Coercive and Emotional Diplomacy in East Asia: Japanese Responses

The workshop series “Coercive and Emotional Diplomacy in East Asia: Japanese Responses” will
address the role of emotion in International Relations. Although recognized as significant, there has
been limited scholarship on how to theorize and better understand the implications of Coercive and
Emotional Diplomacy in the East Asian context.
The basic rationale of this project is to understand the mechanisms behind Coercive and Emotional
Diplomacy and their effects by using Japan’s bilateral relations with China, South Korea, and Russia
as case studies. The choice of Japan as a case study is not only justified by the expertise of the main
applicants but also by the fact that Japan has been both experiencing and practicing Coercive and
Emotional Diplomacy for more than two decades.
As scholars specializing in East Asian international relations and security, with combined research
experience on precisely these issues, we thus aim to: (1) develop analytical tools for addressing when,
why and how diplomatic practices take an emotionalized form and (2) explore the effects of Coercive
Diplomacy. In doing so, we will develop analytical tools that can be applied to studying Coercive
Diplomacy in different regional contexts. Undoubtedly the results are also highly relevant for the Nordic
countries that are increasingly experiencing Coercive and Emotional Diplomacy through their relations
with China as well as Russia.
The workshops are planned as in-person events in Aarhus, Lund, and Oslo and will gather early and
mid-career researchers to analyze the various aspects of Coercive and Emotional Diplomacy in
Japan’s relations to China, South Korea, and Russia and publish the results in a special issue of a
highly ranked journal. As we deem the topic as highly relevant for the Nordic Countries' foreign
relations, the workshops’ most important results will also be presented to a wider non-academic
audience at the end of the project cycle.
Another but not less important aspect of the workshops is to establish a network of early and
mid-career scholars in the Nordic Countries and enable more collaboration in the future with the
potential of developing the region as a center of expertise on the study of the convergence of Coercive
and Emotional Diplomacy. With that purpose, we would like to utilize this project as the first step in a
more ambitious and larger project application within the Horizon Europe framework 2023/2024.