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Articles

Political psychology of emotion(al) norms in European Union foreign policy

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Pages 193-205 | Received 02 Jul 2021, Accepted 23 Aug 2021, Published online: 21 Oct 2021

ABSTRACT

The article uses political psychology to understand how emotions such as fear, anger, hate and passion fuel the construction of emotional norms in foreign policy, and why this is important to the contributing articles to this Global Affairs special issue (SI) on emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy. It argues that the SI sets out a significant stage in the political psychology of emotions from IR to the EU over the past 50 years. The value of the SI's theoretical contribution to the field is demonstrated by using the political psychologies of individual cognitive psychology, social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysis and critical political psychology to allow for engagement with the broader inter-discipline. The article concludes that the SI has made an original and interesting contribution in terms of empirically multileveled, theoretically emotional, and methodologically discursive approaches to the understanding of the political psychologies of emotional norms in EU foreign policy.

Introduction

In an era of planetary crises connecting economic neoliberalism, social interdependence, ecological emergency, endemic conflict and the rise of authoritarian ethno-nationalism, the topic of international relations has become a very emotional subject. The anger which protestors demonstrate against kleptocratic governments, the hate which nationalist far-right parties express for minority groups and the passion with which #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter and #FridaysForFuture activists argue for progressive transformation is today central to understanding international relations. Being mindful of planetary politics – reflecting on the ways in which psychology and politics are deeply implicated in understanding international relations, the EU and EUropean foreign policy is no longer an option; it is a necessity. This concluding article uses political psychology to summarize and understand the contributing articles to this Global Affairs special issue on emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy. In particular, the article seeks to understand how emotions such as fear, anger, hate, and passion fuel the construction of emotional norms in foreign policy and why this is important to understanding contemporary EU foreign policy. Following the convention established in the introduction (Terzi, Palm, & Gürkan, Citation2021), this article distinguishes between “emotion norms” referring to the appropriate emotional expressions, and “emotional norms” referring to the norms that trigger emotional responses in analysing the political psychology of emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy. The article will first review the literature in the sub-field to contextualize the special issue’s contribution by considering the 50-year journey from International Relations (IR) to EU of the political psychology of emotions in international relations and foreign policy. Then the article will use a five-fold political psychology framework to analyse the special issue’s contribution to the theoretical field. Finally, the article concludes by reflecting on the empirically multileveled, theoretically emotional and methodologically discursive contribution of the special issue in emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy.

Political psychology from international relations to EU

As the introduction by Terzi et al. (Citation2021) to this Global Affairs special issue on emotion(al) Norms in EUropean Foreign Policy sets out, the political psychology of emotions in international relations has been important over the past 50 years. Since the field is so large, any review of the literature cannot cover all of the 100,000 books, chapters and articles written on emotions, psychology and international relations. Instead, the focus is on three periods of literature and research: the well-known IR work of the Cold War era; the lessor-known political psychology of the post-Cold War 1990s and the explosion of new work on critical political psychology, emotions, discourse and IR in the 2000s. Similarly, not all political psychology of IR and EU can be covered, for example, work on “operational code” (George, Citation1969), “attribution error” (Heradstveit, Citation1979) or “prospect theory” (Levy, Citation1992) in IR is not discussed (see Aggestam, Citation2014).

Since the mid-1950s the political psychology of emotions in international relations and foreign policy has become an increasingly important area of research (Deutsch & Kinnvall, 2001, pp. 26–28), with pioneers such as Irving Janis (Citation1972), Robert Jervis (Citation1976), Margaret Hermann (Citation1977), Deborah Welch Larson (Citation1985) and Janice Gross Stein (Citation1989) engaging in analyses during the Cold War. The end of the Cold War brought much broader interest in psychoanalysis and critical psychology of emotions in international relations, building on the work of Erik Erikson (Citation1950), Tajfel (Citation1978), Julia Kristeva (Citation1982, Citation1991), Michael Billig (Citation1995) and Vamik Volkan (Citation1997).

