Face-to-Face Diplomacy
Social Neuroscience and International Relations

Argues that face-to-face interaction undercuts the security dilemma at the interpersonal level by providing a mechanism for understanding intentions.

Marcus Holmes (Author)

9781108417075, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 March 2018

314 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'The book will be of immense interest to scholars and students of diplomatic studies, IR, world history, social neuroscience, psychology, and anyone else interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the social sciences. The book is of substantial value for practitioners - diplomats and leaders - who might ?nd the empirical cases of interpersonal communication between state leaders enlightening, instructive, and worth keeping in mind in the continuously evolving practice of diplomacy.' Olga Krasnyak, International Studies Review

Face-to-face diplomacy has long been the lynchpin of world politics, yet it is largely dismissed by scholars of International Relations as unimportant. Marcus Holmes argues that dismissing this type of diplomacy is in stark contrast to what leaders and policy makers deem as essential and that this view is rooted in a particular set of assumptions that see an individual's intentions as fundamentally inaccessible. Building on recent evidence from social neuroscience and psychology, Holmes argues that this assumption is problematic. Marcus Holmes studies some of the most important moments of diplomacy in the twentieth century, from 'Munich' to the end of the Cold War, and by showing how face-to-face interactions allowed leaders to either reassure each other of benign defensive intentions or pick up on offensive intentions, his book challenges the notion that intentions are fundamentally unknowable in international politics, a central idea in IR theory.

Acknowledgements
1. The puzzle of face-to-face diplomacy
2. Face value: the problem of intentions and social neuroscience
3. Reassurance at the end of the Cold War: Gorbachev and Reagan face-to-face
4. Unification and distribution after the wall falls: a flurry of face-to-face
5. Overcoming distrust at Camp David
6. 'Munich'
7. Escaping uncertainty
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Central government [JPQ], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]