Emotions before paradigms: Elite anxiety and populist resentment from the Asian to subprime crises

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 127-144

  Widmaier, Wesley W ^a  

^a GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Constructivism; Emotions; Subprime crisis

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955410131     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0305829810372693     Document Type: Article

References (95)

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3. For a more recent elaboration, see George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
4. These themes are developed by John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929 (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1954).
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7. Office of the Press Secretary, 'Remarks by the President on the Economy', (14 April 2009), 29.
8. From a broadly cognitive vantage, as Ross notes, Wendt defines interests in terms of beliefs. See Andrew Ross 'Coming in from the Cold: Constructivism and Emotions', European Journal of International Relations Vol. 12 no. 2 (2006): 197-222.
9. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). On the interplay of affect and cognition,
10. see R.B. Zajonc, 'Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences', American Psychologist 35 no. 2 (1980): 151-75.
11. Also see R.S. Lazarus, 'Thoughts on the Relations Between Emotion and Cognition', American Psychologist 37 (1982): 1019-24.
12. Ross, 'Coming in from the Cold', 199.
13. Such populism need not only find expression in Keynesianism: populist tendencies can also spur libertarian trends. However, a full development of such distinctions exceeds the scope of this article.
14. Office of the Press Secretary, 'Remarks by the President upon Departure', (18 March 2009), 24. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-the-President-Upon-Departure (Accessed 10 June 2010).
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52. In terms of the psychoanalytic bases for these claims, Freud defined the ego as 'the actual seat of anxiety', as agents fear 'being overwhelmed or annihilated' by the uncontrollable libidinal pressures of the Id. Despite their differences, Carl Jung similarly highlighted anxieties that arise from cognitive resistance to emotional forces, reflecting 'fear of the dominants of the collective unconscious'. On Freud, see Sigmund Freud, 'The Ego and the Id', in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: W. W Norton & Company, Inc. 1989), 657.
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