Personality and Foreign Policy: Tony Blair's Iraq Decisions

Abstract

The British choice in Iraq has been characterized as ''Tony Blair's War,'' with many believing that the personality and leadership style of the prime minister played a crucial part in determining British participation. Is this the case? To investigate, I employ at-a-distance measures to recover Blair's personality from his responses to foreign policy questions in the House of Commons. I find that he has a high belief in his ability to control events, a low conceptual complexity, and a high need for power. Using newly available evidence on British decision making, I show how Blair's personality and leadership style did indeed shape both the process and outcome of British foreign policy toward Iraq. The research reemphasizes the importance of individual level factors in theories of foreign policy, as well as offering a comprehensive explanation of a critical episode.

Leadership Traits and Ghana’s Foreign Policy: The Case of Jerry Rawlings’ Foreign Economic Policy of the 1980s

“…For Hermann (1999), knowledge about the degree to which leaders are confident in their abilities to exercise power over what occurs in their environment is critical in determining whether they will challenge or respect their constraints. Kesgin (2012) and Dyson (2006) have also endorsed Hermann's (1999) idea that leaders who display the traits of self-confidence, belief in their ability to control events and the need for power and influence in challenging their constraints tend to score high on how they react to their environmental constraints. The opposite is true for leaders who respect or consent to their constraints.…”

“…The question that emerges is this: How can one connect these traits to Rawlings' foreign economic policy decision to shift from the East to the West? Dyson (2006) offers some useful explanations. For Dyson (2006, p. 294), the belief in a leader's ability to control events can lead to a 'more proactive policy orientation, and a perception that the barriers to successful action are surmountable'.…”

“…The field, as Hermann et al (2001) have observed, is a response to the debate on whether leaders are born with certain leadership traits or they rise to the challenges of their times. At the heart of these studies (Hermann, 1980;Birt, 1993;Kaarbo, 1997;Dyson, 2006;Gorener and Ucal, 2011;Kesgin, 2012) is the theory of LTA. The LTA is a framework that measures how leadership and personality traits of political leaders shape their foreign policy decisionmaking.…”

“…These theoretical ideas can be applicable to Rawlings, who has exhibited evidence of these traits, as earlier discussed. One could therefore argue, based on the application of Dyson's (2006) conceptual ideas, that Rawlings became proactive in his policy calculus, especially when he noticed that the economic assistance he needed from the East would not materialise.…”

“…The LTA is a framework that measures how leadership and personality traits of political leaders shape their foreign policy decisionmaking. The theory, which was pioneered by Hermann (1980Hermann ( , 1999 and later advanced by scholars such as Dyson (2006), Kaarbo (1997) and Kesgin (2012), rests on the assumption that political leaders matter in foreign policy-making. For Hermann (1999, p. 1), the personal characteristics of leaders matter because of the recognition that their 'preferences, the things they believe in and work, and the ways they go about making decisions can influence our lives'.…”