, and Humanitarian Intervention," Ethics & InternationalAffairs, Vol. 12 (1998), pp. 103-119; Robert Jervis, Perception
InternationalSecurity, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring 2000), pp. 116-156 ? 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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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," concentrates 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 'rationality' suggests," and Hans Morgenthau remarked that "the possibility of conand Misperceptionin InternationalPolitics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 356381; Irving Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, 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 Cnystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990); Steven Kull, Minds at War: Nuclear Reality and the Inner Conflictsof Defense Policymakers(New York:Basic Books, 1988); Ralph K. White, Fearful Warriors: A PsychologicalProfile 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 & InternationalAffairs, Vol. 12 (1998), pp. 121-140; and Margaret Hermann, "One Field, Many Perspectives: Building the Foundations for Dialogue," InternationalStudies Quarterly,Vol. 42, No. 4 (December 1998), pp. 605624. 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 0. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests:Political Arguments for Capitalism beforeIts 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 influenced 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. Griffiths, What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 4. Robert 0. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "Power and InterdependenceRevisited," 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, summarizes but does not question assumptions of rationality held in formal models.

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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 understandable 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 psychology 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 relevantfear 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 difficult 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 wari6. Kenneth N. Waltz, "Reflections on Theoryof InternationalPolitics: A Response to My Critics," in Robert 0. 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, Perceptionand Misperceptionin InternationalPolitics; 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 difficult, 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 InternationalStudies Review, Vol. 42, Supp. 1 (May 1998), pp. 63-96; and Richard Herrmann, "The Empirical Challenge of the Cognitive Revolution: A Strategy for Drawing Inferences about Perceptions," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 175-203.

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ness about generalizing from individual to group behavior and the attributes of organizations, including states. These are formidable concerns but not necessarily 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 international 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 undermined 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, confidence building, and postconflict 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 definition 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 first 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 briefly return to methodological problems and propose a preliminary re-

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search agenda for studying emotion and emotional relationships in world politics.

Theories The Centrality of Emotionin Realistand Liberal


Although their concepts need clarification, 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."'1 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 justifies behaviors that might otherwise be difficult to justify, while courage, 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 passions, 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 trinitycomposed 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 first, 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.

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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, bellicosity, is the counterpart of the love of peace; but militarism is more, and sometimes 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 nation."20 Further, it is widely believed that men will fight for love of country, and even more bravely out of their brotherly feelings for their comrades.21 In a passage that conflates 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."22Soldiers 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 Commentaryon War since 1942 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1942] 1965), pp. 1562, 1222. 18. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Meridian Books [19371 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 identification of the individual with his nation stands in inverse proportion to the stability of the particular society as reflected 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.

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without Mercy is a chilling account of how hatred was engendered and mobilized by both sides in the Pacific 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 fighting effectiveness, divides participants in two conflicting camps, segregates attitudes of friendliness and of hostility geographically, and creates profound emotional insecurities in the process of rearranging the current political alignment.... The flight 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 became 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 Pacific 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 collaboration 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 dominant 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.

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cludes emotional relationships, specifically "international patterns of amity and enmity "29 Keohane both takes empathy seriously and attempts to put it into a rational actor framework. Specifically, Keohane argues that empathy and empathetic interdependence play a "subordinate role" to rational interests, and he suggests that "if government's definitions of self-interest incorporate empathy, they will be more able than otherwise to construct international regimes, since shared interests will be greater."30Richard Rorty argues that empathy influences 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.'"31These are potentially important arguments; what remains is the development and evaluation of a coherent account of passion's role in world politics.

Defining Emotion
While many believe that Charles Darwin was the first to systematically study emotion-he attempted to describe the expression of universal human emotions and locate their antecedents in other species-scholars have long undertaken to define and categorize emotion. Still, biologists, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have not agreed on a single definition 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 disagreements 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 first century B.C. Aristotle defined emotion as "those thingsby thealteration of whichmendiffer

with regardto thosejudgments whichpain and pleasure The origins accompany."32


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

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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 definitions 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."33Aristotle, 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, defiance, 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 Difficulties in definition and categorization are even greater in a comparative framework. Aristotle and Darwin argued that emotions were universally recognized 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 cultures.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, Alchemiesof the Mind: Rationalityand the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 241. 34. Charles Darwin, The Expressionof Emotion in Man and Animals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1872] 1965). See also Paul Ekman, ed., Darwin and Facial Expression:A Century of Researchin Review (New York: Academic Press, 1973). 35. A short overview is Randolph R. Cornelius, The Science of Emotion:Researchand Traditionin 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 Handbookof Emotions (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), pp. 417431.

