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Recent International Relations scholarship has emphasized the significance of ritual and emotion in international politics. Much less attention has been paid to instances of ritual failure. Ritual failure refers to the occurrence of deliberate mistakes, errors or sabotage to contest the sociocultural boundaries, hierarchies and structures underlying international rituals. In this article, I argue that ritual is an emotion transformer that generates a sense of community among North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members. Successful ritual makes community members experience 'we-feeling', which underpins peaceful change in a security community. NATO members carry the group-aroused emotions for a time and come out of the ritual encounter feeling strong and confident. Conversely, a failed ritual lowers the confidence of community members because they do not experience 'we-feeling'. I suggest that this explains the internal divisions and anxieties when rituals go wrong, such as during Trump's infamous speech in front of the new NATO headquarters in 2017.

Konstruktivistische Ansätze haben seit langem auf die Notwendigkeit hingewiesen, die Beziehung zwischen Identität und Differenz bei der Bildung und Aufrechterhaltung von Sicherheitsgemeinschaften wie der North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) besser zu verstehen. Aufbauend auf Émile Durkheims Ritualtheorie argumentiere ich, dass der soziale Zusammenhalt in einer Sicherheitsgemeinschaft auf rituellen Aktivitäten beruht, und zwar gerade dann, wenn kein politischer Konsens besteht. In diesem Beitrag möchte ich Durkheims ursprüngliche Erkenntnisse über die Rolle des Rituals bei der Schaffung von Solidarität nutzen, indem ich zeige, dass der Zusammenhalt der NATO weniger auf der Homogenität der Überzeugungen ihrer Mitglieder beruht als auf dem "Wir-Gefühl" während eines Rituals. Anhand der transatlantischen Sicherheitsgemeinschaft entwickle ich zunächst einen theoretisch-konzeptionellen Rahmen, der erklärt, wie Rituale Solidarität zwischen den NATO-Mitgliedstaaten erzeugen. Das Argument wird dann durch eine empirische Fallstudie zur rituellen Rekonstruktion der Solidarität durch die NATO nach dem Irakkrieg 2003 veranschaulicht.

Emotionen spielen in der Krise der liberalen Weltordnung eine zentrale Rolle. Wut und Hass fordern sie von innen heraus – Appelle an die Vernunft helfen nicht weiter. (IP)

Emotions that run through relations of power are complex and ambivalent, inviting resistance and opposition as much as compliance. While the literature in International Relations broadly accepts emotions as an intrinsic element of power and governance, relatively little attention has been given to situations when the emotional meanings of "the state" are openly contested. This essay highlights a situation in which emotional meanings are contested, or what I refer to as affective sites of contestation: situations and events where rules and norms about the proper expression of emotions are challenged, resisted, and potentially redefined. It is the ambivalence and alternation of particular emotional meanings, which, I will suggest, makes emotions an object of contestation in world politics. Whenever "official" emotions are contested from "below," "the state" itself, representing a national project, is called into question, potentially transforming the relationship between citizens and the state. Building on the works of sociologist Mabel Berezin and others, this essay develops the ideal types of "the secure state" and "communities of feeling" as analytical prisms to reconstruct the political contestation of emotional meanings, pertaining to how collective grief is expressed after a terror attack.

Emotions have been found to underpin the moral hierarchy of values and beliefs within and among groups by restraining undesirable attitudes and behavior. As such, emotions serve as potential indicators for analyzing whether or not certain norms are still deemed relevant. As Jon Mercer puts it: "One way to test for the presence of norms is to look for emotion". While the literature in International Relations (IR) generally accepts the emotional underpinnings of norms, there has been strikingly little elaboration of appropriate methods and criteria for studying the link between emotion and norms in IR. In this contribution, I suggest that socialization processes in a security community involve the internalization of appropriate rules of emotional expression or, in short, emotion norms. I propose that emotion norms can be historically traced via the emotional vocabulary and expressive rules derived from the production of texts. To do this, I searched for documents and treaties that serve as canonical texts for the collective self-conception and self-image of the transatlantic security community. As I hope to show, in these texts one can find substantial evidence of emotion norms, which designates these documents as 'emotional landmarks' that embody the emotional construction of the transatlantic emotional (security) community.

Emotions have been found to underpin the moral hierarchy of values and beliefs within and among groups by restraining undesirable attitudes and behavior. As such, emotions serve as potential indicators for analyzing whether or not certain norms are still deemed relevant. As Jon Mercer puts it: "One way to test for the presence of norms is to look for emotion". While the literature in International Relations (IR) generally accepts the emotional underpinnings of norms, there has been strikingly little elaboration of appropriate methods and criteria for studying the link between emotion and norms in IR. In this contribution, I suggest that socialization processes in a security community involve the internalization of appropriate rules of emotional expression or, in short, emotion norms. I propose that emotion norms can be historically traced via the emotional vocabulary and expressive rules derived from the production of texts. To do this, I searched for documents and treaties that serve as canonical texts for the collective self-conception and self-image of the transatlantic security community. As I hope to show, in these texts one can find substantial evidence of emotion norms, which designates these documents as 'emotional landmarks' that embody the emotional construction of the transatlantic emotional (security) community.

Constructivists claim that the democratic peace is socially constructed via mutual recognition between liberal subjects. Mutual recognition is rooted in shared moral attitudes and cognitive perceptions, thereby creating liberal intersubjectivity. What is largely missing from these accounts is the fact that shared meanings and identities are not solely rooted in cognitive perceptions and moral attitudes but significantly depend upon shared emotions that underpin and reproduce intersubjectivity. Building on interdisciplinary insights from social constructivist emotion theories, it is argued here that collectively shared emotions provide a way by which liberal subjects choose particular meaning frames and interpretations, which help align and sustain mutual attitudes and perceptions in constructing categories of 'us' and 'them.' Accordingly, the theoretical question concerning how liberal democracies recognize each other as friends can be more fully answered by the high degree of emotional convergence among them. Moreover, I suggest that it is precisely this emotional convergence that underpins the way liberal selves construct non-liberal others as their enemies.

Constructivists claim that the democratic peace is socially constructed via mutual recognition between liberal subjects. Mutual recognition is rooted in shared moral attitudes and cognitive perceptions, thereby creating liberal intersubjectivity. What is largely missing from these accounts is the fact that shared meanings and identities are not solely rooted in cognitive perceptions and moral attitudes but significantly depend upon shared emotions that underpin and reproduce intersubjectivity. Building on interdisciplinary insights from social constructivist emotion theories, it is argued here that collectively shared emotions provide a way by which liberal subjects choose particular meaning frames and interpretations, which help align and sustain mutual attitudes and perceptions in constructing categories of 'us' and 'them.' Accordingly, the theoretical question concerning how liberal democracies recognize each other as friends can be more fully answered by the high degree of emotional convergence among them. Moreover, I suggest that it is precisely this emotional convergence that underpins the way liberal selves construct non-liberal others as their enemies.