Introduction
For more than twenty years, the ‘age of apology’ has been at the forefront of research focused on the moral, social, and political implications of public remorse.Footnote 1 Countless cases of apologies have been scrutinised in the fields of transitional justice, conflict resolution, and discourse studies (to name a few), concentrating on the process leading to apologies, the speech act itself, and its consequences. Although public apologies are a prominent discursive phenomenon, a pivotal aspect of that process has been surprisingly overlooked – demands for apologies. While apologies constitute the final outcome of a negotiated process of recognition,Footnote 2 demands for them stand at the apex of this process. They form a reflexive, pedagogic moment in which a transgression that requires rectification is publicly ‘seen and noticed’.Footnote 3 In contrast to apologies, the demand for them epitomises a critical moment of awareness, an understanding that the party from whom the apology is demanded does not perceive the certain event in the same manner as the actor demanding the apology. If issued, the moment of apology is one in which the demandee accepts the perspective proposed by the demander.Footnote 4 Similar to apologies, demands reconfigure power relations, hierarchies, and the (re)positioning of states within the international system.Footnote 5 Both the apologies and the demands also involve the construction and maintenance of identity and reputation vis-à-vis other actors in the international community. As such, demands for apology constitute a research-worthy discursive phenomenon. Their realisation in a specific time and place is indicative to what a state actor perceives as a transgression. If an apology is delivered following a demand, international norms are reaffirmed and troubled relations soothed.
Building on the premise that the era termed the ‘age of apology’ is less about apologies and more about demands for apologies, in this article we adopt an actor-oriented perspective in order to situate the speech act within the delicate management of interstate relations following transgressions. A demand for an apology can follow either historical transgressions or more recent ones. While historical transgressions involve and shape national narratives, collective memories, and constructed pasts,Footnote 6 ‘contemporaneous’,Footnote 7 ‘diplomatic transgressions’,Footnote 8 involve both long-term identity and short-term image concerns. In addition to national narratives, diplomatic transgressions revolve around issues of sovereignty and the positioning of a state within the international community.Footnote 9 As such, these transgressions and the demands for apology that follow them serve as rich sites for analysing the process of seeking rectification.
In what follows, we offer a conceptual framework for answering the following questions: Why do states demand apologies, on what grounds do they justify their demands, what do states demand alongside apologies, and how do they do so? We analyse 57 cases of demands for apology made by various state actors in a variety of diplomatic contexts between the years 1999 and 2019 in order to demonstrate: (1) the types of transgressions that bring forth demands; (2) the normative scripts that inform their performances; (3) the content of the demands; and (4) the discursive strategies applied for intensifying pressure on the alleged transgressor to comply. In the conclusion, we discuss the role of rhetoric in shaping the international order and underline the benefits of studying public speech acts of demands for understanding the enactment of normative scripts within international society.
Demanding political apologies
Demands for an apology are situated within a process of offense and rectification. They come after transgressions are committed, which can consist not only of a wide array of historical injustices, including religious persecution, colonialism, slavery, and genocide,Footnote 10 but also ephemeral- and intermediary-scope diplomatic offenses.Footnote 11 Following a demand, if a remedy is materialised in the form of an apology, wounded bilateral relations may be restored;Footnote 12 the balance of power in the wider social network the actors take part in may be transformed;Footnote 13 international norms, customs, and habits can be reassessed;Footnote 14 and new interpretations of the past may be legitimised.Footnote 15
The demand stands at a critical junction within a conflictual process. The Oxford Dictionary defines a demand as ‘an insistent and peremptory request, made as of right’. Contrary to this definition, a pragmatic definition of the act of demanding, according to Anna Wierzbicka,Footnote 16 does not imply that the speakers have the right to obtain their desire (that justice is on their side), but rather, that they assume their demand has great force, ‘which the addressee is bound to recognize’.Footnote 17 The demand for an apology, as opposed to the more mitigated forms of requesting Footnote 18 or calling for Footnote 19 an apology, portrays the expectation that it is not to be refused, underlining the power relations between the participating actors.Footnote 20
The moment of demand is constituted by a performative act of ‘public noticing’,Footnote 21 interpolating the actors in offender-offended relations.Footnote 22 Once a demand is made, whether implicitly or explicitly, a link between what is perceived as a transgression and its expected remedy is formed. Public noticing, namely the moment at which a ‘seen but unnoticed’ conductFootnote 23 transforms into a ‘seen-and-noticed’ transgressionFootnote 24 may assume several forms that can be positioned on a continuum ranging from maximum imposition on one end to minimum imposition on the other. Maximum imposition is reflected in cases in which a powerful actor forces a weaker one to make material or symbolic redress, either through threats or ultimatums.Footnote 25 Minimum imposition is realised in cases in which a clarification, explanation, or apology is requested or called for. In contrast to cases of maximum imposition that stem from power differences of the involved states and thus coerce a specific response, cases of minimum imposition enable the demandees more leeway in deciding how to react. The demand to apologise lies between the two extremes. On the one hand, it avoids coercing the alleged transgressor; on the other, it is explicit enough to direct the attention of both the transgressor and the international community to the gravity of the offense.
