The Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS)

2023 – 2025

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 to 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. 

The basic aims of the three workshops of the project are to: 

1. Define Coercive and Emotional Diplomacy while exploring the convergence between them; 

1. Critically discuss Japan’s responses through various case studies; and 

1. Establish a network of early and mid-career scholars in the Nordic Countries and enable more collaborations in the future. 

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.