| This dissertation seeks to provide the tools necessary to theoretically address and empirically investigate the role of emotional behavior at the interstate level. For this purpose, I develop a theory of emotional idioms, which I define as shared, implicit understandings of emotional rhetoric, expressive behavior, and action tendencies. In contrast to scholars who advocate focusing on individual-level emotions, I instead propose examining the possibility that policymakers, regardless of what their own emotions may be, strategically draw upon emotional idioms when formulating foreign policy. In particular, I suggest that the use of emotional idioms in international relations provides an important means to express intentions and convey meaningful signals. To probe the utility of my theoretical framework relative to neo-utilitarian approaches, I examine three empirical domains: German-Israeli relations, Sino-American relations, and the responses of various state governments to the September 11th attacks. In my study of German-Israeli relations, I argue that the emotional idiom of guilt repeatedly guided German policies towards Israel over a forty-year historical period. In my work on Sino-American relations, I claim that the emotional idiom of anger shaped official PRC responses upon multiple occasions in its relationship to the United States regarding the issue of Taiwan. Finally, concentrating on Russia, the PRC, the United Kingdom, and Cuba, I maintain that in the aftermath of the September 11 th attacks the responses of these diverse state actors were in the first instance formulated in accordance to the emotional idiom of sympathy. |