Demands for apologies are morally controversial. On the one hand, they may be morally defective, and made in an attempt to dominate; in fact, instances in which states have demanded apologies have been previously documented within utilitarian contexts such as ‘rituals of humiliation’.Footnote 26 Whereas the expectation is that apologies should be given voluntarily, a demand forces the offender party to participate in a ritual of degradation.Footnote 27 On the other hand, demands are morally endorsed, as they may constitute a model for appropriate behaviour in the international arena through the public disapproval of transgressions and transgressors. Demands for an apology carry moral attributes since they constitute a teachable moment of exposing maltreatments in public;Footnote 28 they restore the dignity and agency of victimsFootnote 29 through the acceptance of their perspective, narrative, and framing of events;Footnote 30 and serve as a resource for securing forbearanceFootnote 31 through the public etching of the transgression in official records and collective memories.Footnote 32
Demands for apology vary in their public articulation. When realised, the offended party manifests its expectation for recognition of the transgression through a process of rectification. Three trajectories of such an articulation can bring an apology to fruition. The first entails an implicit expectation for an apology. The expectation is informed by a normative knowledge-based script of what constitutes a diplomatic transgressionFootnote 33 and when an apology is anticipated. In such cases, both the offended party and the transgressor are aware of the general norm the latter has violated, as well as the discursive norm or expectation for rectification that is to be performed following a specific offense.Footnote 34 In this form of articulation, acts of public noticing are absent; the transgressors notice their own misconduct and apologise voluntarily, without first necessitating a request, a call for, or a demand to do so.
The second trajectory of articulation entails an explicit discursive expectation for an apology. In this case, the offended actors are required to manifest their expectation in a public manner with ranging levels of verbal directness. The level of explicitness is differentiated through the choice of the speech-act verb intensifying the illocutionary force of the utterance (request, call, or demand), the content of the speech act (whether the demander expects an apology or other types of verbal redress), or the use of threats (for example, future sanctions) that further elevate the level of imposition. If the manifested expectation for rectification is not responded to, a demand for an apology may be repeated.Footnote 35 For example, when an explanation is given instead of an apology, the offended party may not be satisfied with the extent to which the articulation of remorse is performed by the offending side.Footnote 36 By repeating the demand for an apology, the offended party calls for more adherence to the expectation of symbolic rectification.Footnote 37
The third trajectory of articulation entails an explicit discursive expectation for material compensation. Explicit demands may encourage transgressors to recompense alleged victims either verbally (for example, by an apology) or materially. The former case is indicative of the limited power of words from the perspective of the offended side. In some cases, words do not suffice, and the expectation is that the transgressor will further manifest a sense of recognition and the intention to rectify the transgression through material compensation or other structural transformations, such as a change in policy.Footnote 38 In some cases, words do not serve as compensation at all, and the expectation is that recognition and redress will be enacted solely through deeds. In such an event, words are considered meaningless and other forms of rectification are required for the settlement of the conflict.Footnote 39
In this study, we analyse the latter two cases, in which demands for apology are explicitly made with or without an additional demand for material compensation. We use a grounded-content analysis of statesperson acts of demands for apologies to provide an actor-oriented perspective on the expectations for rectification following diplomatic transgressions.
Research design
In order to identify the process by which demands are made publicly following diplomatic transgressions, we collected cases from both official and media sources between the years 1999 and 2019 from a number of digital online sources. First, using the keywords ‘apology’ and ‘demand’ we retrieved cases of demands for an apology from the United Nation digital library. Second, we conducted a keyword search using the LexisNexis Academic database (The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Times) and the Israeli quality news archive Haaretz using the following terms: apology, sorry, regret, demand, request, and call for. Third, we looked for cases in the following academic resources: The Political Apologies Archive of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University; Political Apologies: Chronological List of the University of Pennsylvania; and the Political Apologies and Reparations Primary Document List of the Wilfrid Laurier University. After consolidating our initial corpus, we searched for supplementary data (for example, the exact wording of the demand and other governmental references to the transgression and its aftermath) regarding each case in various official websites of the demanding state.
Overall, we collected 177 cases all of which adhered to the following criteria: First, the maximum amount of time between the transgression and the apology (if made) or the demand for an apology was no more than 15 years, due to our focus on diplomatic wrongdoing. In most cases the demand for an apology was made within the same year of the transgressions (47 out of 57 cases). We decided to add cases of delayed demands (up to 15 years) as a strategy to capture more incidents that fall under the category of ‘diplomatic transgressions’. Second, the incidents concerned international cases in which the transgression was committed by a state actor. Due to the state's privileged position and its central role in the reconstruction of narrative and identity, it served as our unit of analysis.
Following this procedure, we mapped the 177 cases adhering to these criteria. For each one, we identified the key actors, the demand, the official discourse surrounding it, the media's contribution to each incident, and the public's response to the entire case as it unfolded. We then discarded those cases in which there was no explicit demand for an apology, and/or the demand was made by or directed to a non-state representative. We thus reached the total of 57 cases of explicit diplomatic demands for an apology involving state representatives as addressors and/or addressees. All demands were directed towards specific actors who assumed official roles in a certain country, and as such were held responsible for the transgression and were considered to possess the power to issue a public apology.
Next, we conducted a qualitative content analysis on the 57 cases of demands. Building on a grounded theory approach,Footnote 40 we inductively uncovered the normative script state actors reconstruct and activate for extracting recognition and rectification via the practice of demanding apologies. Each case was carefully examined, focusing on the way the transgressions and demands for rectification were constructed in terms of their textual forms and content. In this process, we examined the various constructions of the transgressions that led to the demands, the various justifications surrounding them, the supplementary actions the offended party demanded alongside the apology, as well as the ways in which the demands were rhetorically intensified. On the basis of repeated themes, we formulated a codebook that included the main components of demands (types of transgression, scripts of transgressions and the presence of intensifiers). An inter-coder reliability test performed by two trained coders on 15 cases (26.3 per cent of entire corpus) achieved satisfying scores (Krippendorff's α > 0.87).
