The paper will try to explore the explanatory potential of national resentment in IR. The latter will be understood as a special type of animosity. In contrast to hatred or anger, however, resent¬ment is a weaker but also more durable form of ill will towards another actor. Usually it is a “smoldering” sentiment elicited by the perception that another party enjoys an undeserved status position. A resentful actor thus perceives an inacceptable mismatch between the object's high so-cial rank and its lower moral status. Studying resentment might help to clarify the emotional basis of typical negative prejudices about powerful nations (e.g., anti-Americanism in China, France, Russia, and some Arab countries). It seems also interesting from a more theoretical point of view: as the emotional stabilizer of negative prejudices it might provide the missing link between strongly felt short-term emotions, such as anger and vengeance, and collective (long-term) orientations embedded in national discourses. To explore the analytical promise of resent¬ment for IR the paper will discuss the concept itself (based on both “classical” discussions by Ni¬etzsche and Scheler and on more recent developments in social psychology) as well as the causes, consequences and possible indicators of resentment.
