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Because of his personality, had Donald Trump won the 2020 election the remarkable and unexpected united response by NATO allies to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened. Relying on leader personality research in foreign policy, we demonstrate this by using the counterfactual method of analysis. Specifying key differences between Biden's and Trump's personalities in terms of their experiences, traits and beliefs, we explicitly show that president Trump would have been very unlikely to share US intelligence, rally NATO allies in support of Ukraine or challenge Vladimir Putin. In contrast, these responses fit very well with Joe Biden's personality. We first present counterfactual analysis as a method before comparing Biden and Trump along personality characteristics known to significantly influence foreign-policy decisions. Through our case-study, we demonstrate the value of using systematic and theoretically grounded counterfactual methods for assessing the importance of individual differences between leaders and emphasizing their impact on international affairs.

Using both quantitative and qualitative research techniques, we investigate the effect of leaders' style and personality on foreign policy. The study examines six Turkish leaders, Suleyman Demirel, Bulent Ecevit, Necmettin Erbakan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Gul, and Turgut ozal, and 18 foreign policy cases to answer the following questions: do Turkish leaders differ from each other in terms of their personality traits and styles?; how did their styles affect their foreign policy choices?; and how did they react to various domestic and international constraints they encountered in cases of foreign policy? Our findings suggest that: (a) in terms of their personality traits, Turkish leaders do not collectively fit in one category; (b) there are some stark differences among our six leaders, although some leaders are more similar to each other than others in terms of their personality traits and styles; (c) these differences were observable in the foreign policy decisions they made.

This article considers how leaders' personality traits change over time. I focus on how leaders become more authoritarian, overconfident and more mistake-prone; how, when and why do leaders ‘break bad’? Temporal evolution of leaders is an important topic given the long tenure of many political leaders and the influence these leaders have over policies, including foreign policies. There is very little work on how leaders' personalities develop and how they interact with changing constraints and opportunities. This article is an agenda-setting review, designed to push foreign policy analysis in new directions. This is especially important given the resurgence in research on personalities and the renewed interest in leaders. Drawing on diverse and multi-disciplinary scholarship on the psychological effects of aging, experience, learning and power-holding, this article develops expectations about leader personality change. I discuss challenges for research in this area, focusing on how ‘bad’ can be conceptualized, and offer specific avenues for future investigations.

It is often noted that former US President Donald Trump brought unpredictability to Washington’s relationship with China. This may appear intuitively true, but in what ways was Trump actually ‘unpredictable’ towards China? We show that the most unpredictable feature of Trump’s approach was his rhetoric, strongly defined by impulsivity, emotion and provocation. This generated rhetorical unpredictability which was regularly seen in inconsistent and contradictory statements. Using political psychology and leadership personality approaches, we further demonstrate that this unpredictable rhetoric can be traced to Trump’s psychological profile. We argue that while the composition of Trump’s China rhetoric was often difficult to anticipate, as a component of his US China policy it was predictable to the extent that it was grounded in his personality. Trumpian China policy broadly followed longer-term trends, but the president’s erratic rhetoric had domestic and international consequences for the relationship. The article further contributes to work on unpredictability in international relations (IR), and on leadership personalities and foreign policy.

A psychological approach to the study of political executives examines executives as individuals and leaders, observing their subjective interpretations of their political environments and exploring how these interpretations are influenced by their personal characteristics and experiences and can shape government policy-making and executive action. The psychological approach has evolved across time and contemporary research conceptualizes leadership as interaction between what the leader is like and the nature of the context. Research in this area involves a number of methods, including psychobiographies and assessment-at-a-distance tools. Key questions in this scholarship are: (1) what should we know about political leaders to understand their behaviour? (2) what influences individuals in group contexts? and (3) in what contexts is it critical to know something about executives as individuals? Building on prior work, we suggest future research should focus on comparisons of national leaders to other executives, social media, strategic interactions, and new decision units.