The discursive construction of transgressions
The first set of questions we tackled concerned why states demand an apology and on what grounds they justify their demands. Our analysis of demands focused on two facets related to the reasons states seek to extract rectification from other states: the types of transgressions and the normative scripts that inform the identification of a diplomatic offense (the act of public noticing) and the demand for an apology that follows.
Types of transgressions
We distinguished among three general types of transgressions recurrent in diplomatic discourse – physical, verbal, and symbolic. The most prevalent in our corpus relate to threat or harm to property and human lives. Physical transgressions occurred 37 times and included cases such as the NATO bombing of China's Belgrade embassy (in which three journalists were killed) in 1999, the collision between Japan's Ehime Maru and the United States’ USS Greeneville (in which nine civilians were killed) in 2002, and the Israel military operation against a Turkish flotilla to Gaza (in which nine activists were killed) in 2010. This type of transgression is regarded as the most severe since it involves the fundamental violation of international law, namely the taking of human life and destruction of civic infrastructure.
Verbal transgressions occurred 12 times in our corpus and included statements perceived by the offended party as an insult. The offensive remarks ranged between personally insulting specific public figures (such as a Fox News anchor calling the Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘killer’ in 2017), to accusations levelled against state actors regarding past and present cooperation with condemnable international actors (such as the accusation in 2014 by the Vice President of the United States John Biden that Turkey was backing ISIS).
Finally, symbolic transgressions included cases in which a specific action was framed as a breach of the normative script of diplomacy. Such transgressions occurred eight times in the sample and included non-verbal and non-physical violations, as when in 2010 Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Dani Ayalon seated the Turkish ambassador Ahmet Oğuz Çelikkol on a low couch at a meeting and then publicly recording the ‘humiliation’, and when United States immigration officers delayed and questioned a Pakistani official before he was allowed to board a flight in 2012.
Scripts of transgressions
Generally, in order to frame a physical, verbal, or symbolic action as a transgression, actors demanding apologies activate their knowledge about the scripts that guide (or what they perceive to guide) relations in the international arena. These normative and judicial scripts include sets of codes, norms, and rules that serve as the guiding logic of interstate diplomatic communication.Footnote 41 Some of these scripts are formal and available in the form of written protocols and laws, while others are informal and present in the realm of actors’ expectations.Footnote 42 Awareness of the various formal and informal scripts of diplomacy can be demonstrated by the following remark made by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark regarding the Israel-New Zealand passport scandal in 2004. After the exposure of two Mossad agents fraudulently holding Canadian passports and fraudulently applying for New Zealand passports, Clark said,
[the acts carried out are] not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law.Footnote 43
In this one statement, Clark has encapsulated the various scripts used by statespersons to identify and construct a transgression. The first script breached is solidarity. It is implicitly referenced in the words ‘utterly unacceptable’, pointing to the expectation that allies would avoid committing offensive actions. The second breach is of the informal script of autonomy (‘a breach of New Zealand sovereignty’), which includes the expectation to be considered and respectfully treated as an independent entity. The third breach is of the judicial, formal script of autonomy, referred to explicitly by Clark as a violation of ‘international law’. In what follows we elaborate on each of these scripts.
Breaches of solidarity
Scripts of solidarity are based on social actors’ need for involvement and appreciation from community members who share common interests and beliefs.Footnote 44 This need is manifested in a variety of verbal, symbolic, and material forms allowing international actors to perform solidarity with other actors, and thus to build consensus in political and diplomatic communication.Footnote 45 Transgressions committed by breaching the script of solidarity build on the informal expectations arising from special interstate relations of various kinds. Such relations may be characterised as ‘friendships of utility’,Footnote 46 namely, close alliances between selfish entities,Footnote 47 or as genuine friendships that have a variety of emotional manifestations.Footnote 48 In either case, special relations entail expectations for a specific amicable treatment from an ally state.Footnote 49 When such expectations are not met, solidarity-based offense is taken.
Breaches of solidarity include various ‘disappointments’ manifested by one state because of what it perceives is unfriendly behaviour by another. Consider the example of the Mexican foreign ministry's response to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's tweet in 2017 supporting United States President Trump's intentions to build a wall along its southern border. Mexico demanded an apology and expressed ‘profound astonishment, rejection and disappointment’ with regard to the Israeli behaviour. The statement pointed specifically to Israeli-Mexican special relations, asserting,
Mexico is a friend of Israel and should be treated as such by its Prime Minister.Footnote 50
Another recurrent breach of solidarity in our corpus included disappointment manifested towards a state with geographical proximity. Such scripts develop over time either due to shared interests or through cultural and social contact.Footnote 51 Consider the collision between two Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats and a Chinese trawler in disputed waters near the Senkaku Islands in 2010. The collision and Japan's subsequent detention of the Chinese skipper and 14 crew members resulted in a major diplomatic crisis between the states. In his demand, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed his disappointment, saying,
China and Japan are two close neighbors. It is in the fundamental interests of the two peoples to adhere to the development of Sino-Japanese strategic relations of mutual benefits.Footnote 52
According to the Chinese premier, even if not considered ‘close friends’, mutual interests emerging from geographical proximity shape the relational expectations emerging from scripts of solidarity.
