These Are Not Just Words: A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Content of Political Apologies

Zoodsma, Marieke; Schaafsma, Juliëtte; Sagherian-Dickey, Thia; Friedrich, Jasper

doi:10.5334/irsp.503

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, Kirchhoff and Cehajic-Clancy (2014) examined which components a ‘good’ apology needs to include, but their studies yielded inconsistent results as to which elements are most essential for an apology to be ‘effective’. In their analysis of the content of state apologies across the world, Zoodsma et al (2021, but see also Zoodsma and Schaafsma, 2022) also observed that many of these statements only contain a selection of the components that are deemed essential in the literature, and they proposed a more liberal set of criteria to identify state apologies. For example, they included in their political apology database all statements by political authorities that included words such as ‘sorry’, ‘apologize’, and expressions of regret or remorse, or requests for forgiveness, but they also included statements that included expressions of guilt or shame if this was also accompanied by an acknowledgment of past wrongdoing.…”

Section: Distinguishing Between State Apologies and Non-apologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Argumentative strategies to evade state apologies: The Turkish example

Demir

Schaafsma

2023

Discourse Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Countries are often reluctant to publicly recognize and express regret for past wrongdoings despite urgent pressures or calls to do so, and in the past decades there have been numerous examples of states that have issued statements that evade an admission of wrongdoing or apology. Evading an apology requires politicians in authority to make argumentative maneuvers to steer the discourse to their own advantage. But what do such maneuvers look like? This paper sets out to address this question by drawing on a Turkish example and by analyzing President Erdoğan’s message of condolences addressed to the Armenian community in 2014, when he was the Prime Minister of Turkey. We utilized the pragma-dialectical notion of ‘strategic maneuvering’ in uncovering how he exploited the topical potential, addressed the audience expectations, and chose from available presentational means to defend the standpoint that ‘Turkey should not be blamed for the events of 1915’. Our analysis suggests that even when political authorities evade an apology, they may still try to observe dialectically reasonable and rhetorically effective argumentation. The message we analyzed shows how this can be done by pairing evasive language about past atrocities with expressions of empathy with the victims and by highlighting the importance of dialogue, mutual tolerance, and compromise in establishing a common future.

show abstract

Section: Distinguishing Between State Apologies and Non-apologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Argumentative strategies to evade state apologies: The Turkish example

Demir

Schaafsma

2023

Discourse Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Worldwide history abounds with examples of political apologies (MacLachlan, 2010). In recent years, there is a consistently increasing number of political apologies following historical wrongdoings and injustices in a historical, national and political level (Celermajer, 2009;Gibney, 2008;Zoodsma et al, 2021). To this end, politicians seem to face past wrongdoings and injustices by making morally-based amends for such wrongs (Howard-Hassmann & Gibney, 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Victim-focused political apology predicts political support via perceived sincerity, trust and positive emotional climate: The case of the 2018 bushfire in Attica

Gkinopoulos

2022

J. Soc. Polit. Psych.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Political leaders tend to apologize for wrongdoings. This study focuses on a disaster that occurred on July 2018 in east Attica, Greece, where wildfires destroyed houses and left dozens of people dead. Two pilot studies and one main study were conducted testing perceptions of apology as sincere, perceived trust, positive emotional climate and participants’ support towards the governmental policies. Participants (N = 180 for the two pilot studies, N = 222 for the main study) were recruited from the disaster zone of east Attica. The focus is on two key forms of political apology, a self or offender-focused apology and a self-other or victim-focused apology. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the conditions equivalent to each of the two forms of apology, that is either in a victim-focused apology condition or an offender-focused apology, or a control condition, where a neutral image was shown to participants. Results showed a positive association between victim-focused apology, compared to offender-focused apology, and political support towards the government via increased perceived sincerity, trust and positive emotional climate. Political and psychological implications related to different forms of public apologies are discussed.

show abstract

“…a recognition of wrongdoing, a recognition of suffering) were included. More details can be found in Zoodsma et al (2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the ‘age of apology’: Insights from the Political Apology database

Zoodsma¹,

Schaafsma

2021

Journal of Peace Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is often assumed that we are currently living in an ‘age of apology’, whereby countries increasingly seek to redress human rights violations by offering apologies. Although much has been written about why this may occur, the phenomenon itself has never been examined through a large-scale review of the apologies that have been offered. To fill this gap, we created a database of political apologies that have been offered for human rights violations across the world. We found 329 political apologies offered by 74 countries, and cross-nationally mapped and compared these apologies. Our data reveal that apologies have increasingly been offered since the end of the Cold War, and that this trend has accelerated in the last 20 years. They have been offered across the globe, be it that they seem to have been embraced by consolidated liberal democracies and by countries transitioning to liberal democracies in particular. Most apologies have been offered for human rights violations that were related to or took place in the context of a (civil) war, but there appears to be some selectivity as to the specific human rights violations that countries actually mention in the apologies. On average, it takes more than a generation before political apologies are offered.

show abstract

These Are Not Just Words: A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Content of Political Apologies

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Argumentative strategies to evade state apologies: The Turkish example

Argumentative strategies to evade state apologies: The Turkish example

Victim-focused political apology predicts political support via perceived sincerity, trust and positive emotional climate: The case of the 2018 bushfire in Attica

Examining the ‘age of apology’: Insights from the Political Apology database

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About