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The Perception of Political Personality and Complex Decision Making: The Psychological Profile and Leadership Style of Angela Merkel, the World’s Most Powerful Woman

Elites
Policy Analysis
Political Psychology
Christ'l De Landtsheer
Universiteit Antwerpen
Jurriaan Middelhoff
Universiteit Antwerpen
Christ'l De Landtsheer
Universiteit Antwerpen
Leadership Perception in Complex Political Decision-Making and Media Environments - sponsored by IPSA

Abstract

This paper presents a political personality and leadership style analysis of Angela Merkel, Germany’s successful Christian democratic federal chancellor and one of EU’s most powerful leaders. How does her personality and leadership style contribute to her success, what can we still expect from Merkel? Political psychology has generated several studies into the personality of political leaders (Winter, 2013; Post, 2013). We follow this research tradition as we draw a psychological profile of Angela Merkel and analyze her leadership style. The elaborated MIDC profiling method we employ (Immelman, 2004) and the leadership style analysis that is derived from it (Steinberg and Immelman, 2008) are based on the Millon’s (1990) personality approach. The case study explains how Angela Merkel’s personality and leadership characteristics, besides of her personal history, affect her performance and policies at the EU level.