https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6108-8240
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ABSTRACT
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, Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, Necmettin Erbakan, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Abdullah Gül, and Turgut Özal, 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.
Acknowledgements
We also thank Social Science Automation for making ProfilerPlus available. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Studies Association Convention in 2015; we would like to thank our discussant Stephen B. Dyson for his helpful comments. Finally, we extend our thanks to two anonymous reviewers and the journal’s editorial team for their constructive feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Note on contributors
Esra Çuhadar is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University in Turkey and a Senior Fellow at the Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative at the Graduate Institue, Geneva. Most recently, she was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in 2018. Dr. Cuhadar’s research interests include political leadership, inclusive peace processes, mediation, track two diplomacy and role of civil society in peacebuilding, and negotiation pedagogy among others. Her research has been published in top academic journals such as Political Psychology, Journal of Peace Research, Computers in Human Behavior, Negotiation and Conflict Management, Mediterranean Politics, International Politics, and Turkish Studies. Dr. Cuhadar received one of the Young Scientist awards given by the Science Academy in Turkey in addition to research grants from USIP, Sabanci University, TUBITAK, and German Marshall Fund.
Juliet Kaarbo is Professor of International Relations with a Chair in Foreign Policy at the University of Edinburgh. She is founding co-director of Edinburgh’s Centre for Security Research. Her research focuses on leader personality and decision making, group dynamics, foreign policy analysis and theory, parliaments and parties, and national roles and has appeared in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Political Psychology, West European Politics, Cooperation and Conflict, and Foreign Policy Analysis. In 2012, Professor Kaarbo published Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making; and, in 2016 she co-edited Domestic Role Contestation, Foreign Policy, and International Relations. She was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis by the International Studies Association.
Barış Kesgin is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Coordinator for the International and Global Studies Program at Elon University. His research focuses on the role of leaders’ personalities on Israeli and Turkish foreign policy. His publications have appeared in Cooperation and Conflict, International Area Studies Review, International Studies Perspectives, Journal of International Relations and Development, and Political Psychology.
Binnur Ozkececi-Taner is Professor of Political Science in Hamline University's College of Liberal Arts. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on foreign policy analysis and Turkish foreign policy. Her publications have appeared in Foreign Policy Analysis, International Studies Review, Mediterranean Politics, Political Psychology, and Turkish Studies. She holds a BA in International Relations from the Middle East Technical University (Ankara), an MA in Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, and a PhD in Political Science from Syracuse University.
Notes
1 Quoted in Winter, “Personality,” 108. See also Kesgin, “Tanus Ciller’s Leadership Traits,” 29.
2 See, among many, Kaarbo and Hermann, “Leadership Styles,” and Schafer and Walker, Beliefs and Leadership.
3 Kaarbo and Hermann, “Leadership Styles,” 245.
4 Heper and Sayari, Political Leaders, vii.
5 Dessler, “What is at Stake,” 443.
6 Giddens, The Constitution of Society.
7 See, for example, Gilpin, War and Change; Keohane, “International Institutions”; Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Krasner, International Regimes; and Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence.
8 Guner and Koc, “Leverages and Constraints.”
9 Kirisci and Kaptanoglu, “The Politics of Trade.”
10 Tezcur and Grigorescu, “Activism.”
11 See, for example, Wendt, Social Theory; Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics”; and Bozdaglioglu, Turkish Foreign Policy.
12 See, for example, Katzenstein, The Culture; Berger, Cultures of Antimitiliarism; and Hopf, Social Construction.
13 Yanik, “Constructing Turkish “Exceptionalism.”
14 Bilgin, “Only Strong.”
15 See Owen, “How Liberalism.”
16 See Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace; Lektzian and Souva, “A Comparative Theory Test”; Debs and Goemans, “Regime Type”; and Valentino, Huth, and Croco, “Bear Any Burden.”
17 See Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic; Lai and Slater, “Institutions”; Lobell, Ripsman, and Taliaferro, Neoclassical Realism; and Dueck, “Neoclassical Realism.”
18 See Hagan et al., “Foreign Policy”; Palmer, London, and Regan, “What’s Stopping You”; Ozkececi-Taner, The Role of Ideas, and “The Role of Institutionalized Ideas”; and Kaarbo, Coalition Politics, and “Power and Influence.”
19 Hermann and Hermann. “Who Makes Foreign Policy,” and Hagan et al., “Foreign Policy.”
20 Keller, “Constraint Respecters,” 838.
21 Keller, “Constraint Respecters,” 836-837, italics in original.
22 For arguments on the importance of personalities in Middle East foreign policy specifically, see Darwich and Kaarbo, “IR.”
23 Walker, Role Theory, 13.
24 Dessler, “What is at Stake”, 471
25 The timeframe we have for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s profile is between 2002 and 2013. This timeframe is important to understand the discussions then about the transitioning of Turkish political system from a parliamentary system to a presidential system.
26 Çuhadar et al., “Examining Leaders’ Orientations.”
27 See Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Style,” “Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior,” Handbook, “Leaders,” and “Personality.”
28 Walker, “Assessing Psychological Characteristics,” and Schafer, “At-a-distance analysis.”
29 Hermann, “Leaders,” and “Personality”; Kesgin, “Uncharacteristic”; Kille and Scully, “Executive Heads”; Mastors, “Gerry Adams”; Preston, The President; Taysir and Preston, “The Personality”; van Esch and Swinkels, “How Europe’s Political Leaders”; and Brummer, “Fiasco.”
30 Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Style.”
31 Walker, “Assessing Psychological Characteristics,” and Schafer, “At-a-distance analysis.”
32 Levine and Young, “Leadership Trait Analysis.” ProfilerPlus is developed by Social Science Automation. The company is headed by Michael Young. Margaret Hermann was a co-founder in 1997. In ProfilerPlus, Young and colleagues converted hand-coding practices in leadership assessment to automated coding.
33 Hermann (“Assessing Leadership Style”) provides a detailed description of how scores are calculated on each personality trait.
34 See Hermann, Handbook, and “Leaders,” as well as Winter, “Measuring Personality.”
35 Hermann, “Personality,” and “Assessing Leadership Style.”
36 Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Style,” 193.
37 Preston, The President, 17. For a recent discussion and exploration of validity, see Dyson and Raleigh, “Public and Private Beliefs,” and Kesgin “Turkey’s Erdoğan.”
38 Detailed analyses of these case studies are available upon request from the authors.
39 Harnisch, “Conceptualizing the Minefield”; Malici, Reagan and Gorbachev”; and Malici and Malici, “The Operational Codes.
40 Hermann, “Leaders’ Foreign Policy Role Orientations,” and Hermann and Hermann, “Who Makes.”
41 Dille and Young, “The Conceptual Complexity,” 594.
42 Çuhadar et al., “Personality or Role.”
43 Kaarbo and Hermann, “Leadership Styles.”
44 Hermann, “Assessing the Personalities.”
45 See, for example, Kesgin, “Turkey’s Erdoğan.”