Recent developments across political landscapes have contributed to a re-empowerment of the political executive. The authority of political executives was once largely autonomous and unchecked, but diminished with the development of constitutional and democratic constraints and further curtailed by more pressures on and more competitors to the state. The drivers behind the re-empowerment of political executives are also diverse, stemming from both domestic and international sources. The study of political executives has also experienced a revival; political executives are being rediscovered by students and scholars of politics. This is partly due to the re-empowerment trend, but it is also connected to developments within the research program on political executives. Although the term ‘political executives’ will be understood by scholars and non-scholars alike, there is considerable room for different notions of the exact position and functions of political executives in different types of political regimes. This introductory chapter also discusses the borderlines between the political executive and other actors within the executive: the bureaucracy and the head of state.

Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politics orientation in IRME. We argue that this scholarship ignores work in foreign policy analysis (FPA) with its psychological-oriented and agent-based dimensions and that this constitutes a missed opportunity for the study of the region. The article offers suggestions for incorporating FPA research into IRME and argues that an FPA perspective offers an alternative and complementary approach to the eclectic frameworks predominant in the scholarship on IRME.

British foreign policy stands at a turning point following the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum. Drawing on role theory, we trace the United Kingdom’s efforts to establish new foreign policy roles as it interacts with the concerned international actors. We find that the pro-Brexit desire to ‘take back control’ has not yet translated into a cogent foreign policy direction. In its efforts to avoid adopting the role of isolate, the United Kingdom has projected a disoriented foreign policy containing elements of partially incompatible roles such as great power, global trading state, leader of the Commonwealth, regional partner to the European Union (EU) and faithful ally to the United States. The international community has, through processes of socialisation and alter-casting, largely rejected these efforts. These role conflicts between the United Kingdom and international actors, as well as conflicts among its different role aspirations, have pressed UK policies towards its unwanted isolationist role, potentially shaping its long-term foreign policy orientation post-Brexit.

This paper contributes to current debates on the politicization of international politics by examining party-political contestation of peace and security missions. It is guided by two inter-related questions, (a) to what extent deployment decisions are contested amongst political parties and (b) what drives such contestation. We examine data from a new data set on parliamentary votes on deployment decisions in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom and from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. Against conventional wisdom and in an effort to address the often-overlooked role of political parties, we find that military deployments have been systematically contested amongst political parties across Europe. Further, we find that contestation is driven by the left/right axis, as opposed to newer cleavages captured here by the so-called gal/tan axis. We also find evidence that patterns of contestation depend on parties’ positions in government or opposition, a factor we relate to bureaucratic and international pressures on the parties in office, and to political opportunities for opposition parties.

This paper explores how differences in prime ministers’ leadership styles may affect parliamentary influence in security policy. Drawing on work on personality differences in political psychology, I argue leadership style is a critical but often-overlooked factor in the growing area of research on parliaments and foreign affairs. My key argument is that prime ministers vary in how they respond to and manage parliamentary involvement in security policymaking. I propose Leadership Trait Analysis to capture prime ministers’ orientations toward parliamentary involvement and advance specific expectations for how personality traits translate into PM openness to parliamentary involvement, how active they will be in managing the process,and the effectiveness of their management. I examine the plausibility of my argument with intra-country comparisons of Turkish and UK prime ministers’ orientations toward parliament in specific cases of security policy. More generally, this paper challenges more formal-institutional approaches to parliaments’ role in security policy. A focus on prime ministers has an analytic advantage of bringing together some of the various factors (such as intraparty divisions and public opinion) to explain parliamentary influence in security policy.

