Sand in the Gears: When Diplomatic Interpersonal Interactions Go Awry

Interpersonal diplomatic incidents play a significant role in generating negative interpersonal relations between statespersons. Yet despite the obvious impact on international relations, thus far scholars have not systematically studied interpersonal interactions that have gone astray. In this paper, we discuss such incidents, identifying their causes and consequences. To this end, we collected stories about such incidents from interviews with fifty statespersons, fifteen autobiographies, and high-profile reports in the news media. We then applied the conceptual framework of politeness theory, an approach focusing on the management of social relations, to classify six types of offenses that lead to interpersonal diplomatic incidents: degradation, minimization, marginalization, unfriendliness, uncollegiality, and alienness. We further highlight the potential and actual consequences of these incidents and the factors that can curb their negative impact. In the conclusion we discuss the contribution of our findings to current IR theory, specifically the relational approach and the micro foundations of IR.