The Politics of Emotions in International Relations: Who Gets to Feel What, Whose Emotions Matter, and the “History Problem” in Sino-Japanese Relations

Abstract

A large literature within the field of international relations has now explored both how emotions can shape political perceptions and behavior and how international actors may seek to manipulate, harness, or deploy emotions and emotional displays for political ends. Less attention, however, has been paid to how political struggles can also center upon issues of who can or should feel what emotion and whose feelings matter. Precisely, we theorize a distributive politics of emotion that can manifest in three general forms, all of which have their own properties and logics of contestation. The first centers on emotional obligations, understood as an actor's duties to feel and express specific emotions. The second concerns emotional entitlements, or the rights an actor enjoys to either feel or not feel certain emotions. And the third involves hierarchies of emotional deference, that is, the varying degrees of priority accorded to different actors’ feelings. We illustrate how the politics of emotions can unfold on the international stage by looking at developments in the so-called history problem within Sino-Japanese relations.