In the 1990s, a new generation of political psychology and international relations scholars used these foundations in IR, psychoanalysis and critical political psychology to build the political psychology of global politics. This scholarship included Julia Kristeva’s post-Lacanian psychoanalysis found in Mary Caputi (Citation1993, Citation1996) and Vivienne Jabri’s (Citation1998a, Citation1998b) work. Drawing on the work of Melanie Klein and Erich Fromm, scholars such as John Cash (Citation1989, Citation1996) developed psychoanalytic approaches to ideology and affected in postcolonial settings. Using Erikson, Kristeva and Volkan’s ideas, Catarina Kinnvall worked at the interface of political psychology and psychoanalysis to advance concepts of “ontological security”, the “abject” and “chosen traumas” in international relations, initially by focussing on diasporic identity constructions (Kinnvall, Citation1997, Citation2002) and globalized religious nationalism (Citation1999, Citation2004). Finally, Paul Nesbitt-Larking (Citation1992, Citation2003) contributed to the construction of critical political psychology drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Weltman and Billig.

By the 2000s, the foundations were set for the political psychology of international relations, conventional, psychoanalytical and critical, to become more widely known through the work of Neta Crawford (Citation2000, Citation2014) on passions and emotions, Jonathan Mercer (Citation2005) on rationality and psychology, Derek Hook (Citation2012) on critical psychology of the postcolonial, Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking (Citation2011) on the political psychology of globalization, Kurt Jacobsen (Citation2017) on psychoanalysis and international relations, Cristian Tileagă (Citation2013) on critical political psychology, Bleiker and Hutchison (Citation2014) on emotions and world politics, Ty Solomon (Citation2015) on American foreign policy and Simon Koschut (Citation2014) on discourse and emotions.

The political psychology of European integration and EU foreign policy has been slower to emerge, with early work on ontological security (Manners, Citation2002; CitationMitzen, 2006a, Citation2006b) and also work with Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalysis (Kristeva, Citation1998; CitationManners, 2006a, Citation2006b). However, by the 2010s, a series of edited volumes and special issues demonstrate that the foundations of the political psychology of the EU are ready to address the emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy. The Palgrave Handbook of Global Political Psychology (Nesbitt-Larking et al., Citation2014) provided over 11 contributions on European political psychology ranging from dialogical approaches through migration and multiculturalism, fear and insecurity, to an overview of the political psychology of European integration (Manners, Citation2014). The special issue of Political Psychology on “The Political Psychology of European Integration: Brexit and Beyond” (Nielsen & Capelos, Citation2018) has 12 articles on topics such as territorial identity triggers, reactionary politics, psychoanalysing Europe, feeling at home and the political psychology of European integration (Manners, Citation2018; Mitzen, Citation2018a).

More specifically, the political psychology of EU foreign policy was addressed in two articles on the European [security] Union (Manners, Citation2013a) and trauma, emotions and memory in the EU’s foreign policy in the Middle East conflict (Pace & Bilgic, Citation2018). The special issue of European Security on “Ontological (In)security in the European Union” (Kinnvall, Manners, & Mitzen, Citation2018) specifically addresses emotions such as fear and insecurity, as well as stronger emotional responses such as anxiousness, anxiety and trauma in EU external and security relations. The special issue of Political Psychology on “Emotions in the Politics of Security and Diplomacy” (Pace & Bilgic, Citation2019a) develops these approaches with articles on the study of emotions in politics, affective sticking points and studying emotions in security and diplomacy (Lynggaard, Citation2019; Pace & Bilgic, Citation2019b).

This short history of Cold War, post-Cold War and twenty-first century political psychology of emotions in IR, together with the more recent development of the political psychology of European integration and EU foreign policy, including ontological security and emotions in security and diplomacy, sets the scene for this special issue on the political psychology of emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy. Broadly speaking, the special issue is empirically focussed on both EU foreign policy and the foreign policies of EU member states. In terms of EU foreign policy, the first three substantive contributions focus on European Parliament debates on the Armenian genocide (Gürkan, Citation2021), the European security community and EU border control (Palm, Citation2021) and the European Commission’s enlargement policy towards the Western Balkans (Terzi, Citation2021). In terms of the foreign policies of EU member states, the second half of the special issue focuses on Ireland and Brexit (Tonra, Citation2021) and the refugee issue in European far-right discourse (Özer & Aşcı, Citation2021). Empirically the special issue reveals a knowledgeable and insightful emergent sub-field with case studies from across the borders of the EU.

Political psychologies of emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy

Having established the context of the special issue within the literature on the political psychology of international relations and European integration, this second section will consider the special issue’s theoretical contribution using a five-fold political psychology framework (Manners, Citation2014, Citation2018). The framework identifies individual cognitive psychology, social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysis and critical political psychology as providing different analytical approaches to the study of emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy. While the special issue as a whole is broadly located within the social constructivist approach, the contributions allow for engagement with the other four approaches.

