A Feedback Loop: Why Some Neighbouring Countries Dislike Each Other

ABSTRACT Many adjacent states sustain a persistent, nonmilitary climate of mutual aversion—what we term neighbourly dislike. We conceptualise this as a dyad‐specific attitudinal state, distinct from episodic crises or open conflict, and theorise a bidirectional feedback loop in which top‐down elite cueing and bottom‐up emotional mobilisation coproduce and reinforce one another through collective “feeling rules.” The framework is scope conditioned: amplification occurs under territorial salience (claims framed as indivisible), cultural similarity mobilised for status competition and perceived disorder or inequity in cross‐border contact; by contrast, institutional density and routinised dispute management dampen the loop's half‐life. Methodologically, we retain a qualitative‐first posture but make claims test‐ready: a structured‐focused comparison combines event window process tracing with time‐ordering and causal‐process observations; we specify falsifiable if X → Y (within window) commitments and qualitative observables at the state, collective and individual levels. Evidence from an extended Japan–South Korea illustration and comparative vignettes across Asia, Europe and the Americas yields four recurrent patterns: (1) indivisible territorial frames amplify and prolong negativity; (2) high‐volume contact reduces dislike only when perceived as equitable and orderly; (3) dense institutions truncate negativity and stabilise “managing differences” norms; and (4) shocks generate short‐run spikes (Disputes → Dislike), whereas memory politics and elite cueing raise the domestic cost of conciliation (Dislike → Disputes). Together, these results validate our hypotheses conditional on scope and show how the loop can be traced qualitatively. The article's contribution is a neighbour‐specific attitudinal concept and a testable, bidirectional mechanism—with explicit scope conditions, qualitative operationalisation and an identification strategy—clarifying when neighbourly dislike is amplified, when it is dampened and how it can be moved toward “neighbourly like.”