1 Roy. L. Brooks, ‘The Age of Apology’, in Roy L. Brooks (ed.), When Sorry isn't Enough (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 3–11.

2 Mark. R. Amstutz, The Healing of Nations: The Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, INC, 2005), p. vii.

3 Peter. E. Digeser, Political Forgiveness (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 69–70; Raymond Cohen, ‘Apology and Reconciliation in International Relations’, in Y. Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 178; Yehudit Auerbach, ‘The Role of Forgiveness in Reconciliation’, in Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, p. 156.

4 As shown by recent studies: E. Barkan and A. Karn (eds), Taking Wrongs seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Marguerite La Caze, ‘The Asymmetry between Apology and Forgiveness’, Contemporary Political Theory, 5 (2006), pp. 447–68; Michael R. Marrus, ‘Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice’, Journal of Human Rights, 6:1 (2007), pp. 75–105; Mark Gibney, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Jean-Marc Coicaud and Niklaus Steiner (eds), The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Michael Cunningham, ‘“It Wasn't Us and We Didn't Benefit”: The Discourse of Opposition to an Apology by Britain for its Role in the Slave Trade’, The Political Quarterly 79:2 (2008), pp. 252–59; Melissa Nobles, The Politics of Official Apologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

5 For example: in sociology, Nicholas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); in philosophy: Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London and New York: Routledge, 1997); in law: D. Shelton, ‘The World of Atonement: Reparations for Historical Injustices’, Netherlands International Law Review (2003), pp. 289–325; in psychology: M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament and C. E. Thoresen (eds), Forgiveness. Theory, Research, and Practice (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 2000); A. Lazare, On Apology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and in discourse studies: R. T Lakoff, ‘Nine Ways of Looking at Apologies: The Necessity for Interdisciplinary Theory and Method in Discourse Analysis’, in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. E. Hemilton (eds), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 199–214.

6 Wendt Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Hurd presented a similar idea through three mechanisms of social control that explain why an actor might obey a rule: Ian Hurd, ‘Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics’, International Organization, 53: 2 (1999), pp. 379–408.

7 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 43.

8 Piki Ish-Shalom, ‘Theory as a Hermeneutical Mechanism: The Democratic-Peace Thesis and the Politics of Democratization’, European Journal of International Relations, 12:4 (2006), p. 567.

9 See, for example, Emanuel Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics’, European Journal of International Politics, 3:3 (1997), pp. 319–63; Jeffery Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, World Politics, 50:2 (1998), pp. 324–48; M. Finnemore and K. Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization, 52:4 (1998), pp. 887–917; Thomas Risse, ‘“Let's Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics’, International Organization, 54:1 (2000), pp. 1–39.

10 Digeser, Political Forgiveness. For a detailed explanation of the distinct characteristics of official and interpersonal apologies see: Tavuchis, Mea Culpa, pp. 100–101; Trudy Govier and W. Verwoerd, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Apology’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 33:1 (2002), p. 76. Donald. W. Jr. Shriver, ‘Is There Forgiveness in Politics? Germany, Vietnam, and America’, in Enright, R. D. and J. North (eds), Exploring Forgiveness (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. 133–4.

11 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness.

12 Janna Thompson, ‘Apology, Justice, and Respect: A Critical Defence of Political Apology’, in Mark Gibney et al. (eds), The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 31.

13 Speech act: doing something by saying something. Jenny Thomas, Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. (London and New York: Longman, 1995), pp. 49, 51; F. V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 8.

14 Lakoff, ‘Nine’, p. 201.

15 Denial of wrongdoing is included as part of the continuum. Although it is problematic to refer to a denial as a form of asking for forgiveness – the denial of a crime is certainly not a request for forgiveness – the terminology in this article requires articulation of all the reference options available to a wrongdoer in the context of a call for an apology. These options include refusing to define the wrong as such.

16 The explained phenomenon is ‘types of requests’ even though that includes utterances which are not usually considered a request for forgiveness. Some words could function not only in their lexical meaning but also as another speech act. Thus, there are several words or expressions in a language that function as a request for forgiveness in a sense of articulating a degree of responsibility regarding a terrible past. Because the most important speech act is ‘forgive us’ I decided to name the examined phenomenon: types of requests for forgiveness.