Breaches of autonomy
Transgressions of this kind are committed against both informal and formal scripts of diplomatic deference, which are built on the need of social actors for independence and recognition and manifested through claims for territorial integrity and self-determination or through acknowledgments of others’ autonomy and freedom of action.Footnote 53 In international relations, scripts of deference include the expectation of states to be recognised and respectfully treated as independent, sovereign entities.Footnote 54 Since such transgressions are related to misrecognition of autonomy and disrespect for another actor's agency,Footnote 55 they are closely linked to issues of identity and the reputation of a state within the international community.
Informal breaches of autonomy typically include interventions in policy and domestic issues. Informed by informal codes that regulate the expectation of deference between two states, such violations are perceived to be a breach of ‘diplomatic courtesy rules’.Footnote 56 Consider the incident in 2018 in which Canada demanded the release of human rights activists held in Saudi Arabia. In reaction, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, demanded an apology and harshly criticised the Canadian demand:
It is outrageous from our perspective that a country will sit there and lecture us and make demands … We demand the immediate release and independence of Quebec, granting of equal rights to Canadian Indians. What on earth are you talking about? You can criticize us about human rights, women's rights … others do and that's your right. You can sit down and talk about it, but demand the immediate release? What are we a banana republic? Would any country accept it? No! We don't.Footnote 57
The Saudi foreign minister's response differentiates between legitimate intervention in domestic affairs (‘You can criticize us about human rights … others do and that's your right’), and illegitimate intervention that breaches informal diplomatic-courtesy rules (‘but demand the immediate release? Would any country accept it? No! We don't’). This distinction, which points to what members of the international society are expected not to do, serves as a basis for his equally ‘illegitimate’ demand from the Canadians: ‘We demand the immediate release and independence of Quebec, granting of equal rights to Canadian Indians.’ Such a retaliatory counterdemand serves as a rhetorical strategy that underlines and reflects the ‘outrageous’ nature of the Canadian demand.
Formal breaches of autonomy include all types of intrusions across physical borders, acts that threaten and/or harm human lives, and the infliction of damage to infrastructure. These types of breaches are all violations of international law and as such constitute a transgression of a formal script of conduct that is widely recognised by members of the international community as regulating interstate relations.Footnote 58 Alongside demands for an apology, demands issued following such transgressions typically include demanding an investigation into the incident, judicial punishment, and a promise not to commit such an assault in the future.
Most cases in our dataset include such a transgression (35 of the 57 incidents). Consider the NATO bombing of China's Belgrade embassy in 1999. Following the bombing, China's ambassador to the United Nations termed the incident
a gross violation of the United Nations charter, international law, and the norms governing international relations … [and] a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Such a breach, according to the ambassador, justified the demand for a deference-oriented means of compensation,Footnote 59 including
[a] public and official apology to the government and people of China and the families of the Chinese victims.Footnote 60
A second example that underlines the deference-related consequences of breaches of autonomy can be found in a British raid in Basra, Iraq in 2005, during which five civilians were killed. Following the incident, Basra's governor, Mohammad al-Waili, called for ‘the British troops [to] stop these barbarian and illegal actions’. Lewa’ al Batat, the deputy governor of Basra, criticised the British troops, saying ‘they broke the laws and insulted our institutions’.Footnote 61
This statement highlights two breaches of the codes of autonomy: violation of the law that regulates the social order of the international community and the disrespectful treatment of the Iraqi sovereignty, constructed in the statement in its emphasis on the emotional consequence of the breach (‘insulted our institutions’).
In sum, most of the demands in our corpus followed breaches of autonomy in which international law or the sovereignty of a specific state was disrespected. Breaches of autonomy can be either informal, wherein one state symbolically intervenes in what the demanding state perceives as a ‘domestic’ issue, or formal, wherein one state infringes on international law that aims to secure the sovereignty of members of the international community. Less frequent are breaches of solidarity, which build on the informal expectation of states to be treated amicably by their allies. Lastly, the distinction between autonomy and solidarity crosses over the former distinction between physical, verbal, and symbolic transgressions. Each one of the latter transgressions is informed by and publicly noticed through scripts of deference, solidarity, or both, which in their turn serve as a basis for making the demand for an apology.
The discursive construction of demands
The second set of questions we focused on concerned what states demand along with apologies and how do they do so. Our analysis focused on the content of the demands and their rhetorical construction, resulting in a mapping of the types of rectifications expected following all types of transgressions and the means that intensify pressure on the demandee to comply.
Categories of rectification
Our analysis of the content of demands yielded three recurrent patterns of rectification: verbal-public, material, and structural. In line with previous claims in the apology literature,Footnote 62 these types of demanded remedies correlated in our study with the types of transgressions discussed above. Whereas following verbal transgressions, all cases led to a demand for verbal compensation only (that is, an apology or clarification); following physical transgressions that involved threats to property and human lives, 17 out of 37 cases led to demands for material (financial) and 15 out of 37 cases led to demands for structural (policy-related) compensation, in addition to verbal. Eight cases out of 37 led to demands for both material and structural compensation (in addition to the verbal one).