Extract ----- Abstract This article focuses on personalities, or individual differences, of world political leaders. After arguing that international relations theory has experienced a turn toward decision makers, I briefly overview one of the dominant approaches to the study of leader personality in foreign policy: Leadership Trait Analysis. While this research includes a number of important studies that directly challenge traditional understandings of international relations and engage with international relations theory, I argue that the subfield of personality studies in foreign policy is ripe for new theoretical and methodological developments. In the final section of this article, I outline several specific areas for future research, including a connection between foreign policy-personality approaches and the growing body of work on political leadership. Keywords: Personality, Leadership Trait Analysis, International Relation Theory, Foreign Policy ----- Bibliography: Kaarbo, Juliet: Personality and International Politics: Insights from Existing Research and Directions for the Future, ERIS, 2-3-2017, pp. 20-38. https://doi.org/10.3224/eris.v4i2-3.02

Multi-party coalitions are an increasingly common type of government across different political regimes and world regions. Since they are the locus of national foreign-policy-making, the dynamics of coalition government have significant implications for International Relations. Despite this growing significance, the foreign-policy-making of coalition governments is only partly understood. This symposium advances the study of coalition foreign policy in three closely related ways. First, it brings together in one place the state of the art in research on coalition foreign policy. Second, the symposium pushes the boundaries of our knowledge on four dimensions that are key to a comprehensive research agenda on coalition foreign policy: the foreign-policy outputs of multi-party coalitions; the process of foreign-policy-making in different types of coalitions; coalition foreign policy in the ‘Global South’; and coalition dynamics in non-democratic settings. Finally, the symposium puts forward promising avenues for further research by emphasising, for instance, the value of theory-guided comparative research that employs multi-method strategies and transcends the space of Western European parliamentary democracies.

This article examines international reactions to Scotland’s 2014 bid for independence as an instance of socialisation of an aspirant state, what we term ‘pre-socialisation’. Building on and contributing to research on state socialisation and role theory, this study proposes a nexus between roles and sovereignty. This nexus has three components: sovereignty itself is a role casted for by an actor; the sovereign role is entangled with the substantive foreign policy roles the actor might play; and the sovereign role implicates the substantive foreign policy roles of other actors. The Scottish debate on independence provides an effective laboratory to develop and explore these theoretical dimensions of pre-socialisation, revealing the contested value and meaning of sovereignty, the possible roles that an independent Scotland could play, and the projected implications for the role of the UK and other international actors. Our analysis of the Scottish case can provide insights for other cases of pre-socialisation and is more empirically significant following the UK’s 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. Postprint

Personality approaches to politics are often criticized for not examining the effect that institutional role constraints have on individual beliefs and preferences. When leaders appear to change their stance when they change roles, it is assumed that roles have a determining influence. Modern personality theory and contemporary sociological role theory, however, view the effects of roles as interacting with agents’ personalities. In this article, we investigate this question by comparing personality profiles of three Turkish leaders (Ozal, Demirel, and Gul) during their tenure as prime minister and during their subsequent time as president. For Gul, we perform an additional comparison during his time as foreign minister. The personality profiles are in the form of quantitative scores generated from machine-coded content analysis of leaders’ words using the Leadership Trait Analysis method. We hypothesize that different leaders will be more susceptible to changing role contexts, depending on core personality traits, and that different traits are more likely to change with new roles. Overall, our results suggest that leaders’ traits are fairly resistant to changes across roles and that task orientation is the most likely trait to change as leaders adapt to different role demands and expectations. This study makes a contribution to our understanding of the interaction between personality and political contexts by offering specific theoretically derived hypotheses and by empirically and statistically examining a preliminary set of expectations that could be applied more broadly to other leaders.

Over the last 25 years, there has been a noteworthy turn across major International Relations (IR) theories to include domestic politics and decision-making factors. Neoclassical realism and variants of liberalism and constructivism, for example, have incorporated state motives, perceptions, domestic political institutions, public opinion, and political culture. These theoretical developments, however, have largely ignored decades of research in foreign policy analysis (FPA) examining how domestic political and decision-making factors affect actors’ choices and policies. This continues the historical disconnect between FPA and “mainstream” IR, resulting in contemporary IR theories that are considerably underdeveloped. This article revisits the reasons for this separation and demonstrates the gaps between IR theory and FPA research. I argue that a distinct FPA perspective, one that is psychologically oriented and agent-based, can serve as a complement, a competitor, and an integrating crucible for the cross-theoretical turn toward domestic politics and decision making in IR theory.

