Personal and Political Emotions in the Mind of the Diplomat

Abstract

Despite growing research on the role of emotions in international relations, little work has analyzed how diplomats and decision‐makers themselves make sense of feelings generated by relationships that have both individual and state‐level implications. Do diplomats consciously experience feelings on behalf of the state? If so, how? How might individual embodied emotions affect how diplomats carry out their roles during negotiations? In the first systematic effort to address and conceptualize these questions empirically, with Henry Kissinger as a case study, we investigate the interplay between the experience of being an individual with personal emotions, on the one hand, and the practice of evaluating performative emotional cues relevant to the state, on the other. We suggest that diplomats recognize some emotional inputs as accruing not to them as individuals but to the state they represent, typically in connection with traditional diplomatic protocols and rituals that are firmly established as state‐level performances. At the same time, however, especially but not exclusively in high‐stakes negotiations involving strong personal relationships, individually embodied feelings with little‐to‐no state relevance can have significant influence on how diplomats define and pursue the national interest.