Margaret Hermann's Explaining Foreign Policy Behaviour Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders
Margaret Hermann’s main conclusion in her 1980 article “Explaining
Foreign Policy Behaviour Using the Personal Characteristics of
Political Leaders”, is that the personal characteristics and
orientations of foreign affairs of political leaders are important.
However, one needs to be cognizant of the fact that personal
characteristics is only a first step in the process of trying to
explain why governments do certain things in the foreign policy arena.
Moreover, individual actions are constrained by political, social,
bureaucratic, environmental and context. Hence this limits the
importance of individuals’ personal characteristic. What is important
is the situation in which individual characteristics are important.
In order to completely understand decision makers we must analyze and
appreciate what drives a person, the innate characteristics that can
consist of an individual belief system, motives, decision and
interpersonal style, ethnic background, and genetic makeup.
Fundamentally, a person’s cognition and operational codes, which
basically comprise the personal characteristics that determine their
behaviour, how the individual perceives, interprets, learns as well as
past experiences influencing their behaviour, affects their decisions.
Knowing how a leader thinks and what he/she believes can be classified
as that leaders operational code. Alexander George defines the
operational code as a political leader’s beliefs about the nature of
politics and political conflict, his views regarding the extent to
which historical d...
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step in the process of trying to explain why governments do certain
things in the foreign policy arena.
Bibliography
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Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders, International Studies
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It is the intention of this essay to explain the United States foreign policy behind specific doctrines. In order to realize current objectives, this paper will proceed as follows: Part 1 will define the Monroe Doctrine, Sections 2, 3, 4, and 5 will concurrently explicate the Roosevelt Corollary, Good Neighbor Policy, and the Nixon Doctrine, discuss how each policy resulted in U.S. involvement in Latin American countries, describe how it was justified by the U.S. government, respectively, and finally, will bring this paper to a summation and conclusion.
How an individual frames oneself determines how the audience will view one. During the 2016 presidential debates, speeches, and other media airings of conservative presidential candidates, people who run for president get the chance to frame themselves in the way they want and the audience then unconsciously places its own narratives on them. Donald Trump is one of the Republican presidential candidates running in the election of 2016 and he is one to use framing as a strategy to gain recognition among the other presidential candidates. How does Trump frame himself in order to gain so much popularity? George Lakoff, the author of the book titled The Political Mind, is a cognitive scientist who talks about how issues are framed, and how that
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Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand [cited 12 September 2011]. Available from: http://www.questiaschool.com>. US Department of State.
Mingst, K. (2011). Essentials of international relations. (5th ed., p. 70-1). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company
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Ashley, Richard K. “Political Realism and the Human Interests”, International Studies Quarterly, No. 25, 1981, pp. 204-36
Weber, Smith, Allan, Collins, Morgan and Entshami.2002. Foreign Policy in a transformed world. United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.
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