The first and most conventional approach to studying the political psychology of IR, the EU and foreign policy is individual cognitive psychology which studies these processes from the perspective of individual determinants of political psychology. The historical emphasis on the “individualism of American psychology”, the “strong emphasis on psychological processes as determinants of political processes in American political psychology” and the particular focus on cognitive rather than psychodynamic approaches are determining factors in this first approach (Bar-On, Citation2001, p. 334; Cash, Citation1989; Deutsch & Kinnvall, Citation2002, p. 16; Nesbitt-Larking, Citation2003, p. 247). Individual cognitive psychology tends to place considerable emphasis on personality, character, attitudes, opinions and personal choice. In the study of IR, foreign policy and EU foreign policy, this approach is still quite dominant within political psychology, even if these assumptions remain largely unwritten and unspoken. Mainstream FPA books such as Hudson and Day (Citation2019) or Alex Mintz (Citation2016) represent this approach, although most “IR-realism” works have the same unwritten assumptions.

Contributors to the special issue demonstrate their familiarity with this first approach, but also the need to move beyond it, for example, Gürkan (Citation2021) arguing the need to move the analytical focus away from internal phenomenological perception and appraisal by individuals. As Palm (Citation2021) points out, far from being just an individual experience, shared understandings of security and community are embedded in shared emotional vocabulary. Tonra (Citation2021) extends this assumption, shared throughout the special issue, that moving beyond the behaviour of rational actors (and their individual cognitive psychology) is essential for the social science of passions and emotions in order to understand the behaviour of the political actors and the analysis of those actions. Finally, Özer and Aşcı (Citation2021) conclude that emotions in IR are socially meaningful experiences that are not individually but socially constructed.

The second approach, more common in European political psychology, to the political psychology of IR, the EU and foreign policy is social psychology placing far greater emphasis on the effects of group psychology and political behaviour. The “effect of the collective on the construction of identity” (Bar-On, Citation2001, p. 335) and the influence of the social identity theory of Henri Tajfel (Nesbitt-Larking & Kinnvall, Citation2012, p. 52) have led to social-psychological approaches to IR, the EU and foreign policy are more common in Europe. At the same time, European political psychology has been “less one-sided [in] the study of the influence of political processes on psychological processes” (Deutsch & Kinnvall, 2001, p. 16). In contrast to individual cognitive psychology, social psychology studies the influence of in-group/out-group relations and social identity theory on IR, the EU and foreign policy. Studies of IR located in the social psychology of “the everyday” politics of emotions (Beattie, Eroukhmanoff, & Head, Citation2019; Pace & Bilgic, Citation2019) utilize a group and crowd approach. Predating these studies, scholars of social identity and intergroup conflict have a long history of social-psychological research, including on Europe and the EU (Andreouli & Nicholson, Citation2018; Mahendran, Citation2018; Portice & Reicher, Citation2018).

Seda Gürkan’s (Citation2021) contribution to this special issue on emotions in parliamentary diplomacy engages with the social psychology of in-group/out-group and intergroup interactions in the European Parliament. Gürkan makes the distinction between emotional norms within a social group and emotional norms that are intergroup in transcend in-group/out-group interactions. By drawing on the discursive theory of Jürgen Habermas, Gürkan makes the distinction between pragmatic-utilitarian norms, ethical-social norms and moral-maxim norms, similar to the original formulations of the normative power approach to the EU’s international identity (Manners, Citation2000, pp. 31–32; Manners, Citation2013b, pp. 312–314). One weakness of Habermasian discourse theory is that without the fourth approach of narrative-legitimation norms, the use of just three discursive justifications is undermined by the critique that it appears pre-political in overlooking meta-narrations of discursive claims (Manners & Murray, Citation2016, p. 187).