The three categories of rectification and their relation to types of transgressions can be demonstrated by the demand made following the eruption of anti-Thai violence in Cambodia in 2003. An allegation made by a Cambodian newspaper regarding the disputed Angkor Wat temple resulted in riots in which the Thai embassy was burned and the commercial properties of Thai businesses were vandalised. In response, the Thai government demanded an apology and set three further demands for rectification: (1) a full explanation by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) for its failure to respond to Thai requests for protection; (2) full compensation for all losses incurred by the Royal Thai Government (RTG), its diplomatic personnel, and Thai nationals; and (3) justice for the perpetrators of the violence and those instigators responsible for it. This statement summarises the three different types of rectifications demanded by statespersons in our corpus to redress transgressions:
Verbal-public rectification
The first type of rectification consists of a demand for a variety of remedial speech acts delivered in public settings. The Thai statement above demonstrates the demand for a verbal account of the damage, seeking acknowledgment of the wrongdoing committed by the transgressor (‘full explanation’). In other cases, remedial speech acts included performative markers such as clarification, explanation, and apology. Some of the demands focused on a specific speech act expected to be performed by the transgressor (that is, clarification or apology), while others consisted of a demand for both an apology and a clarification or explanation. Consider, for example, Libya's demand for an ‘apology and clarification’ from Switzerland in 2008 following the arrest of Hannibal Gaddafi and his wife for the assault of their servants at a Geneva hotel.
In addition to a verbal remedy, state actors may demand that transgressors perform the apology on a public stage. Insisting on giving publicity to the apology could be seen as a means to commit apologisers to their act.Footnote 63 Such publicity ratifies public norms and posits a definite version of a dispute, with clear wrongdoers and victims on the record.Footnote 64 Once on the record, according to Nicholas Tavuchis, ‘the apology is transformed into a type of socially validated testimony, and the offender into a kind of witness’.Footnote 65 Consider the following verbal transgression in which the Italian president Silvio Berlusconi claimed the German member of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, ‘would be perfect for a film role as a Nazi guard’. In response, the Irish president of the European parliament, Pat Cox, said:
It's to the European Parliament that Mr. Berlusconi must present his excuses in public. … The prime minister's apology must be made publicly and to the parliament. … If Berlusconi were to say: People I am wrong, it won't be repeated, then this incident is settled. It has to be made clear to him; this is not a boxing match. An institution has been offended.Footnote 66
According to Cox, giving publicity to the verbal rectification is important for activating the normative force of the apology. Only a public apology would position the side participants (the ‘people’) as witnesses to the act, transforming it into a socially validated testimony for the respectful status of the European Parliament.
Material rectification
The second type of remedy is demonstrated in the Thai-Cambodian example cited above in the demand for ‘full compensation for all losses’, namely financial restitution for the damage caused. As mentioned above, material compensation was sought after mostly in cases of physical transgressions. Financial compensation, alongside verbally acknowledgment of the wrongdoing, is regarded as a sign of sincerity, as evidence that the perpetrators are willing to back their words with deeds.Footnote 67 An example can be found in a physical transgression that occurred in 2005 in Iraq. In response to a British raid on a police station in Basra during which five civilians were killed, the deputy governor of Basra, Lewa’ al-Batat, demanded an apology and added:
They broke the laws and insulted our institutions. We will cut relations with them until they apologise and offer compensation for the relatives of [those] who died, as well as for the rebuilding of the police station.Footnote 68
Offering financial compensation to the bereaved families (‘offer compensation for the relatives’) as well as repairing the material damage caused during the army operation (‘rebuilding of the police station’) are thus the conditions set for restoring relations between the disputing sides.
Structural rectification
The third type of demanded remedy is demonstrated in the Thai statement above in the demand for judicial procedure (‘justice for the perpetrators’), which aims to secure forbearance. Under structural rectifications we included cases in which the demand for an apology was accompanied by an additional demand for various penalties, such as legal procedures, policy modifications, and culpable resignation. These penalties may be conceived as prices tags for physical transgressions, motivated by either a desire for revengeFootnote 69 or a genuine attempt to promise forbearance. Consider the two following demands made by South Korea to the United States (2002) and the Taiwanese government to the Philippines (2013) following physical transgressions (The Yangju highway incident and the killing of Taiwanese fisherman by the Philippines Coast Guard, respectively):
We strongly demand an apology, the punishment of those responsible and steps to prevent it from happening again.Footnote 70
[We demand] the Philippines clarify whether it was conducting a criminal or an administrative investigation and what kind of punishment it planned for those responsible – dismissal, imprisonment, or a fine.Footnote 71
In both cases, the offended parties demanded the sanctioning of the responsible actors (‘punishment … dismissal, imprisonment, or a fine’) in addition to an official investigation and policy modifications that aim to ‘prevent [the incident] from happening again’.
Intensifiers of demands
Thus far we have identified the rhetorical construction of demands as consisting of the act of public noticing, anchoring the transgressions within normative scripts that serve as a basis for legitimising them. In addition to these components, offended parties in the corpus utilised further rhetorical means to pressurise offenders into conforming to their demand. These included the performance of threats and ultimatums and resorting to pressure mechanisms by depicting the ‘people's rage’ (intrastate pressure) or international community indignation (interstate pressure). Strategies for intensifying demands were significantly more prevalent in cases of physical transgressions, which may be considered more severe than verbal and symbolic transgressions. In 21 out of 37 cases of physical transgressions, the demands were accompanied by intensifiers, in comparison with one out of eight cases of symbolic transgressions and six out of twelve cases of verbal transgressions.
