Hcss report

aggressive
, in which an actor infringes upon the rights of others; 
passive
, in 
which a person essentially allows others to violate his/her own rights; 
assertive
, in 
which an actor respects both his/her own rights and those of others; and also 
passive-
aggressive
, in which someone is essentially being aggressive but in a passive or 
indirect way (e.g., someone may be angry but not act in an overtly aggressive way by 
yelling or hitting, but still signaling displeasure by sulking or slamming a door). We take 
away two important points from this: 1) that there is both a 
communicative 
(rhetorical)
side to assertiveness and an 
attitudinal (factual)
side; and 2) that 
assertiveness is not the same as aggressiveness, and that it can have both a positive 
and a negative association (see Figure 2.7).
FIGURE 2.7: DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ASSERTIVE, PASSIVE AND AGGRESSIVE
In International Relations
In international relations, the concept has not been the subject of much in-depth 
scholarly inquiry, although it has been used discursively – and much more so in the 
‘applied’ than in the theoretical literature. And in the more applied policy debates it 
can be found back in both a 
positive
sense of constructive activism (e.g., “Germany is 
not pulling its weight in international affairs and should become more assertive”) and 
in a 
negative 
sense (“China is behaving increasingly assertively”). The term does 
appear to be used more frequently in the negative sense.
The one explicit attempt at providing a formal definition that we were able to identify 
in the literature was by Harvard China-scholar Alastair Iain Johnston, who described 
assertiveness as a “form of assertive diplomacy that explicitly threatens to impose 
costs on another actor that are clearly higher than before” e.g., “if you sell weapons 
to Taiwan, we will harm you in much more costly ways than before”; or “if you let the 
Dalai Lama visit, the costs for you will be substantially greater than before”.
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Whereas 
we instinctively agree with the main elements of this definition (i.e., that it deals with 
Passive
You step on me
Assertive
Both are protected
Aggressive
I step on you

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