Ritual, emotion, and change in world politics

Abstract The question of political change – how the nature and the distinguishing features of orders persist or change – is an enduring puzzle in international theory. We engage ensuing debates through the burgeoning literature on the politics of rituals. We proceed in two steps. First, we introduce and build on existing scholarship that presents emotions as central to how rituals create a sense of collective unity. Second and primarily, we then show that emotions are also key to understanding how rituals can disrupt and transform order. To think so appears counterintuitive at first, for it is natural to think of rituals as being associated with tradition, with time-honoured processes and patterns. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, we show how the very power of rituals to enact and entrench political orders also provides disenfranchised individuals and groups with opportunities to challenge existing power relations. We argue that discomfort – being unsettled – is important for understanding how ritual and political change take place. We do so by linking rituals with shifts in collective feelings. The ensuing affective agency can explain how rituals – and the political orders they manage and sustain – are enacted and change over time.