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Brian Rathbun argues against the prevailing wisdom on morality in international relations, both the commonly held belief that foreign affairs is an amoral realm and the opposing concept that norms have gradually civilized an unethical world. By focusing on how states respond to being wronged rather than when they do right, Rathbun shows that morality is and always has been virtually everywhere in international relations - in the perception of threat, the persistence of conflict, the judgment of domestic audiences, and the articulation of expansionist goals. The inescapability of our moral impulses owes to their evolutionary origins in helping individuals solve recurrent problems in their anarchic environment. Through archival case studies of German foreign policy; the analysis of enormous corpora of text; and surveys of Russian, Chinese, and American publics, this book reorients how we think about the role of morality in international relations

Brian Rathbun argues against the prevailing wisdom on morality in international relations, both the commonly held belief that foreign affairs is an amoral realm and the opposing concept that norms have gradually civilized an unethical world. By focusing on how states respond to being wronged rather than when they do right, Rathbun shows that morality is and always has been virtually everywhere in international relations - in the perception of threat, the persistence of conflict, the judgment of domestic audiences, and the articulation of expansionist goals. The inescapability of our moral impulses owes to their evolutionary origins in helping individuals solve recurrent problems in their anarchic environment. Through archival case studies of German foreign policy; the analysis of enormous corpora of text; and surveys of Russian, Chinese, and American publics, this book reorients how we think about the role of morality in international relations.

Scholars and citizens tend to assume that rationality guides the decision making of our leaders. Brian Rathbun suggests, however, that if we understand rationality to be a cognitive style premised on a commitment to objectivity and active deliberation, rational leaders are, in fact, the exception - not the norm. Using a unique combination of methods, including laboratory bargaining experiments, archival-based case studies, quantitative textual analysis, and high-level interviews, Rathbun questions some of our basic assumptions about rationality and leadership, with profound implications for the field of international relations. Case studies of Bismarck and Richelieu show that the rationality of realists makes them rare. An examination of Churchill and Reagan, romantics in international politics who sought to overcome obstacles in their path through force of will and personal agency, show what less rationality looks like in foreign policy making.

Scholars and citizens tend to assume that rationality guides the decision-making of our leaders. Brian C. Rathbun suggests, however, that if we understand rationality to be a cognitive style premised on a commitment to objectivity and active deliberation, rational leaders are in fact the exception not the norm. Using a unique combination of methods including laboratory bargaining experiments, archival-based case studies, quantitative textual analysis and high-level interviews, Rathbun questions some of the basic assumptions about rationality and leadership, with profound implications for the field of international relations. Case studies of Bismarck and Richelieu show that the rationality of realists makes them rare. An examination of Churchill and Reagan, romantics in international politics who sought to overcome obstacles in their path through force of will and personal agency, show what less rationality looks like in foreign policy making.

Cover -- PARTISAN INTERVENTIONS -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Contesting the National Interest: Political Parties and International Relations -- 2. Partisan Lenses and Historical Frames: Ideology, Experience, and Foreign Policy Preferences -- 3. A Faraway Place of Which We Know Little? The Politics of Humanitarian Intervention in Great Britain -- 4. Never Again War? The Interparty and Intraparty Politics of Normalization in Germany -- 5. The French Exception? Presidential Prerogatives and the Public And Private Politics of lntervention -- 6. European Army, Militarized Europe, or European Europe? The Domestic Politics of a Security and Defense Policy for the European Union -- 7. Parting Ways -- Index

The value and values of diplomacy -- Creating value: a psychological theory of diplomacy -- Tabling the issue: two Franco-British failures of diplomacy -- Setting the table: German reassurance, British brokering and French understanding -- Getting to the table: the diplomatic perils of the exchange of notes -- Cards on the table: the negotiation of the treaty of mutual guarantee and the spirit of Locarno -- Turning the tables: reparations, early evacuation and the Hague conference -- Additional value: the rise and fall of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process -- Searching for Stresemann: the lessons of the 1920s for diplomacy and the Middle East peace process

What is the value of diplomacy? How does it affect the course of foreign affairs independent of the distribution of power and foreign policy interests? Theories of international relations too often implicitly reduce the dynamics and outcomes of diplomacy to structural factors rather than the subtle qualities of negotiation. If diplomacy is an independent effect on the conduct of world politics, it has to add value, and we have to be able to show what that value is. In Diplomacy's Value, Brian C. Rathbun sets forth a comprehensive theory of diplomacy, based on his understanding that political leaders have distinct diplomatic styles—coercive bargaining, reasoned dialogue, and pragmatic statecraft.

Trust in International Cooperation challenges conventional wisdoms concerning the part which trust plays in international cooperation and the origins of American multilateralism. Brian C. Rathbun questions rational institutionalist arguments, demonstrating that trust precedes rather than follows the creation of international organizations. Drawing on social psychology, he shows that individuals placed in the same structural circumstances show markedly different propensities to cooperate based on their beliefs about the trustworthiness of others. Linking this finding to political psychology, Rathbun explains why liberals generally pursue a more multilateral foreign policy than conservatives, evident in the Democratic Party's greater support for a genuinely multilateral League of Nations, United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rathbun argues that the post-World War Two bipartisan consensus on multilateralism is a myth, and differences between the parties are growing continually starker

It is frequently maintained that rationalism is something other than an 'ism' of International Relations. Inspired by critical theory but using quantitative survey data, this article takes issue with that notion, arguing that rationalist work – with its emphasis on interests, institutions, and information – has a distinct logic of individualistic utilitarianism. It therefore exhibits all of the subjective biases of other 'isms', defining both the answers and the very questions that are asked. Using data from the 2011 TRIP survey, I show that those substantive commitments reveal themselves in the economic ideology of those who make rationalist assumptions in their work. Parallel to a view of international relations in which egoistic units seek material gains, rationalists identify as economic libertarians at a much higher rate than non-rationalists. All of this suggests that rationalists have an unacknowledged and unconscious bias in their scholarship that threatens the positivistic epistemology to which most claim to be committed.

"Empirical Evidence for Empirical International Relations Theorizing: Tests of Epistemological Assumptions With Data" published on by Oxford University Press.