The third approach, which forms the core theoretical contribution of this special issue to the political psychology of IR, EU and foreign policy, is a social construction with its origins in hermeneutics, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism and poststructuralism. Within the social constructionist approach, drawing on the fields of psychoanalytic theory, sociology and political psychology, the study of ontological security in IR, EU studies and foreign policy analysis has increased dramatically over the past two decades (Hay, Citation2002, Citation2004, Citation2006; Kinnvall et al., Citation2018, p. 2019; Manners, Citation2002; Mitzen, Citation2006a, Citation2006b). From the perspective of social construction, IR, the EU and foreign policy can be explained as social phenomena both in terms of identity and knowledge about oneself, for example, in EU debates over whether member states and citizens are more or less “ontologically secure” within or without the EU (Alkopher, Citation2018; Browning, Citation2018; Mitzen, Citation2018b). As Kinnvall (Citation2017, p. 1) has made clear, European crises of the past 2010s, in particular economic and refugee crises, but also the fear of terrorist attack, have created a sense of angst and ontological insecurity which fed the social (re)construction of identity and difference in the EU.

The special issue is firmly anchored in social constructivist theories of emotional norms, identity construction, the security community and ontological security. All the authors share a theoretical foundation on the work of Neta Crawford and Simon Koschut, amongst other constructivists. The contributions by Trineke Palm, and by Yonca Özer and Fatmanur Kaçar Aşcı are interesting for special consideration in this respect. Trineke Palm’s (Citation2021) article analyses emotional contestation in EU external border control by considering the EU as an emotional security community under pressure. Palm uses Mitzen’s (Citation2018b) idea of the EU as an anxious (in)security community to understand the importance of the emotional underpinnings of the EU as a security community. One suggestion would be to take a step further and explore the anxieties and fears that drive ontological (in)security in the EU. Yonca Özer and Fatmanur Kaçar Aşcı’s (Citation2021) article analysing the migration issue in European right-wing populist discourse do engage directly with ontological security in the EU by considering the psychological consequences of living with insecurity and a sense of vulnerability in Europe. In particular, Özer and Aşcı use Kinnvall’s (Citation2013) understanding of ontological insecurity as a range of threats and risks, real or imagined, which are related to political, social, and economic transformations of the world, and can lead to a threat to personal, collective, and even state identity.

The fourth approach to studying the political psychology of IR, the EU and foreign policy is psychoanalysis which emphasizes the role of the unconscious in political processes. Within psychoanalysis, the work of Jacques Lacan on trauma and lack; Julia Kristeva’s post-Lacanian work on semiotic, symbolic and abjection; Frantz Fanon postcolonial psychoanalysis and political critique; and Mikhail Bakhtin and Tzvetan Todorov on dialogicality are all valuable for the study of the political psychology of emotions. Nesbitt-Larking and Kinnvall (Citation2012, pp. 49–50) argue that “Freud’s political psychology is about the struggle between desire and order and the challenges of balance”. Lacan’s linguistic reading of Freud suggests that “to be positioned as an outsider, as marginal, as eccentric, engenders a space from which to question the encrusted and obdurate character of the established order” (quoted in Nesbitt-Larking, Citation2003, p. 248). Psychoanalytical approaches to postcolonialism by Paul Gilroy (Citation2004), Ross Truscott and Derek Hook (Citation2014), and John Cash (Citation2004, Citation2017), have made significant contributions to the study of IR and foreign policy. More recent research on the psychoanalysis and European integration (Manners, Citation2014, pp. 269–271, Citation2018, pp. 1222–1225; Kølvraa, Citation2018; also Scuzzarello, Citation2014) sets out how the rise of far-right ethno-nationalist across the EU is part of a desire to “return” to the imaginaries of glorious imperial pasts, to desires for the “good old days”, and to make European countries “great again”.

While none of the contributions to the special issue work explicitly within psychoanalysis, all of the articles express emotionally important terms such as “past”, “history”, “memory” or “trauma” that invite a psychoanalytical approach to their relevance and meaning. Memories and interpretations of the past exist in conscious and unconscious psychological and psychoanalytical conditions, and these are not easily avoided. Seda Gürkan’s (Citation2021) analysis of debating the Armenian Genocide in the European Parliament demonstrates how “honouring the memory of victims” is important to the collective memory of a community such as the EU, showing the emotional importance of trauma roots in the emotional history of Europe. Özlem Terzi’s (Citation2021) analysis of emotion discourse in determining future “Europeans” also demonstrates the importance of “overcoming past injustices” and “overcoming divisions of the past”, as well as judging “historic significance” or a “historic milestone”. Similarly, Ben Tonra’s (Citation2021) study of emotion norms for understanding Ireland and Brexit, particularly through reference to earlier historical, emotional patterns in which the “millennium of history” in which “English colonial expansion” shaped Irish historical memory. All of these analyses demonstrate how emotional pasts, histories, memories or traumas require a psychoanalytical reading to bring out their unconscious role in shaping current norms in European and EU foreign policy.

