Making Foreign Policy. The Role of Political Leaders

Abstract

The literature on the relationship between regime types and war has increasingly recognized the importance of individual leaders when explaining foreign policy outcomes. This panel contributes to this growing literature and features work that studies the role of foreign policy leaders. Broadly speaking, this panel focuses on examine the how the characteristics and circumstances of leaders and elites shape foreign policy. By placing the focus squarely on the decision-makers – leaders and cabinet members – papers in the panel explore understudied explanatory mechanisms for how and why states decide to use force or reach other foreign policy decisions. Most of the previous research on foreign policy leaders has focused on the individuals who are “the pinnacle of power”, such as prime ministers and presidents. However, these individuals are not the only important politicians in the foreign policy-making process. To fully understand the impact of leaders on foreign policy outcomes, we also need to investigate the role of subordinates of presidents and prime ministers, which several papers of this panel does, by investigating the background, beliefs and survival of foreign ministers or secretaries of state. The first paper,”Same same but different? Examining the operational codes of US Secretaries of State”, by Roxanna Sjöstedt and Max Eriksson, focuses on investigating the operational codes of Secretaries of State in the US context, also relating these operational codes to the background of the Secretaries. The second paper, “Comparing Machine Learning Methods for Survival Analysis: An Application to Tenure at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, by Alejandro Quiroz Flores, focuses on predicting the survival of foreign ministers using a new methodological approach based on machine learning. The third paper, by Alexander von Hagen-Jamar shows that foreign ministers with diplomatic backgrounds are more effective at deescalating crises, preventing widespread violence. The fourth and final paper of the panel, by Niklas Karlén, focuses on when leaders change their support commitments, focusing on US support to rebels in Syria and Nicaragua.