Threats and ultimatums
The most common intensifiers in our corpus were performances of threats and ultimatums toward the transgressor. These ranged from threats to downgrade relations and to impose sanctions, to threats to halt collaborative enterprises. Building on the performative power of threats to make something happen,Footnote 72 the threatening actor claims to have the power to bring about unfavourable consequences for the transgressor,Footnote 73 thus aiming to create compliance through a sense of fear.Footnote 74 In the case of threats, the actions needed to restore relations are not time constricted and the demands are explicitly presented for the addressee to adhere to. As exemplified in the Thailand-Cambodia case in 2003, a speech act of threat was made in the official letter sent by the Thai government to Cambodia:
All ongoing government projects on technical and economic cooperation between the two countries are henceforth suspended.Footnote 75
In the more forceful version of threats, that is, ultimatums, a deadline is presented alongside the threat. If not met, the ultimatum is realised. Following the killing of a Taiwanese fisherman by the Philippines Coast Guard in 2013, Taiwan's President MaYing-jeou expressed his strong dissatisfaction and threatened:
Further sanctions would be imposed unless Taiwan's demands were met by 1000 GMT Wednesday.Footnote 76
The reason for the prevalence of threats accompanying demands may be explained by the power of both speech acts to transform and reverse discursive configurations. Whereas after the transgression the offender has the upper hand in the bilateral relations with the offended party,Footnote 77 demanding an apology and expecting an act or a process on the part of the addressor that is not in the best interests of the addressee enables the former to position itself higher in the discursive hierarchy.
Two additional strategies of intensification resort to the representation of intrastate pressure in the form of public protest or interstate pressure in the form of creating an international coalition of resentment: public rage and coalition of resentment.
Public rage
Official demands for an apology are tools not only for managing international relations, but may also function as a means for reducing inner tension while intensifying the pressure on the transgressor to respond to the call. Inwardly, in cases in which spontaneous protests erupt after a transgression, the demand can serve as evidence of the government's awareness of public rage and as a means for maintaining its own legitimacy and stability. Outwardly, public rage can be referred to in official statements for strategic purposes, that is, to exert pressure on the offending side to respond to the demand or to apologise. Consider, for example, the following statement made by the South Korean government after public protests erupted following the killing of two South Korean girls by a United States army tank in 2002:
President Bush should apologize to soothe the pain of the Korean people and to prevent any escalation in anti-American sentiment.Footnote 78
The statement formulates the demand in the form of adviceFootnote 79 (‘should apologize … to prevent’) to United States President George W. Bush: an apology would ‘soothe the pain’ and relieve ‘anti-American sentiment’. The latter is an implicit threat of what could result if no apology is forthcoming: failing to respond to the demand would escalate the protests against United States presence in South Korea.
Coalition of resentment
Whereas in all cases in our corpus the demands were made publicly, in some cases the demanding party explicitly underlined their public nature by calling for other countries to join the demand, thus exacerbating the pressure on the transgressor to respond by creating an international coalition of resentment. Such cases demonstrate how demands for apology are public speech acts, defined by their addressivity structure.Footnote 80 They are not addressed solely to a particular transgressor, but to a transnational or culturally marked public sphereFootnote 81 whose inhabitants are called to join a coalition of resentment against what is wrong and sanctionable in human affairs.Footnote 82 The following statement was made in 2015 by the Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after the death of 769 worshipers outside the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Accusing the Saudi Arabia authorities of not fulfilling their duty to serve as custodian of the holiest places of Islamic orthodoxy, Khamenei said:
Saudis should accept the responsibility and apologize to the Muslims and the victims’ families. … The Islamic world has a lot of questions. The death of more than 1,000 people is not a small issue. Muslim countries should focus on this.Footnote 83
Building a discursive coalition of resentment among Muslim states from which Saudi Arabia is excluded and scolding it as the transgressor is aimed at rhetorically achieving two goals: first, it positions Iran as the leading state of the Islamic world, one that is morally competent and powerful enough to perform the act of public noticing; second, ignaling out Saudi Arabia as both culpable for the specific event and incompetent in securing holy sites intensifies the pressure on the Saudis to accept the demand. This type of discursive boundary work that demarcates imagined communities of shared moral scaleFootnote 84 points to societal functioning of demands of apology.
The discursive effect of demands
Thus far, demands for an apology were treated as a responsive act, aiming to serve the functions of public noticing to a past offence while calling for an amending action (apology) from the alleged transgressor. In this section we discuss and exemplify the perlocutionary goal of demanding an apology, namely the practical and intended consequence of the speech act.Footnote 85 It should be noted right from the outset that the relatively small number of cases (57) does not enable us to ascertain a significant statistical effect a demand has, but it does allow us to observe meaningful trends. Specifically, we can indicate the components of a demand for an apology that are likely to bring about an apology.
In 28 cases (49 per cent) in our corpus, the above process was fully executed and the demand for rectification was met with an apology. This serves to indicate an agreement between the offended party and the transgressor regarding the offensive nature of the preceding act (either verbal, symbolic, or physical transgressions of autonomy or solidarity). Within the 28 pairs of demands-apologies, we further looked for specific components that predict the realisation of an apology. A statistically significant relationship was found between scripts of transgressions (autonomy or solidarity) and apologies. In 63 per cent (n = 22) of cases in which a state transgressed the scripts of autonomy (misrecognition of another state's sovereignty), a demand for an apology was met (P > 0.05). The preference of states to amend transgressions of autonomy can be explained by the power of an apology to restore the sense of agency and personhood of victims.Footnote 86 Failing to recognise the sovereignty of another state may be perceived by the offended party as a degrading in status of an equal actor in the society of states. An apology for such an offence reaffirms the equal status and acknowledges states’ need for recognition, and thus serves as efficient means in restoring relations following breaches of autonomy.