Foreign policy change (FPC) is an important topic and has therefore attracted much scholarly attention. Yet, the literature has largely overlooked how FPC is related to international norms. This special issue seeks to add value to the field of foreign policy analysis by strengthening the empirical literature linking FPC and international norms. The papers in this issue tease out the intervening factors in facilitating the relationship between foreign policy change and the international norm. The introductory article introduces the conceptual framework which draws on both the structure–agency and “push–pull” debates to provide the cohesive analytical structure for the issue.

This article examines how decision-making dynamics in coalition cabinets influence states’ responses to international norms and foreign policy change. International normative structures may be interpreted differently by coalition partners, which share the authority for responding to external expectations and pressures. I examine two cases of internal contestation over international norms—Japanese decision-making over the ban of imported rice in response to international norms of trade liberalization (1993) and Turkish decision-making over the ban of the death penalty in response to international norms on human rights (1999–2002). In both cases, coalition partners disagreed over policy responses to the norm and I unpack the way in which the norm became entangled in internal coalition politics. The cases are examples of (eventual) policy change, which challenges a dominant image of coalitions completely deadlocked actors. The explanations of these case outcomes further our understanding of how domestic agents and structures respond to international norms and produce changes in foreign policies.

Scholarship on domestic role contestation arose out of critiques of two frequent assumptions about the impact of national role conceptions (NRCs) on a state’s foreign policy: the assumption of elite consensus and the assumption of elite–public agreement on one or several NRCs. These critiques have been occasionally articulated since the entry of role theory into international relations literature, but they were systematized during a new wave of research on roles that started in the 2010s. The domestic role contestation approach identifies the key domestic actors that hold NRCs and hypothesizes that roles connect to foreign policy behavior via the domestic political process. The degree of consensus along two dimensions—commonly defined as “horizontal” and “vertical” for the intra-elite and the elite–public nexus, respectively—can explain what roles are enacted or blocked. Empirical findings, though tentative, have corroborated the relevance of these arguments. Elites with significant institutional power—particularly in the executive–can often overcome impediments to enact preferred roles, although this ability often hinges on the lack of divisions in ruling institutions. Although less robust due to the absence of significant empirical research, role theory scholarship has also revealed that the public can, at times, constrain elites from enacting unpopular roles. The literature on domestic role contestation has a number of limitations that can inform future research directions. First, there is still no comprehensive list of domestic actors that hold (and argue about) NRCs. Such a list can outline the diversity of social environments in which countries find themselves, generate insights into how they navigate their presence in each one, and lead to more detailed accounts of how the contestation process unfolds. Second, the literature is yet to provide a framework for incorporating the involvement of relevant external actors (commonly known as “alters”) in the domestic contestation process. The impediments here are partly practical—an eye to detailed domestic processes and external involvement can create an unwieldy narrative—but the effort to conceptualize this dimension is important in light of role theory’s major focus on the interaction between ego and alter. Third, role contestation scholarship needs stronger and clearer connections to traditional and critical international relations theories, as well as the study of contentious politics. Finally, methodological rigor and diversity should be a priority for the future development of this strand of role theory.