The fifth and final approach to studying the political psychology of IR, the EU and foreign policy is critical political psychology that brings together the more critical aspects of the approaches discussed to situate the political psychology of emotional norms within critical theories of ideological common sense. Critical political psychology places emphasis on “cross-cultural political psychology and the possibilities of political psychology beyond the framework of possessive individualism” (Nesbitt-Larking, Citation2003, p. 239). Critical political psychology draws on the critical theories of David Weltman and Michael Billig’s (Citation2001) ideological critique, Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking’s (Citation2011) political psychology of globalization and Cristian Tileagă’s (Citation2013) emphasis on historical awareness and critique, and the pursuit of social justice. In the study of IR, the EU and foreign policy, critical political psychology is found in the study (in)security in postcolonial Europe (Kinnvall, Citation2013; Kinnvall & Nesbitt-Larking, Citation2009, Citation2011); narrative approaches to political change, conflict and coexistence (Andrews, Citation2014; Hammack & Pilecki, Citation2014; Mannergren Manners & Murray, Citation2016; Selimovic, Citation2014); and trauma, emotions and memory in EU foreign policy (Pace & Bilgic, Citation2018, p. 2019).

The contributions to the special issue by Özlem Terzi (Citation2021) and Ben Tonra (Citation2021) illustrate the presence of critical political psychology in the study of emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy through their use of critical and poststructural theorists, crucial discourse analysis and discursive institutionalism, speech act theory and securitization. Terzi’s use of Ruth Wodak’s critical discourse analysis and Vivien Schmidt’s discursive institutionalism places the analysis of norms of belonging firmly within a critical discourse-historical context. Tonra’s use of Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker’s poststructural theorizing of emotions in IR and the Copenhagen School’s language of a “securitising move” also works within critical political psychology.

Conclusion: empirically multileveled, theoretically emotional, and methodologically discursive

The special issue on emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy has made an original and interesting contribution to the understanding of the political psychologies of emotional norms in EU foreign policy. The special issue has, firstly, illustrated the empirical challenges of analysing multileveled polities where individual, group, local and state-level emotional norms coexist with EU norms and policies. As the six contributing articles set out, emotional norms are used at EU, state and subnational levels (Gürkan, Palm and Terzi); EP political parties (Gürkan) and in EP debates (Palm); by the European Commission and the European Council (Terzi). At the same time, the articles also demonstrated how emotional norms are present in state discourses in and on Turkey, Ireland, the UK and Germany. This challenge is very much present in the political psychology of emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy, with scholars placing different degrees of emphasis on individual-level analysis (individual cognitive psychology) and on state-as-individual analysis (social construction). At the same time, political psychology faces similar challenges in conducting group-level analysis both in terms of social and political groups (social psychology) or in terms of local-level, transnational or translocal social and political groups (ontological security). The third aspect of this analytical challenge of multilevel polities is whether the analyst is studying the norms and preferences of EU institutions and states or whether these emotional norms are expressions of more unconscious factors (psychoanalysis), as well as the role of hidden structures of power (critical political psychology).

Secondly, the special issue has shown how important theorizing emotions and emotional norms is to the study of EU foreign policy. The introduction to emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy, together with the special issue contributions on emotions in EP diplomacy, emotional (de)legitimation in EU external border control, norms of belonging and EU enlargement, emotion norms between Ireland and Brexit and instrumentalization of emotions and emotion norms in far-right migration discourse, set a clear approach to the social constructivist study of norms. All the contributors firmly distance themselves from individual cognitive psychological approaches to EU foreign policy. As set out above, Gürkan’s (Citation2021) analysis of the EP brings social-psychological approaches to the study of emotional norms in EU foreign policy. Similarly, both Palm’s (Citation2021) and Özer and Aşcı’s (Citation2021) contributions bring ontological (in)security to the study of emotional norms in EU foreign policy. Finally, all the contributions, but especially Gürkan, Terzi and Tonra’s analyses bring in the possibility of using psychoanalysis and critical political psychology to enrich the theoretical understanding of emotional norms in EU foreign policy.