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classified 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 fixed categories of nature. Rather, they are hypotheses formulated by our linguistic ancestors."38 Disagreements on the definition 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 definition of emotion that covers all the ground required to develop a theory of emotion for world politics. Instead, I offer a simple definition designed to be agnostic about the sources and consequences of emotion. Emotions are the inner states that individuals describeto others as feelings, and those feelings may be associated with biological,cognitive, and behavioralstates and changes. Thus emotions are first 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 recognition 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 definition should be debated and improved. After the following review of biological, cognitive, psychodynamic, and social learning theories of emotion, the virtue of a simple definition containing few assumptions should be apparent.

Conflicting Theoriesof 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 Studies," 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," Psychological 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," PsychologicalBulletin, 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 Handbookof Emotions, pp. 199-208.

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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 Rene 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 office 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 consequence 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. Contemporary 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 Treatiseof Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 415. See also Robert C. Solomon, "The Philosophy of Emotions," in Lewis and Haviland, The Handbookof 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 definition and theories of emotion in psychology, see Paul Ekman and Richard J. Davidson, The Nature of Emotion:FundamentalQuestions (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 influenced by Freud see emotions and emotional relationships as a consequence of both psychological development and relationship dynamics. For instance, see Vamik D. Volkan, Demetrios A. Julius, and Joseph V. Montville, eds., The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, Vol. 1, Concepts and Theories (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990).

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example, the function of fear, which includes physiological changes such as a rapid heartbeat, is to prepare animals for fighting or running away.43 Biological or naturalistic theories of emotion strongly influenced psychological theories, moving many students of emotion to examine ever smaller physical structures (such as the hypothalamus, amygdala, and extended amygdala in the human brain) and neurochemical (amino acids, hormones, and neuromodulators) processes within and between cells.44 For example, some researchers 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 "hyperexcitability" 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 biological 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: Theony,Research,and Experience,Vol. 1, Theoriesof 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 Amelie 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 Reviezv,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.

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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 inflicted 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 influence emotional 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 significance for their well-being. Magda Arnold argued that humans are constantly deliberating or appraising, and this influences emotional responses such as fear: "We rememberwhat 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 associated 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 associationhow emotions influence 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 continuum from the natural to the social-specifically, 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).

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"emotions are responses that have been institutionalized by society as a means of resolving conflicts which exist within social systems."51 "Strong" constructivists such as Rom Harre suggest that "emotions can exist only in the reciprocal exchanges of a social encounter" and that emotions may only be understood in their social context, specifically 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 specific social situations. Fourth, "emotions are constituted in order to serve sociocultural functions. . . . to restrain undesirable attitudes and behaviour, and to sustain and endorse cultural 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 influenced 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, although these approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive; biological, cognitive, and social constructivist approaches to emotion account for findings at different levels (cellular, behavioral, social, etc.) and explain different findings altogether. Specifically, 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 Determinants," 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 Harr6, "An Outline of the Social Constructionist Viewpoint," in Harre, 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.

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on Emotionin World Propositions Politics


The time is ripe for addressing emotion in world politics and, at the same time, the politically consequential situations of international relations may contribute 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 find support. Nevertheless, with appropriate humility, I suggest propositions on the incidence and variation 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 fields, 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 constructivist approaches are correct. Rather, I am agnostic about theoretical approaches 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 specific emotions vary withiii 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 malleable 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 intensity. Emotions are a human (or more generally, animal) characteristic. Strong cultural taboos against expressing particular emotions may make it difficult, 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.

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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."58Only 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.59This 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. If emotions and emotional relationships are cognitive and soVARIATION. cially constructed, one can expect different expressions historically, within societies, and across cultures. Emotions may have differing salience and behavioral components in different organizational and cultural settings. Cognitive 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 re54. Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes:Inside the WhiteHouse 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).

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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 physiological 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 influence 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-sacrifice 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-sacrifice. 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 difficulty) relearned, as can the behavioral components of emotions. Social learning theories may help in unrderstanding how aggressive nationalist and ethnocentric beliefs and their associated emotions are used to mobilize states' populations for war. Specifically, 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) departments is a testament to the importance of both implanting and kindling emotions in domestic populations to mobilize support and sacrifice for war. Conversely, cognitivist and social constructivist understandings of how emo60. 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.