This investigation was financially supported by the University of Kansas General Research Fund. Why do multiparty cabinets in parliamentary democracies produce more extreme foreign policies than single-party cabinets? Our paper argues that particular institutional and psychological dynamics explain this difference. We test this argument using a global events data set incorporating foreign policy behaviors of numerous multiparty and single-party governments. We find that more parties and weak parliaments promote extremity in coalitions, but parliamentary strength has the opposite effect for single-party governments. This study challenges existing expectations about the impact of democratic institutions on foreign policy. Postprint

Despite renewed interest in role theory and its promise to relate to agent–structure relationships, research in this area has underdeveloped notions of ‘agency’ and an incomplete understanding of the interaction between ‘agency’ and ‘structure’. This problem can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the theory frequently overlooks the centrality of domestic political agents in the process of role conflict. An analysis of Danish decision-making over the country’s involvement in Iraq and of Dutch decision-making over its involvement in Afghanistan illustrates the theoretical and empirical advantages of examining role conflicts with a focus on domestic politics. We conclude that studying role conflict as embedded in domestic political processes is important in the development of role theory in international relations research.

This analysis investigates the role of historical analogies in the influence that parliaments have in foreign policy. Our empirical focus is the UK House of Parliament’s unusual opposition to the Prime Minister on UK involvement in Syria in2013. The Parliament’s vote challenges many conventional expectations about the role of parliament in security affairs. Important in this vote were lessons learned and strategically used from UK participation in the intervention of Iraq in 2003. We develop this argument theoretically based on research on historical analogies, arguing that parliaments, ‘learn’ (primarily negative) lessons about past foreign policy events which guide parliamentary preferences and procedures and can enhance parliaments’ role in subsequent foreign policy. We contribute to research on analogies by extending the logic to lessons on process. This use of precedents can offer more structurally-oriented perspectives mechanisms that translate critical junctures into reforms in procedures and policy making practices.

The move from territorial defence to ‘wars of choice’ has influenced the domestic politics of military interventions. This paper examines the extent to which both the substance and the procedure of military interventions are contested among political parties. Regarding the substance, our analysis of Chapel Hill Expert Survey data demonstrates that across European states political parties on the right are more supportive of military missions than those on the left. On the decision-making procedures, our case studies of Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom show that political parties on the left tend to favour strong parliamentary control whereas those on the right tend to prefer an unconstrained executive, although with differences across countries. These findings challenge the view that ‘politics stops at the water’s edge’ and contribute to a better understanding of how political parties and parliaments influence military interventions.

Cantir, Cristian and Juliet Kaarbo. (2011) Contested Roles and Domestic Politics: Reflections on Role Theory in Foreign Policy Analysis and IR Theory. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00156.x Many of the strengths of research in Foreign Policy Analysis have been overlooked by role theorists. Role theorists often assume that roles are shared across elites and masses, that elites can manipulate masses, or that public opinion on roles constrains elites. Role theorists also tend to assume that there is a consensus among elites over national roles. Research in Foreign Policy Analysis, on the other hand, demonstrates that foreign policy may be contested both vertically (between elites and masses) and horizontally (among elites) and that these conflicts affect foreign policy decision making and foreign policy behavior. We propose that (i) contested roles mean that roles and foreign policy are not as stable as is often implied; (ii) research on contested roles offers Foreign Policy Analysis a less preference-oriented way of conceptualizing policy disagreements and decision making; and (iii) structures reveal themselves as important when agents use them in domestic discourse over contested roles, but the impact of international norm and role structures is not automatic, as it is shaped by the agents (and domestic structures) in the domestic political process. We suggest that research on the strategic use of roles could bring together these benefits of examining contested roles.

This essay reviews the intersection between institutional and psychological conditions that occurs in multiparty coalition cabinets and the effects on foreign policy and decision making. Parallel research in social psychology and foreign policy can provide clues to the underlying mechanisms linking institutional context to policymaking and policy choices. The psychological processes involved in group polarization, persuasion, and other influence strategies as well as psychological factors affecting the quality of decision making are important in coalition cabinets and are reinforced by the particular institutional dynamics of multiparty governance. Indeed, this essay proposes that future research focus on contingency factors in the policymaking process, given the competing views on the effects of multiple advocacy on the quality of decision making and on the types of foreign policies associated with multiparty cabinets. More broadly, this essay supports the view that a highly structural understanding of the effects of institutions on politics and policies is incomplete and that research on the interplay among structures and human agents is critical.