17 Thomas, Meaning in Interaction, pp. 1–2, 35, 52; Lazare, ‘On Apology’, p. 98. In this article, sorrow is perceived as a broader concept than regret since it has more semantic and pragmatic functions (Pragmatics is a linguistic field that emphasises the meaning in use or meaning in context, that is, contextual meaning, of an utterance by a speaker). One of these functions is regret. An expression of sorrow referring to the victim is stronger than an expression of regret in cases where the latter focuses on the self (the speaker) and fails to acknowledge the harm to the other. Moreover, when an expression of sorrow includes regret it is stronger than regret alone.

18 Lakoff, ‘Nine’, pp. 203–4.

19 Thomas, Meaning in Interaction, p. 52; Cohen, ‘Apology’, pp. 186, 191–3.

20 J. R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969). Whereas when an apology is issued, the party that apologises is the wrongdoer (or its representative) and the responsibility is ascribed to the apologising party. This is not necessarily so when a party says it is sorry.

21 An example of such a case is when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologised to his Turkish counterpart in 2007 for possibly violating Turkey's airspace if indeed there was a violation. For additional examples see: S. Harris, K. Grainger, and L. Mullany, ‘The Pragmatics of Political Apologies’, Discourse and Society, 17 (2006), pp. 715–37.

22 This article argues that apologies may be partial, and that similar to cases of expressions of sorrow, atonement, admission of guilt and/or responsibility (full or partial) do not necessarily follow. There are cases where the wrongdoer only apologises for the wrong's occurrence. Of course, apologetic utterances can also be followed by expressions of sorrow, responsibility, and so on. Partial apologies are discussed by Barry O'Neill, Honor, Symbols, and War (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 185. Just as we find different types of apology (different usages of the word), this research presupposes that there can also be different types of expression of sorrow (on the different functions of saying sorry see: Z. Kampf, ‘Public (non) Apologies: The Discourse of Minimizing Responsibility’, Journal of Pragmatics, (2009), doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.11.007). For additional definitions of apology see: Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1971); Kathleen Gill, ‘The Moral Functions of an Apology’, The Philosophical Forum, xxxi: 1 (2000), pp. 11–27.

23 This stands in contradiction to Tavuchis, who sees apology as a speech-act aimed at seeking forgiveness. Tavuchis, ‘Mea Culpa’, p. 27.

24 Thomas, Meaning in Interaction, p. 36.

25 Lind presents a similar continuum. Lind situates a state's view of its past along a continuum between apologetic and unapologetic: Jennifer M. Lind, ‘Apologies and Threat Reduction in Postwar Europe’, paper prepared for delivery at the Memory of Violence Workshop (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 24–25 January 2003).

26 A request for forgiveness could refer to an historical or recent wrongdoing.

27 John Rawls, in his well-known book, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) views justice as fairness.

28 Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000), p. xxx.

29 Brooks, ‘The Age of Apology’, p. 7. The demand for a request for forgiveness could be made for an historical injustice that was not considered an injustice at the time it was perpetrated (for example, slavery). The demand will be raised by the victim's descendants at a later period as the result of the institutionalisation of human rights norms.

30 This interpretation of wrongdoing resembles Kelman and Hamilton's definition of sanctioned massacre. See: H. C. Kelman, and V. L. Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 12–3.

31 Actions during war time may be interpreted as a necessity and a success by the winning side and as a wrong by the defeated side. The perception of Hiroshima is an example. See also footnote 29.

32 A detailed discussion of the inner debates surrounding a request for forgiveness and their implications is beyond the scope of this article. In her book, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), Lind discusses the internal backlash and national debate that contrition might bring (as in the Japanese, Austrian, Australian, and other cases) and raises interesting and important questions.

33 When a perpetrator perceives the harm as moderate or low, one could say that it is perceived as damage rather than a wrongdoing. Damage can be repaired, meaning what was lost can be restored, whereas wrongdoing is an unjustifiable evil. Therefore, its victims can never be fully compensated.

34 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 260.

35 Acknowledging a wrong as possessing a high degree of severity when the motive is the third degree of internalisation does not obligate using the phrase ‘forgive us’.

36 Dale. C. Copeland, ‘The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay’, International Security, 25:2 (2000), p. 193.

37 C. Reus-Smit, ‘The Constitutional Structure of international Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions’, International Organization, 51:4 (1997), p. 564.

38 Many studies deal with collective identity. For example: Joseph Lapid and Fredrich Kratochwil (eds), The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996); Katzenstein Peter (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); H. C. Kelman, ‘Reconciliation as Identity Change: A Social Psychological Perspective’, in Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation.

39 Shiping Tang, ‘Reputation, Cult of Reputation, and International Conflict’, Security Studies, 14:1 (2005), pp. 37–8.

40 Jonathan. L. Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 6.

41 Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 8.

