Introduction

Abstract

Hannah Arendt in Beyond Past and Future (1968) understands politics to be a product of opinion rather than factual truth. If politics were dependent on factual truth, then politics would not be contentious at all resulting in the smooth implementation of political policy. Why then is politics so combative? Why do people interpret the world so contrarily? In Political Science, we engage in debate about individual preferences and public opinion. In International Relations, we are taught that ideas construct meanings: “ideas all the way down” (Wendt 1999, 96); but, what force constructs ideas? Where do ideas come from? Is anarchy really what states make of it? (Wendt 1992). Further, what constructs a balance of power? (Waltz 2010; Morgenthau 1948). What drives threat and why do states go to war? (Walt 1985). In International Political Economy and Comparative Politics, scholars try to answer two main questions: Why are there so many varieties of capitalism? What explains the variance of political cultures across countries? This book seeks to answer these questions by looking at the way human beings perceive the world by positing a theory of emotion’s role in the production of politics. Even though emotions form the world, they have effectively been pushed aside in the social sciences (Political Science and Economics fields in particular) until more recently.