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tions may be shaped by learning implies that even beliefs and emotions that are tightly linked may be relearned. This emphasis on learning has implications 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. Like intentions, emotions may be misperceived. Cultural INTERPRETATION. distance or difference affects one's ability to interpret others' emotions. Differences 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"?64Cultural distance may also be found within cultures. Specifically, 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 contexts that are differently relevant for men and women (control vs. intimacy). This finding raises the possibility that women's 'greater emotionality' is a culturally constructed idea, based on observed differences in emotional expression-differences which are socialized from a very early age."65 Scholars concerned 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.

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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 misperceptions seem more likely EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS. Individuals and groups put their relationships to others into emotional categories that influence their perceptions of the other, especially how ambiguous actions and situations are interpreted. Because many behaviors are ambiguous, foreign policy decisionmakers constantly attribute 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 influence 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, antipathy, or hostility, and affected by ethnocentrism and nationalism. Mercer argues that "the more we identify with our group, the more likely we are to discriminate against out-groups.... Group comparisons are not neutral."67A preexisting 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 ShatteredCrystal Ball, pp. 80-81. 67. Jonathan Mercer, "Anarchy and Identity," International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 229-252, at p. 251.

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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 officials interpreted U.S. intentions in a negative way68 Had the bombing been of an embassy whose government had more positive or neutral relations with the United States, a less sinister attribution 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 flexibility in negotiations, whereas dehumanization, demonization, and enmity may have the opposite consequences, fostering harsher interactions and inflexibility Marc Ross argues that as "empathy develops, 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."69Further, just as emotions are labile, emotional relationships 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 five 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 YorkTimes, November 3, 1999, p. Al0. 69. Marc Howard Ross, The Management of Conflict: 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 Genocideand Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Eliciting empathy may be useful in conflict management. Psychologist Herbert Kelman has long attempted to influence the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by putting the parties together in nonthreatening, off-the-record circumstances to promote empathetic understanding among individuals in the two groups. See Kelman, "Interactive Problem Solving: The Uses and Limits of a Therapeutic Model for the Resolution of International Conflicts," in Vamik D. Volkan, Joseph V. Montville, and Demetrios A. Julius, eds., The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, Vol. 2, Unofficial Diplomacy at Work(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1991), pp. 145-160. 70. Colonizers' increased empathy toward the colonized explains in part the trend toward decolonization 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.,

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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 Ohman 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. Ohman 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 centered on threat, which in turn facilitates processing of threat-related information."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 gtate 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 flying from the Soviet Union

Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), pp. 37-61. 71. Arne Ohman, "Fear and Anxiety as Emotional Phenomena: Clinical Phenomenology, Evolutionary Perspectives, and Information Processing Mechanisms," in Lewis and Haviland, The Handbookof 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.

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or one that was 90 miles away."76Gen. 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.79In sum, cognitive processing and the social construction of meaning in this case helped decisionmakers to decide whether the United States was justified 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; calculation of cost, risk, and benefit; use of analogy; and receptivity to argumentis influenced by emotion. INFORMATION GATHERING AND PROCESSING. Emotions influence the performance and content of information gathering and processing by individuals and groups. It is commonplace to acknowledge that moderate stress improves cognitive performance, whereas too much stress impairs performance, especially memory and information processing.80 Emotional arousal may have analogous effects. Thus cognition and emotional relationships allow and shape the identification of threats, whereas emotion may influence the ability to acquire, prioritize, and sort new information. This can work in several ways. First, mood influences 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 Worldin Their Minds, p. 178.

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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, detailoriented strategies. "81 Second, high anxiety may result in individuals reducing information gathering and processing, avoiding those pieces of information that make them feel worse (or emphasizing what makes them feel better), or shutting down completely82 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 commenced five days previously. Wilhelm misread the cable and concluded that Russia had begun mobilizing against Germany five 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 unavoidable responsibility, may induce individuals to gather more information about perceived threats and to work hard to find answers to difficult 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, Emotionand 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).

