Publications

The Passion of International Leadership: How Emotions Shape Transatlantic Cooperation

2022

How do international leaders emerge and why are they successful in bringing followers to converge on their positions? The book argues that leaders are driven by their convictions, and that they must strike a balance between the intense emotions associated with their beliefs and their need to represent a broader community. At the same time as they seek to bring followers on board by persuading them, they need to pay attention to emotionally contagious and resonant events that can alter the course of international cooperation.

Emotional labor in decision making: Gender, race, and relational practices in the White House

Relational and emotional practices intensive in emotional labor play an essential role for high-level decision making, even though this labor is often devalued or unseen. United States presidents can often present themselves as rational and emotionally detached because they delegate emotional work to other members of their team. The burden of such work is unequally distributed along gender and racial lines. It involves expressing empathic concern, repairing relations, anticipating others' emotional responses, protecting marginalized colleagues, speaking hard truths, and providing emotional support to help others regulate their emotions. This article contributes to research on emotions in decision making, public administration, and presidency studies. Case studies of Nancy Reagan and Valerie Jarrett—who played important roles in the Reagan and Obama administrations, respectively—illustrate the article's main argument.

Can’t Buy Me Love: Billionaire Entrepreneurs’ Legitimation Strategies in Transnational Climate Governance

With Marielle Papin (2023)

Several billionaires have recently emerged as leaders of climate governance. So far, little research has examined how they legitimize their involvement in climate networks. We argue that billionaire governance entrepreneurs have high levels of resources but low procedural legitimacy. They pursue output legitimacy to support their political action, highlighting their effectiveness in managing climate issues. Their main strategies, depoliticization, outgrouping, and technical solutionism, may give them short-term legitimacy but risk undermining their long-term goals of addressing climate change. We analyze the discursive legitimation strategies of a successful billionaire entrepreneur in transnational climate governance, Michael Bloomberg. Our empirical analysis is based on the study of more than 800 statements, speeches, and news releases related to Bloomberg’s climate action from 2010 to 2021. It contributes to the study of entrepreneurship, leadership, philanthropy, and transnational actors in climate governance.

Resolving Conflicting Emotions: Obama’s Quandaries on the Red Line and the Fight against ISIS

2022

The study of emotions in foreign policymaking has emphasized dominant discrete emotions and how they each lead to specific action tendencies. Scholars often focus on one emotion to explain decisions and have an additive view of emotions. This article argues that decision-makers often feel conflicting emotions and that emotions are not simply additive. What are conflicting emotions’ consequences for foreign policymaking? How are these conflicts resolved? The cases of President Obama's response to the Syrian chemical weapon attack in 2013 and the rise of ISIS in 2014 provide an occasion to study these questions on major security issues surrounding military intervention. This article argues that when decision-makers feel conflicted emotions their anxiety level rises, and that they are likely to attempt to gain time through procrastination, to resolve their conflict by focusing their attention on new developments, and to seek support to bolster confidence in their decision.

International emotional resonance: Explaining transatlantic economic sanctions against Russia

2022

Why did transatlantic policymakers target Russia with economic sanctions in response to its actions during the Ukraine conflict? Commentators perceived these sanctions as highly unlikely because they would have high costs for several European countries, and were surprised when they were finally adopted. Constructivist scholars employed explanations based on common norms and trust to explain the European Union’s agreement on economic sanctions in this case. I argue that the mechanism of international emotional resonance played a decisive role in altering the course of the United States and core European Union powers’ cooperation. A framework that combines resonance with emotional influence mechanisms of persuasion and contagion explains the precise timing of the policy shift, why European policymakers accepted sanctions at a substantial cost to their economy and how norms affected policy when they were empowered by intense emotions.

Obama’s Leadership Style: Enabling Transatlantic Allies in Libya and Mali

with Jonathan Paquin and Justin Massie (2017)

This article assesses President Obama’s transatlantic leadership style with regard to foreign crises and it contrasts it with the style of the previous Bush administration. It argues that the Obama administration exercises enabling leadership, which implies that the US does lead, but that it does not feel the need to project ‘leadership from the front’. The article presents a computer-assisted content analysis of the 482 official statements issued by these four states in response to the crisis in Libya in 2011 and Mali in 2012–2013. The paper provides qualitative and quantitative evidence suggesting that the Obama administration consciously adopted enabling leadership, a strategy that is consistent with the worldview of the president and his foreign policy entourage.

Taking Flight or Crashing Down? European Common Foreign Policy and International Crises

2016

What was the level of commonality in European foreign policy for recent international crises? This article assesses the level of commonality by conducting a chronological comparative content analysis to bring to light the rhetoric of European powers (United Kingdom, France and Germany) and EU actors. It focuses on the crises between Russia and Georgia in 2008 and the civil war in Libya of 2011. The article argues that states often converged in their positioning on a wide range of issues, even in moments of crisis. However, it also reveals that they remain in control of the timing of their statements and that EU actors were weak. This paper puts forth a novel tool to assess European foreign policy in times of crisis, it provides empirical data on the subject and highlights the importance of different types of issues in the assessment of commonality

US Transatlantic Leadership after Iraq

with Jonathan Paquin (2015)

This article explores whether the United States has been able to exert transatlantic leadership since its head-on diplomatic collision with several European capitals over the 2003 Iraq war. Considering that the decision to invade Iraq was made by the Bush administration, this article also explores whether there has been consistency between the Bush and Obama administrations over transatlantic leadership. This analysis provides qualitative and quantitative evidence leading to four main conclusions. Firstly, US leadership has endured in the post-Iraq era. Secondly, in most cases, France and Britain have aligned their diplomatic positions with those of the United States. Thirdly, the analysis confirms that there is a special Anglo-American relationship. Fourthly and lastly, there has been consistency between the Bush and Obama administrations, with the exception of the US response to the Libyan crisis, which suggests the emergence of a US ‘leading from behind’ transatlantic strategy.

Shedding Light on Canada’s Foreign Policy Alignment

With Jonathan Paquin (2013)

The purpose of this article is to explore the issue of alignment in Canadian foreign policy. The main research question is whether Canada’s responses to foreign crises aligned with those of its allies, and if so, which allies and why. The study tests four major theoretical perspectives that could explain Canada’s behaviour: continentalism, transatlantism, the Anglosphere argument and unilateralism. The research provides quantitative and qualitative evidence suggesting that Canada’s foreign policy alignment primarily tends toward a transatlantic orientation. It also shows that the Harper government was less in line with Washington than was the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin, which challenges the conventional wisdom of Canadian foreign policy.

Embody, Empower, and Relate: Emotions in International Leadership

2021

Chapter in Contemporary Diplomacy in Action: New Perspective on Diplomacy edited by Jack Spence, Claire Yorke, and Alastair Masser. IB Tauris/Bloombsbury, p.187-207.

Review of American Allies in Times of War: The Great Asymmetry by Stéfanie Von Hlatky

2014