Social Distance in International Relations

When are people willing to save strangers?

With ongoing political tensions and conflicts in a number of countries, often aggravated by catastrophes such as droughts and famine, the provision of aid and other forms of support (including military support) remain contentious and contemporary foreign policy issues. I study the provision of support and aid through a new lens; that of ‘social distance’.

Social distance connotates the extent to which we relate to, or identify with, certain others.

Whilst common sense has it that our moral obligation to provide assistance extents equally to all people, my expectation is that social distance creates socio-emotional hurdles and impacts people’s engagement with the hardship of others.

To put it bluntly, people do not care equally for all human suffering and this influences their, and therewith countries’, political priorities.

This project has two central objectives: a) To show how socio-emotional distance impacts people’s perceptions of, and reactions towards, international crises and catastrophes;b) to theorise and analyse how such micro-level and personal responses are translated into foreign policy decisions on the national level.To achieve these goals, I first develop a distance/emotions dictionary to study how people express social proximity/distance and associated emotions.

Second, I conduct a comparative analyses, studying if and how social distance shapes the narratives about, and people’s engagement with, the current crisis and hardship in Venezuela in Colombia, the USA and the Netherlands.

Third, I study how these engagements shape foreign policy decisions in these countries.This project promises to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the socio-emotional mircofoundations of international relations.

It offers a perspective that complements, but at the same time significantly advances, earlier approaches, and it forms a critical stepping stone for me to a senior academic appointment.