A second observable trend in our corpus concerns the relationship between intensifiers (threats, ultimatums, and resorting to pressure mechanisms) and apologies. In 57 per cent (n = 16) an apology was made following demands that included intensifiers, compared to 41 per cent (n = 12) of cases in which an apology was made following a demand without intensifiers. Although not statistically significant, these findings are meaningful since intensifiers are considered by speech act theorists as signalling perception of severity.Footnote 87 Intensifiers were employed by the offended parties in the corpus as an efficient rhetorical means. First, to pressurise the offenders into conforming the demand and, second, to bring about the intended effect through the signalling of the importance of the act. Interestingly, the findings suggest that in cases of intensified demands following breaches of autonomy, the chances for an apology are even higher (64 per cent of apologies following an intensified demand and a breach of autonomy compared to 36 per cent of apologies following a non-intensified demand and a breach of autonomy). This finding confirms a trend according to which apologies are more likely to be made in cases in which the offended party signals the severity of a sovereignty-related transgression.
To understand and demonstrate the practical consequences of the demand for an apology, we turn to the case study of the Mavi Marmara in 2010. This case entailed a deadly confrontation on board the Turkish flotilla during the ‘Gaza Freedom Flotilla’, resulting in the killing of eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American by the Israel Defence Forces. In our terms, the physical transgression is a formal breach of autonomy, namely, the taking of human lives of citizens of another sovereign state. This transgression created an imbalance in the relations between Israel and Turkey. According to the seesaw model of rituals of apology,Footnote 88 the offence positioned Turkey as inferior in the bilateral relations, and positioned Israel, which satisfied its objectives, as superior. This can be demonstrated in the act of public noticing made by Turkey, which referred to the raid as a ‘bloody massacre’Footnote 89 and a ‘gross violation of international law’,Footnote 90 contending that ‘psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey’.Footnote 91
In order to restore the relational balance, Turkey immediately demanded all three types of rectifications: an apology (a verbal-public rectification), compensation (a material rectification), and prosecution of those involved (a structural rectification). In Israel the raid was perceived as legitimate and justified, both according to international law and moral standards.Footnote 92 To this extent, Israel perceived the demand as coercive and one that forces Israel to participate in a ‘ritual of humiliation’.Footnote 93
Following Israel's refusal to apologise, Turkey employed a gamut of intensifiers, conditioning non-compliance with threatening measures both discursive and practical. Discursively, Turkey threatened to downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel, stating that normal ties between Turkey and Israel are ‘unthinkable’ until Israel apologises. In terms of creating a coalition of resentment, Turkey demanded an international investigation on the flotilla incident and called other states to pressurise Israel into lifting of the blockade on Gaza.Footnote 94 Public rage was prevalent with wide-scale demonstrations taking place throughout Turkey, some also resulting in violence. Practically, Turkey downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and suspended military cooperation. Following the release of the UN Palmer Commission report, the Turkish government continued to hard press Israel in the hopes of forcing an apology (accusing Israel of violating the European Convention on Human Rights; indicting senior Israeli military officers; attempting to block Israeli participation in NATO's summit).
Despite these aggressive measures, together with wide international criticism and condemnation, Israel unwaveringly refused to apologise. Only in 2013, after three years of Israel's refusal to perform a reparative, corrective act, Israeli PM Netanyahu apologised to Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan, stating that ‘the tragic results regarding the Mavi Marmara were unintentional and that Israel expresses regret over injuries and loss of life’.Footnote 95 The apology led to restore a balance in the seesaw of the bilateral relations, breaking a three-year stalemate between the countries. Following the apology, relations began returning to normal, with the agreement that Israel would pay compensation to the families of those killed on the Mavi Marmara; Turkey permitted to send aid to Gaza through an Israeli port; and Turkish infrastructure projects for improving the humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory. In return, Turkey committed to prevent Hamas military actions or fundraising and pass legislation protecting Israeli forces from legal actions.Footnote 96 Also, attempts are made to reach an intergovernmental agreement that will enable the construction of a pipeline from Israel to Turkey, and consequently lucrative gas projects for both.
Conclusion
In this article, we discuss a prominent rhetorical means for addressing diplomatic transgressions in contemporary world politics. In-depth content analysis of demands for apology made by various state actors enabled us to underline the discursive construction of transgressions, the demand for remedies that followed, and their discursive effect. In this process, we uncovered the guiding scripts (of solidarity and autonomy) that serve as normative grounds for making a demand for an apology and the types of diplomatic transgressions (verbal, symbolic, and physical) that necessitate rectification. We showed that the distinction between the more prevalent breaches of autonomy and the less frequent breaches of solidarity crosses over the types of transgressions; verbal, symbolic, or physical transgressions are ‘seen and noticed’ against the backdrop of expectations from other states to respect international law or to adhere to expectations embodied in the amicable relations between two ‘friendly’ states.
After identification of the transgressions, we unpacked the discursive construction of demands for apology. Focusing on the content of the demands and their rhetorical design, we mapped the types of rectification that accompany calls for an apology (verbal, material, and structural) and the ways in which pressure to conform to the demand is discursively intensified (by posing threats and ultimatums, referring to public rage, and/or building an international coalition of resentment). Linking between the transgressions and their consequent demands, we showed that the most verbally elaborated demands are those that followed physical transgressions. About half of transgression-related demands included calls for material (financial) and/or structural (policy-related) compensation, alongside an apology. Moreover, most of such demands included intensifiers of various kinds, in comparison with other transgression-related demands.
