Decision-making in crisis situations: Of decisiveness and fear of disorder in European foreign policy

What considerations shape political decision-making in crisis situations, moments when routine patterns of interaction have run their course and the established political order appears in jeopardy? Approaching this fundamental question of politics and international relations form a new perspective, this article puts forward decisiveness as a potential determinant of action amid credible fears of disorder. Decisiveness is theorised here as a logic of political action, that is a way of strategically organising political claims to procure a desired outcome. Concerns with perceived decisiveness risk side-lining other normative and procedural priorities in diplomatic encounters. Their relative ability to shape decision making depends, I argue, on states of collective confidence or insecurity within the arenas in question. These states of confidence and insecurity, preconfigure the credibility of existing decisiveness performances and, thus, the remaining capacities of a political arena for more substantive, normative deliberations. My argument is illustrated using examples of EU foreign policy communication around the so-called “refugee crisis.”