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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 responsibility: "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 superpowers may 'find 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 amplifies anxiety. Left alone to make enormously fateful decisions, decisionmakers may be overwhelmed by fear. Indeed, 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 accountable for their decisions can also increase the quality of their decisionmaking; 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. Specifically, "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 ShatteredCrystal Ball, p. 169. 86. Ibid., p. 98. Further, responsible individuals may believe that it is their role to find solutions, while prior personal experience of effective crisis decisionmaking may reinforce their confidence. 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 I1 Kim, "Accountability and Judgement Processes in a Personality Prediction Task," Journalof 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 Accountability," 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 sufficient because it may cause one to

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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 countermeasures greatly affect the influence 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, affiliative, and egocentric constraints on "vigilant information processing."90 To manage these constraints, decisionmakers use cognitive heuristics, affiliative practices such as following the party line, concurrence seeking (groupthink) and suppression of dissent, and egocentric practices such as defensive avoidance. EVALUATION. Emotions influence actors' understanding of the past and sense of what is possible in the future in four ways; emotions influence recall, the use of analogy, the evaluation of past choices, and the consideration of counterfactuals. The link between emotions and recall goes both ways: particular memories are linked to particular emotions and, conversely, current emotions influence the recall of memories.91 For example, the experience of fear may prompt memories focused on threat.92On the other hand, thinking about
withdraw. Hope alone is insufficient 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, Perceptionand Misperceptionin InternationalPolitics, 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 inflexibility and overconfidence. So, for better crisis decisionmaking, 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; affiliative 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: Leadershipin Policy Making and Crisis Management (New York: Free Press, 1989); and Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 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. Ohman, "Fear and Anxiety as Emotional Phenomena," p. 528.

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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 define the nature of the situation 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 fit 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. Specifically, 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 firsthand or bystander experience with a highly emotionally charged event will likely have strong emotional 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, "Analogical Reasoning and the Definition of the Situation: Back to Snyder for Concepts and Forward to Artificial Intelligence for Method," in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N. Rosenau, eds., Nezv Directions in the Study of ForeignPolicy (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 Ase H. Innes-Ker, "Emotional Response Categorization," Psychological Reviezv,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 Neuroscience," American Psychologist, Vol. 54, No. 3 (March 1999), pp. 182-203, at pp. 195-196.

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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 influence decisionmakers' evaluations of the efficacy of past choices. Specifically, 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 difficult 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 organization theory frameworks suggest that individuals and organizations of
95. The experience of surprise attack or quagmire may be widespread and associated with emotional 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 significance as an event in U.S. foreign policy, emotions have made the lessons of that war a significant factor in post-Vietnam foreign and military policy. 96. Ohman, "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.

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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 oversight, 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 benefits. Prospect and game theory similarly 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 information. Mood also appears to frame the situation. Mood influences assessments of likelihood and risk in situations of decisionmaking under uncertainty or risk. Not surprisingly, policymakers with negative 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 significant loss is highly likely and more accept99. 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., CounterfactualThought Experimentsin WorldPolitics: Logical,Methodological,and PsychologicalPerspectives (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 3-38 and 296-300, respectively. 100. Neal J. Roese, "Counterfactual Thinking," PsychologicalBulletin, Vol. 121, No. 1 (January 1997), pp. 133-148; and Suzanne Altobello Nasco and Kerry L. Marsh, "Gaining Control through Counterfactual Thinking," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 5 (May 1999), pp. 556568.

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ing of risk if the perception of risk is low.101Thomas Nygren notes that, in his research, positive affect participants were "moderately, although consistently, more risk averse in their gambling behavior than were negative affect participants 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 unclear 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 influence, 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 influence, and prestige.103 ARGUMENT. Preexisting emotions influence receptivity to arguments. Conversely, 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-TakingBehavior(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 campaign. 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 financial 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 Qaddhafi in defiance 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 finance with even a slightly pink-tinged economic policy-because they were in a good mood?

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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 previous situation ought therefore be applied to the new situation. Analogies may also be emotionally persuasive: if the events "match" (are similar in respects deemed significant), individuals who belong to generations with direct experience 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 firm" is to use emotionally charged analogies. So. both cognition and emotion influence 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 backfire because "the kind of arguments used in fear appeals appear to disrupt careful evaluation of message content."104 On the other hand, arguments that evoke fear may have positive consequences when one desires fearful decisionmakers not to pay close attention to logic and evidence.
EMOTION AND PROCESS OR BEHAVIOR

Characteristic processes of world politics-including deterrence, persuasion, postconflict 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 subsequent behavior or whether the role of emotion is unrecognized. DETERRENCE. Rational deterrence theories, to the extent that they undertheorize emotions, especially fear, are seriously deficient. 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 Judgemnents, pp. 181-200 and 201-219, respectively.