With regard to the discursive effect a demand has, we first found a statistically significant relationship between scripts of transgressions (autonomy or solidarity) and apologies. Specifically, when a state transgressed the scripts of autonomy (misrecognition of another state's sovereignty), a demand for an apology was satisfied. Also, with regard to the relationship between intensifiers (threats, ultimatums, and resorting to pressure mechanisms) and apologies, we found that, in most cases, an apology was made following a demand that included intensifiers. Moreover, in cases of intensified demands following breaches of autonomy, the chances for an apology are even higher. Thus, we could confirm a trend according to which apologies are more likely to be made in cases in which the offended party signals the severity of a sovereignty-related transgression.
In the remainder of the article we discuss the functions of demands for an apology in world politics and how their study informs theories of diplomacy and IR. Beforehand, however, it is important to clarify that the demands for an apology we analysed in this article may achieve their goals regardless of the question whether they were premised on an actual offense or were made as a bad-faith claim. The way in which sincerity is judged in public settings is also what differentiates interstate demands for an apology (as well as apologies) from interpersonal ones. According to speech act theorists, in public settings, the publicity given to words serves as a replacement for sincerity.Footnote 97 When a demand is publicly made towards a single actor, the demander also informs the entire community of states about the conflicting perspectives with regard to an alleged transgression. Giving publicity to demands positions the demander as accountable for the demand in front of all third parties. If disingenuous or made in bad faith, other states may challenge both the reliability of the demander and the need for the demandee's response.Footnote 98
What can be learned from our analysis of scripts of demanding apologies after diplomatic transgressions and how such demands can reconfigure power relations in international politics? In order to answer these questions, we adopt practice theorists’ assumption according to which interstate, diplomatic interactions are a gamut of practicesFootnote 99 adopted by state actors for securing ‘the objectives of their foreign policies without resort to force, propaganda or law’.Footnote 100 Practices are routine and habitual patterns of behaviourFootnote 101 that inform and are informed by normative scripts that guide the conduct of a community or a society of states.Footnote 102 Discursive practices, include, among other things, recurrent diplomatic speech acts, such as demands for apology and reparation as well as apologies and compensation. The power of discursive practices lies in their contribution to producing and maintaining the social order and cooperative relations.Footnote 103 Their performance according to normative, diplomatic scripts is thus a condition for the construction of social relations in world politics.
On the basis of this theoretical account we can now point to three functions of demands in world politics, all of which inform their importance for diplomacy and IR scholars. First, demanding an apology for a diplomatic transgression is a means to uncover the diplomatic script. Acts of public noticing enable us to identify what counts as a transgression requiring a verbal remedy and the normative script that guides the demand. They are performed from the participants’ perspective, and even if made in an insincere or exaggerated manner, manifest a normative stance concerning the behaviour expected from other members of the international community. In the case of demanding an apology, such public articulations uncover the expectations of states for solidarity and autonomy. They also reflect expectations for specific remedies for international transgressions: verbal compensation seems to be the most appropriate way to amend verbal breaches and material compensation seems to be more appropriate to remedy physical breaches.
Second, demanding an apology is a device for holding specific transgressors accountable for their actions and thus is a means for reconstructing bilateral power relations. Anchoring the demand in normative scripts and giving publicity to the call exert pressure on transgressors to respond by resorting to various strategies. These may range from accepting the call by apologising, to evading responsibility, justifying their actions, rejecting the call, or ignoring it altogether. The type of dialogue evolving from the demand is crucial to the configuration of the future relationship between the demander and the demandee. Such a dialogue includes the negotiation between two states about the value of their relationship. In many instances in our corpus, states referred to terms borrowed from the field of economics (offer an apology, you cannot afford, their own cost, etc.), intermingling between affective and utilitarian discourse as these unfold in interstate communication. Both the bilateral negotiation and the personal accountability involved in the process of demanding forefront the price of affronts in international relations.
Third, demanding an apology is a community-regulating device, which testifies to the existence of international societiesFootnote 104 or communities,Footnote 105 bounded by common norms and values. Demands for apology serve as a means of enforcing diplomatic scripts that regulate relations between states as members of global or regional communities. When publicly calling for others to amend a transgression, offended parties not only manifest their normative stance, but also call for other members in the community to evaluate the demand and take a stand. When the demand is endorsed by a substantial number of states, the diplomatic norm that was breached may be rectified. Furthermore, publicly manifesting a supportive stance to the demand reveals, and at times, reconstructs, coalitions of actors with a commonly shared normative base. As such, demands can be perceived as a tool for (re)constructing status and positioning in world politics. When a member of the international community chooses to side with either the demander or the demandee, the boundaries between transgressors and victims, and friends and foes, are redrawn and distinct communities are consolidated around shared norms and interests.
In sum, the present study traces the process of demanding an apology from an actor-oriented perspective. To understand the entire phenomenon of diplomatic demands for apologies it would be interesting for future research to trace the aftermath of such demands, namely, the way in which relations between the two state actors are affected following an apology or a refusal to accommodate the demand. In addition, research aimed at exploring the demands for an apology within a state, that is, in intrastate conflicts, would complement the present study by providing both international and domestic perspectives on the phenomenon of demanding an apology.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the help of the editors and anonymous reviewers. Their comments and critique were invaluable.
