Research

The interpersonal foundations of international politics

Across several related projects, I ask how political leaders understand one another's intentions, how interpersonal trust develops, how fear and uncertainty contribute to international conflict, and how the changing practice of diplomacy affects these processes.

What happens when international politics becomes interpersonal?

Face-to-Face Diplomacy and Intention Understanding

One of the central problems of international politics is the problem of intentions.

Political leaders can observe what other states do, but they cannot directly observe why they are doing it. The same military deployment, diplomatic proposal, or conciliatory gesture can be interpreted in very different ways depending upon assumptions about the motivations behind it.

My research on face-to-face diplomacy examines whether encounters between leaders can help address this problem.

I argue that face-to-face interaction is a distinctive diplomatic modality. In-person encounters provide leaders with access to communicative and social information that is difficult to reproduce through written correspondence or other forms of mediated communication. These encounters do not automatically generate cooperation or trust. They can reinforce hostility and misperception as well. But under some conditions, they can help leaders make judgments about sincerity, intentions, and the possibility of cooperation.

This research draws on international relations theory, diplomatic studies, political psychology, and social neuroscience.

Trust and Interpersonal Diplomacy

International relations scholarship frequently treats trust as a property of states, institutions, or repeated strategic interactions. My work asks what happens when trust begins instead between people.

Together with Nicholas J. Wheeler, I examine interpersonal trust as a potentially important mechanism of international political change.

The central question is not simply whether two leaders “like” one another. It is whether interpersonal interaction can change how leaders understand one another's motivations and whether those changes can subsequently affect state policy.

This creates an important problem of aggregation. Even when leaders establish rapport or interpersonal trust, their understandings must be translated into bureaucracies, institutions, alliances, and domestic political systems. Personal relationships can therefore facilitate international cooperation while simultaneously producing new vulnerabilities when diplomacy becomes detached from institutional processes.

Security Dilemma Sensibility

Many of the most dangerous situations in international politics arise when actors with defensive intentions nonetheless appear threatening to one another.

Security dilemma sensibility describes an actor's capacity to perceive the possible complexity of another actor's intentions, recognize the role fear may play in that actor's behavior, and understand how one's own actions may contribute to that fear.

My research examines both the origins and consequences of this capacity.

Why are some leaders able to entertain benign interpretations of apparently threatening behavior while others are not? What role do predispositions, empathy, experience, and political context play? And can particular forms of diplomacy help leaders develop more sophisticated understandings of the security fears facing their counterparts?

This research connects classical work on the security dilemma with contemporary political psychology and the study of diplomatic interaction.

Personalist and Court Diplomacy

A growing portion of my research examines what happens when foreign policy becomes concentrated around political leaders themselves.

Personalist diplomacy privileges direct leader relationships, informal communication, spectacle, personal access, and discretionary decision-making. These practices can sometimes bypass bureaucratic obstacles and create opportunities for diplomatic innovation. But they can also weaken institutional processes and create uncertainty about whether relationships and commitments formed between leaders will translate into durable state policy.

My current book project, The New Court Diplomacy, places these developments in a broader historical perspective.

Contemporary leaders increasingly operate within political environments that resemble courts: access to the ruler becomes a political resource, intermediaries and confidants acquire unusual influence, diplomatic actors employ flattery and symbolic displays, and foreign governments compete to cultivate personal relationships with decision-makers.

The project asks what the return of these practices means for diplomacy and international order.

Digital and AI-Mediated Diplomacy

Digital technologies have transformed the speed, scale, and visibility of diplomatic communication.

My work examines a different dimension of this transformation: what happens to diplomacy when communication increasingly takes place without bodily copresence?

Research on videoconferencing and digitally mediated interaction investigates whether technologies can reproduce some of the social and communicative functions traditionally associated with face-to-face meetings.

My current work extends these questions to artificial intelligence.

AI may dramatically increase the ability of diplomatic actors to communicate, translate, analyze information, simulate responses, and generate messages. But these capabilities also raise a deeper question: what happens to diplomacy when increasingly consequential interactions are mediated, interpreted, or even conducted by artificial agents?