42 Lind, ‘Apologies and Threat Reduction’.

43 Stephen. M. Walt, The Origin of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).

44 F. V. Kratochwil, ‘How Do Norms Matter?’ in M. Byers (ed.), The Role of Law in International Politics: Essays in International Relations and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 54.

45 Oded Löwenheim, ‘ “Do Ourselves Credit and Render a Lasting Service to Mankind”: British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention and the Barbary Pirates', International Security Quarterly, 47:1 (2003), pp. 23–48.

46 Jervis, The Logic of Images, p. 7.

47 Samuel. N. Eisenstadt, Power, Trust, and Meaning: Essays in Sociological Theory and Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 244.

48 Rational actors try to exhibit acceptable images. Jervis, The Logic of Images, p. 15.

49 Alexander Wendt, ‘Why a World State is Inevitable’, European Journal of International Relations, 9:4 (2003), p. 511.

50 Patrick. H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover and London: University of Vermont, 1993), p. 24.

51 Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 95.

52 Jerzy Jedlicki, ‘Heritage and Collective Responsibility’, in Ian Maclean, Alan Montefiore and Peter Winch (eds), The Political Responsibility of Intellectuals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 55–7.

53 People experience the feelings of the group they belong to. Historical divisions and accusations over the past stimulate emotion because they affect the sense of belonging to or being in solidarity with a multi-generational community (a kind of supra-family). Thus, an individual who has not participated in the harmful deed of its group could feel guilt or shame in the name of the group. Michael J. Wohl, A. Branscombe and R. Nyla, ‘Forgiveness and Collective Guilt Assignment to Historical Perpetrator Groups Depend on Level of Social Category Inclusiveness’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88:2 (2005), pp. 288–303. A debt from the past is a heavy burden on the consciences of the group members. This burden will pose a threat to the group's current collective image. Jedlicki, ‘Heritage’, pp. 74–6.

54 Differentiating between ‘true’ feelings and the instrumental use of them in the political arena could potentially be a difficult process. Indeed, actors could emphasise emotion when it would help them realise their interests. Such a display of emotions, deriving from self-interest, would clearly not be genuine. But the fact that actors use emotions in requests for forgiveness (even if the motive is instrumental) emphasises the importance of emotions in IR: the side that uses emotions believes that others perceive them as important and thus that they are influential. Neta Crawford, ‘The Passion of World Politics’, International Security, 24:4 (2000), pp. 132, 155.

55 Lily Gardner-Feldman, The Special Relationship between West Germany and Israel (Boston: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 32–3, 40.

56 Ibid., pp. 40–1.

57 Auerbach, ‘The Role of Forgiveness’, pp. 169–71.

58 Gardner-Feldman, The Special Relationship, pp. 50–1, 54, 56. By not denying Nazi atrocities, West Germany could allay Allied fears regarding the return of German militarism: Lind, Sorry States,p. 187.

59 Gardner-Feldman, The Special Relationship, pp. 50–2, 56.

60 Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 201.

61 Ibid., p. 202.

62 Ian Lustick, ‘Negotiating Truth: The Holocaust, Lehavdil, and al-Nakba’, in A. M. Lesch and I. Lustick (eds), Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians and Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), pp. 111–2; Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 282–3.

63 Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 202.

64 Ibid., p. 201.

65 Gardner-Feldman, The Special Relationship, p. 34.

66 Ibid., p. 35.

67 Lustick, ‘Negotiating Truth’, p. 113.

68 Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 203. Note that in March 1951, Israel sent a letter requesting reparations to the four powers occupying Germany. At the time, Israel did not wish to negotiate directly with the Germans. However, in light of the Powers' insistence that Israel should appeal directly to the Germans, Israeli leaders had no alternative.

69 Auerbach, ‘The Role of Forgiveness’, p. 171.

70 Gardner-Feldman, The Special Relationship, pp. 33–4.

71 Here it should be said that not all German parties supported Adenauer's declaration. It was opposed by the right-of-center parties. Lustick, ‘Negotiating Truth’, p. 111.

72 Ibid., p. 115.

73 Segev, The Seventh Million, pp. 203–05.

74 The existence of this process is evident from references to the Holocaust by Germany's current Chancellor, Merkel. In her visit to Israel in 2006, Merkel said that the German people were ‘full of shame for what happened. I am sorry that only a few righteous people were in Germany at that time’ (Ilan Marciano, ‘Merkel on Shoah: We're ashamed’, YNET, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3208083,00.html (2006).

75 For further discussion see Lind, Sorry States, pp. 179–98.