What makes them tick: Challenging the impersonal ethos in International Relations
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720979012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720979012
Cooperation and Conflict
2021, Vol. 56(3) 346 –363
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836720979012
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What makes them tick:
Challenging the impersonal
ethos in International Relations
Gadi Heimann and Zohar Kampf
Abstract
International Relations scholars and practitioners commonly agree that relationships in world
politics are managed impersonally. Personal connections between agents of states are perceived
as having only little impact on foreign policy of states. The current article challenges this
impersonal ethos, suggesting that personal relationships play an important role in conducting,
and thus understanding, interstate relations. Interviews conducted with 21 senior Israeli officials
concerning mundane professional practices reveal three elements that are essential for successful
statecraft: acknowledging the power of interpersonal relations; substantive knowledge of
counterparts; and the excellent communicative competencies needed to realize the potential of
personal connections. We argue that statespersons’ behavior can be located on an impersonal-
interpersonal continuum. Furthermore, we suggest explanations for deviations from the
impersonal ethos and discuss the role of interpersonal practices in managing interstate relations.
At the very least, the personal aspect should be taken into consideration when examining foreign
policy. However, personal relations may have a highly significant impact on interstate interactions,
thus requiring a revision of the current paradigm in IR, which marginalizes the personal aspect.
Keywords
Communicative competencies, diplomacy, interpersonal relations, knowledge, statecraft
Introduction
In January 2020, news headlines around the world reported the personal birthday greet-
ing that U.S. President Donald Trump sent to his North Korean counterpart, Kim
Jong-un. This was part of a series of personal gestures that followed a long period of
silence between the two states’ leaders, in particular with regard to North Korea’s
nuclear program. After his election, Trump initiated a new type of diplomacy.
Abandoning the established foreign policy track, the American president began to
Corresponding author:
Zohar Kampf, Department of Communication, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem
91905, Israel.
Email: zohar.kampf@mail.huji.ac.il
979012CAC0010.1177/0010836720979012Cooperation and ConflictHeimann and Kampf
research-article2020
Article
Heimann and Kampf 347
practice personal diplomacy, tweeting a series of targeted messages to which the North
Korean president responded in kind.1 The personal relationship further developed fol-
lowing the first summit meeting between the two leaders in June 2018. Trump made
several public announcements praising Jong-un, describing the North Korean leader as
‘smart’, boasting about their ‘good relationship’, and even going so far as to say that
they had ‘fallen in love’.2 Although the two leaders continued to cultivate their friendly
relations via personal correspondence, the talks concerning the denuclearization of
North Korea quickly reached a crisis point. Trying personal diplomacy once more,
Trump sent a personal birthday greeting to Jong-un. This time, however, the North
Korean president reminded Trump of the accepted diplomatic ethos. According to
reports, North Korea sought to return relations to the impersonal track, stating that:
‘Although Chairman Kim Jong-un has good personal feelings about President Trump,
they are, in the true sense of the word, “personal”. . .[the North Korean president]
would not discuss the state affairs on the basis of such personal feelings’.3
The ups and downs in this relationship shed light on two possible guidelines to states-
persons’ behavior in world politics. The first guideline, represented by the North Korean
president’s words, is built upon the normative, well-established impersonal ethos of
diplomacy. According to this ethos, the individual statesperson, even if they are operat-
ing within a non-democratic regime, is committed to act exclusively on behalf of the
state’s interests (Wendt, 2004). The impersonal ethos places states center-stage in inter-
national politics, perceiving personal state agents’ connections with one another as irrel-
evant to and inadvisable for interstate relations. This ethos translated into the formal
conventions and protocols that guide relations in international settings. The second
guideline, as reflected in Donald Trump’s approach, is considered a deviation from this
impersonal ethos and its formal protocols. It entails informal modes of communication
between statespersons, foregrounding their personal relationships as important for con-
ducting, and thus also understanding, foreign policy. The personal guideline positions the
relationships between state agents at the center of world politics, diminishing the impor-
tance of the structure in which they operate and the country they serve.
Diplomatic protocols dictate that statespersons should follow the impersonal guide-
line, affecting how they understand their relationships with their counterparts (Leki,
2007). This allows state actors from different cultural backgrounds who are pursuing
conflicting interests to communicate respectfully, according to a more or less universal
code of diplomacy (Cohen, 1987; Jönsson and Hall, 2005). The impersonal ethos
demands the agent’s exclusive loyalty to the state. Personal beliefs about the importance
of interpersonal relationships, and the knowledge and competencies that are needed to
cultivate such relations, are considered marginal, while adherence to the codes of formal-
ity constitute the guidelines directing professional conduct in diplomacy.
Although, theoretically, the impersonal ethos reigns supreme, in practice, as Trump’s
example of personal diplomacy illustrates, interpersonal relationships between politi-
cians and officials from different states blossom. In recent years, scholarship concerning
the role of emotions in negotiations (Wong, 2016, 2019; Hall and Yarhi-Milo, 2012;
Holmes, 2018; Holmes and Yarhi-Milo, 2016; Yarhi-Milo, 2013), practices in diplomacy
(Kuus, 2015; Pouliot and Cornut, 2015), and the effects of leaders’ friendships on state
interests (van Hoef, 2014, 2019; Wheeler, 2018), has endeavored to assess the
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