Thirdly, the special issue suggests how discursive methodologies may be effectively used to make sense of emotional norms in EU foreign policy, with all the contributions using discourse analysis in one form or another. Seda Gürkan’s article uses Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham’s (Citation1999) claims analysis method to analyse the style and content of emotional norms. Trineke Palm uses Simon Koschut’s (Citation2018) Emotion Discourse Analysis (EDA) method to analyse emotion potential and emotionalizing effects of political discourse. Özlem Terzi, Yonca Özer and Fatmanur Kaçar Aşcı use Ruth Wodak’s (Citation2009, Citation2015) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyse the power and politics of fear in emotional discourse. Finally, Ben Tonra uses Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker’s (Citation2014, Citation2017) more poststructural understanding of understanding emotions through discourse and deconstruction. What these four different discursive methodologies reveal is a wealth of methods and techniques for studying emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy.

The special issue could not, of course, cover all aspects of the political psychology of emotion(al) norms in EU foreign policy but represents an interesting first step. Like the political psychology of European integration and the EU itself, many empirical, theoretical and methodological questions remain to be asked and answered. Questions regarding the role of emotion(al) norms in support or opposition to different EU policies, institutional reform, membership or enlargement are clearly important. It would be interesting to empirically analyse, for example, emotion(al) norms in support or opposition to the EU new green deal or reform of the common European asylum system. But it is equally interesting to understand the extent to which support or opposition, love or hate, for EU internal or foreign policies are emotionally separable from feelings and passions that support or oppose EU member state governments, parties and policies.

Similarly, it would be valuable to theoretically examine the extent to which different political, psychological theories are able to explain and understand emotion(al) norms in EU internal and/or foreign policies. For example, how are theories of individual cognitive psychology, social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysis or critical political psychology best able to make sense of emotion(al) norms in EU relations towards the USA, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Syria or Ethiopia? Does sympathy, love or distain for the victims of conflict and violence associated with these countries alter or shape EU policies? And do individual cognition, group behaviour, psychological insecurity, unconscious fears or post-materialist beliefs have a greater effect in shaping emotion(al) norms towards EU foreign policy?

At the same time, the empirical analysis and theoretical examination of EU emotion(al) norms are critically determined by choice of methodology and method applied to the research (Hay, Citation2002). Hence the use of, for example, numerical analysis, group analysis, narrative analysis, psychoanalytic techniques or deconstruction are likely to predetermine the most compelling theoretical explanations. In this sense, the study of emotion(al) norms in IR and EU foreign policy could well benefit from the use of mixed-method/multi-modal approaches that deploy both conventional and creative research methods (Creswell, Citation2022; Kara, Citation2020; Manners, Lynggaard, & Löfgren, Citation2015).

However, some of the biggest questions relating to emotion(al) norms, European integration, and the EU require a combination of empirical policy analysis, theoretical examination, and multi-modal method. For example, the broad understanding of anyone member states’ membership of the EU requires multiple lines of analysis across emotion(al) norms to appreciate both pro- and anti-European sentiment and politics. In the case of Brexit, individual cognitive psychology recognizes the lack of objective knowledge as important; social psychology shows how social group identity conflicts are determining; ontological security sets out how real and imagined fears play a role; psychoanalysis focuses on Britain’s collective postcolonial melancholia; and critical political psychology demonstrates how neoliberal alienation is a crucial factor (Manners, Citation2018). But all members and potential members of the EU could be subject to such analysis of emotion(al) norms in terms of both membership and feelings towards EU foreign policy.

Taken together, the special issue sets out a significant stage in the political psychology of emotions from international relations to the EU over the past 50 years. The value of the special issue’s theoretical contribution to the field is demonstrated by using the political psychologies of individual cognitive psychology, social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysis and critical political psychology to allow for engagement with the broader inter-discipline. In conclusion, the special issue has made an original and interesting contribution in terms of empirically multileveled, theoretically emotional and methodologically discursive approaches to the understanding of the political psychologies of emotional norms in EU foreign policy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Manners

Ian Manners works in the Department of Political Science, Lund University. He has previously been professor at Copenhagen and Roskilde universities. His research is on the EU’s normative power in planetary politics, examining the symbioses between planetary society, economy, ecology, conflict, and polity. His research is currently focused on projects marking the twentieth anniversary of the normative power approach, including a forum on the “Arrival of Normative Power in Planetary Politics” and a special issue on “Normative Power in the Planetary Organic Crisis”.

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