The value of empathy, the ability to share and understand the feelings of others, is not a value that one often associates with discussions of politics at any level. This is something that hurts us all because as former Irish Diplomat Anne Anderson pointed out in the Harri Holkeri Lecture 2023 “Perspective; Conscience; Integrity: Reflections from a Career in Diplomacy” at Queen’s University Belfast on 24 April 2023, without a sense of empathy you cannot even begin to “understand what needs to be addressed.”

Anderson’s astute observation applies to politics be it at the United Nations Security Council or in the most local of elections. Politics is about people and to succeed in this field logically you need to understand their needs and dreams. One reason that we may shy away from talking about the importance of empathy in political life is because we associated it with agreement. An effective political leader or diplomat can empathise with someone without agreeing with their position. Empathy is about understanding, not agreement.

Over the last several years, many books and articles have been written about Trump voters. For better or worse, I have read many of these works. The one that I have found the most instructive is Anger and Mourning on the American Right (The New Press 2018), by Arlie Russell Hochschild. By training, Hochschild is a sociologist and is now a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkley.

Hochschild began the work that resulted in Anger and Mourning on the American Right by trying to understand why people who could benefit from environmental regulation sometimes oppose it. Her work took her to southern Louisiana where she lived with the people and tried to understand their thoughts and feelings. As she puts it in the book, she got over the empathy wall to understand why the people of south Louisiana felt the way they did.

By no means, does Hochschild agree with all the political stands of the people she meets. However, she does come to understand why they think and feel the way that they do. For an American politician today, the lessons that Hochschild learns are simply invaluable.

We can easily take the lessons of empathy that Hochschild gives for American politics and apply it to the world stage. For example, American foreign policy towards Vietnam would have been more successful if the United States had more understanding of the Vietnamese. The same could be said of the French in Algeria.

Another learning from Hochschild’s work is that it reminds both politicians and academics of the important contribution that sociologists and anthropologists can make to the field of international relations.

History has proven Ambassador Anderson to be quite correct. Without empathy, you cannot begin to understand the nature of the issues to be addressed.  

Martin is a postgraduate student on the Masters degree programme: Conflict Transformation and Social Justice.  His dissertation focuses on The Politics of Persuasion:  How the Irish Republican Leadership Sold the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to their Constituency.