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This book explores the politics of officially expressed emotion on the international stage, looking at the ways in which state actors strategically deploy emotional behavior to shape the perceptions of others. Examining diverse instances of emotional behavior, the book reveals that official emotional displays are not simply cheap talk but rather play an important role in the strategies and interactions of state actors

Much work has examined the phenomenon of dispute escalation, whereby the concrete measures state actors take edge them closer to war. Less attention has been devoted to the ways in which state actors' perceptions of what is at stake in a dispute can also change, with important consequences for the likelihood of conflict. This paper examines the phenomenon of dispute inflation – wherein a contest over an object or issue assumes ever greater stakes and significance for its protagonists – and identifies three different mechanisms that can generate increasing non-material stakes. The upshot is that theoretically even a minor dispute can grow into a major conflict due to swelling stakes, especially when dispute inflation spirals. To illustrate these dynamics at work, this paper looks to recent developments in the dispute between the People's Republic of China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.