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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Evans, Graham and Jeffrey Newham. The Penguin Dictionary of
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Hermann, Margaret. Explaining Foreign Policy Behaviour Using the
Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders, International Studies
Quarterly 24 (1) March, 1980:7-46.
Mingst, Karen. Essentials of International Relations. 3rd ed. New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004.
Neack, Laura. The New Foreign Policy: U.S. and Comparative Foreign
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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