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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 find 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. Aggressors will be (rationally) deterred if the costs and risks of action outweigh the benefits. 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 cirrying out its threats. When one considers emotions, however, deterrence theory looks flawed 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 Conflict (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 first. 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 justifies 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

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decisions that rely on cognitive heuristics rather than integrative complexity In addition, the already fearful tend to gather information that is threat focused, 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 benefits that one expects, and indeed counts on in deterrence situations, will become much more difficult 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, somle 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. Specifically, as Schelling emphasizes, it is both difficult and important in conflict situations to make threats and commitments appear credible; difficult 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 credibilitythe 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 first 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 Conflict, 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 temporally extended contingencies in neutral contexts.... However, if a neutral context were misconstrued 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.

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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 beneficial 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 flight or fight. In addition, the emotions of fear and anger are closely associated biologically (sharing pathways in the brain) and often culturally111Thus a counterproductive 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 favorable in their evaluations of those who support their worldview and more unfavorable in their evaluations of those who challenge it.",112Leaders may discount or rationalize away evidence that shows capitulation to be wise at the same time that pressures among decisionmakers for conformity to the aggressive 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 fight the overwhelming military coalition bent on removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Nor did the coalition that Iraq faced fail in communicating its resolve to Iraq. Rather, it may be that the Iraqi leadership was duly frightened (of both domestic and international situations), and fighting 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 justifiably scared of the domestic and international forces arrayed against them. While thus afraid, both leaders were pushed into fighting 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 Conflict, pp. 199-200. 111. Debra Niehoff, The Biology of Violence:How Understanding the Brain, Behavior,and Environment Can Breakthe Vicious Cycle of Aggresssion (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 50. 112. Jamie Arndt, Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pysczynski, and Linda Simon, "Suppression, Accessibility of Death-Related Thoughts, and Cultural Worldview Defense: Exploring the Psychodynamics of Terror Management," Journalof 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.

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Yet deterrence theory depends on assumptions that may not hold if the emotional 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 commitments 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 influence 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 specifically the ability of states to mobilize the creative energies and the spirit of self-sacrifice of millions of soldiers."114 Similarly, militaries promote fear of outsiders and solidarity and pride among in-group members and exhort soldiers 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, individuals hope to persuade others with their arguments.115 Emotional appeals may be particularly effective when conflicts 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 find an "objective" standard for justified fears to legitimize preemptive wars may thus be particularly difficult 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.

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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 overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action" leads to "deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment"-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 conflicts, may be more difficult than preventing war.117 This is probably for several reasons, not least of which is the way emotions are at work in conflict and postconflict 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."118Posen 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: PsychologicalStudies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 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, Peacemakingin Civil War:International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 19741980 (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 Conflict," in Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 103-124, at p. 120.

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approaches to ending wars and preventing their reeruption-deterrence, military 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 postconflict 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 dther hand, postconflict 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 offensively Specifically, in the context of ending international wars, restructuring consists of efforts to change military doctrine, force posture, and deployments-altering the way that militaries plan, train, and arm to conduct warso 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 restructuring, 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 Genocideand Mass Violence(Boston: Beacon, 1998); Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, CollectiveMemory, 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 Genocidein Bosnia-Herzegovinaand 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 Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 127-155.

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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 reconfiguring 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 emotions 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 retribution 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 recidivists; 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 activity123 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.

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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 because 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 conflict around the world without pursuing justice."124Yet 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 postconflict peacebuilding. Because so much rides on postconflict 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 identified 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," TransnationalLaw & Contemporary Problems, 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.

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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 reflect 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 entirely 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."129Similarly, the character of emotional relationships between groups may account for resort to humanitarian 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 normative injunctions. Elster believes that "sanctions-whether mild or severe-matter 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 difficult to sustain in the context of world politics unless and to the extent that people within states believe that their states have roles, emotional relationships, 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," Mershon 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 distinguish 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."

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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 Systematic attention to emotion will also allow more propositions to be generated, and some of the propositions articulated above will be better specified 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 questions are important. Specifically, 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 difficult 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 Definitional issues are not easily resolved. Rather, one's definition 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 worthwhile to pursue the research agendas implied by all three approaches, with the likelihood that some will prove more profitable 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 InternationalAmbition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 41-42.

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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 find 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 theories of world politics. Nor are decisionmakers necessarily irrational if they are not rational in a classical sense. Rather, humans reason; humans make decisions that are always both classically self-interested and emotional. Although it is not uncommon to conflate 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 135 to reason."
134. See, for instance, Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Organization Press, 1993); and Miles Kahler, "Rationality in International Relations," Internationadl Vol. 52, No. 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 919-941. 135. Mercer, "Approaching Emotion in International Politics," p. 17.

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