Sino Us Relations And The Role Of Emotion In State Action

Examining twenty-first century relations between the US and China, Shepperd investigates three well publicised crises between these states, highlighting how social interests relating to identity and emotional needs were key dynamics driving these interactions and their transformation.

Examining twenty-first century relations between the US and China, Shepperd investigates three well publicised crises between these states, highlighting how social interests relating to identity and emotional needs were key dynamics driving these interactions and their transformation.

Why do states often refuse to yield to military threats from a more powerful actor, such as the United States? Why do they frequently prefer war to compliance? International Relations scholars generally employ the rational choice logic of consequences or the constructivist logic of appropriateness to explain this puzzling behavior. Max Weber, however, suggested a third logic of choice in his magnum opus Economy and Society: human decision making can also be motivated by emotions. Drawing on Weber and more recent scholarship in sociology and psychology, Robin Markwica introduces the logic of affect, or emotional choice theory, into the field of International Relations. The logic of affect posits that actors' behavior is shaped by the dynamic interplay among their norms, identities, and five key emotions: fear, anger, hope, pride, and humiliation. Markwica puts forward a series of propositions that specify the affective conditions under which leaders are likely to accept or reject a coercer's demands. To infer emotions and to examine their influence on decision making, he develops a methodological strategy combining sentiment analysis and an interpretive form of process tracing. He then applies the logic of affect to Nikita Khrushchev's behavior during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and Saddam Hussein's decision making in the Gulf conflict in 1990-1 offering a novel explanation for why U.S. coercive diplomacy succeeded in one case but not in the other.

This volume offers a state-of-the-art study of the diverse methodological approaches and issues in the study of emotions in international relations research. While interest in emotion and affect in IR has grown in recent years, there remains an absence of sustained engagement with questions of methodology and method. Although much of the field holds the ‘emotions turn’ as laudable, it is commonly seen as facing serious, even prohibitive, methodological challenges. Using a common framework for making discussions of methodology and emotion mutually intelligible, this work seeks to address this lacuna and will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, research methods and IR theory.

China and India are becoming increasingly influential, powerful and prominent countries – but what kind of states do their leaders and people wish them to become? Will they act and behave like major Western entities or like something altogether different, hence changing the very nature of international affairs? And as the Asian twenty– first century takes shape, how will these dynamics affect the wider geopolitical landscape and the balance of power? In this in–depth study, Chris Ogden evaluates the prospective impact of China and India upon the definition and nature of great power in the contemporary world. Whilst many contend that they will rise in a similar way to current and previous great powers – namely via traditional material, economic and military measures – Ogden explores the extent to which domestic political and cultural values as well as historical identities and perceptions are also central driving forces behind their common status, ambitions and worldviews. In so doing, he offers a new and comprehensive analysis of these two countries' past, contemporary and future global significance, in particular their shared status as the world's first such post–imperial great powers.

Why is France so often relegated to the background in studies of international relations? This book seeks to redress this balance, exploring the relationship between the United States, United Kingdom and France, and its wider impact on the theory and practice of international relations.