Emotion norms and the shaping of European Foreign Defense and Climate change Policy

This article explores the role of emotion norms (Terzi el al. 2021) in European defense policy and climate change policy (international dimension) over a long time period. The article studies first how key EU policymakers explicitly referred in their discourses to a few key emotions for the study of politics such as fear, anger and sympathy. This analysis will reveal in which contexts the expression of these emotions was considered to be appropriate (emotion norms). This article will also discuss how the expression of emotions may have contributed to the shaping of policy-making. Through the shaping of perceptions, emotions can indeed enable and constrain policy solutions (Palm 2018). In this sense, emotions are related to subtle and indirect power dynamics, including the power of shaping intersubjectivity. Data analyzed include European Parliament (EP) debates from 1994 to 2019: more specifically 36 debates on the topic of Defense policy and 54 debates on the topic of climate change.