Margaret G. Hermann

The personalities of Bush and Gorbatchev measured at a distance: procedures, portraits and policy

We assessed the personalities of George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev at a distance, using methods and materials developed by each of the authors for measuring motives, cognitions, and traits. We discuss methodological and procedural issues. Results are presented in terms of quantitative scores, expressed in comparison with other political leaders. The integrated personality portraits developedfor each leader are discussed in relation to popular and media impressions of that leader. We conclude with some predictions and suggestions about policy implications, including ways of facilitating direct negotiations between Bush and Gorbachev.

An attempt to simulate the outbreak of world war I

Political games and simulations are models or representations of particular political systems and their associated processes. They are techniques for reproducing in a simplified form selected aspects of one system, A , in some independent system, A′ . Games and simulations have a dynamic quality produced by the complex interaction of properties in the model. This feature enables them to generate states of the system that differ radically from those present originally. The kinds of transformations that may occur between the initial and final states of a simulation or game are difficult to represent by other means, despite a diversity in modeling procedures ranging from verbal descriptions to differential equations. Because of their apparent applicability to many problems of politics, as well as their novelty, games and simulations have been developed in a variety of areas in political science. They have been used in research, instruction, and policy formation. Although the application of these techniques has been increasing, systematic evaluation of their performance is only now beginning. This essay reports one type of evaluation. The researchers sought to structure a simulation of international politics so it would reproduce features of the political crisis that preceded the beginning of the First World War. Two separate trials or runs of the simulation were performed as a pilot project. With two runs, the data are sufficient only to illustrate what might be done in an expanded research program.

Leadership styles of prime ministers: How individual differences affect the foreign policymaking process

Abstract Much of the literature linking leadership style to foreign policy decision making has focused on American presidents. This article explores with what success such literature can be generalized to the study of prime ministers in parliamentary systems. It posits a method for assessing the leadership style of prime ministers and for examining if their behavior in the foreign policymaking process reflects their style. Data from a pilot study of four prime ministers are reported.

Assessing the Personalities of Soviet Politburo Members

Reporting on a content analysis of speeches and interviews of Soviet Politburo members, this study provides an initial assessment of the personal characteristics of these political leaders. The characteristics examined are ethnocentrism, belief in ones own ability to control events, need for power, need for affiliation, conceptual complexity, self-confidence, distrust of others, and task orientation. In addition to describing Politburo members and exploring the impact of situational variables on their personal characteristics, interrelations are reported between these characteristics and background data as well as position on detente.

Ballots, a Barrier against the Use of Bullets and Bombs Democratization and Military Intervention

Numerous empirical investigations have demonstrated that democracies are prone to cooperate with one another and that they almost never wage war against one another. Such research has inspired hope that so-called democratic peace might be achieved in the post-cold-war era, especially in light of the rapid diffusion of democracy worldwide since the mid-1970s. This article collates two streams of previously unexamined evidence that speak to the promise of this hope. Looking cross-nationally at the incidence of overt military intervention between 1975 and 1991, the study discovers that democracies were unlikely to be the targets of this form of coercive diplomacy. Both democracies and nondemocracies intervened in the internal affairs of democracies less than would be expected by chance. After exploring several contending explanations for this finding, this article advances some hypotheses about why being a democracy may shelter such states from foreign attack and considers the contribution democratization can make to national security.

Negotiation in leader and delegate groups

personality (e.g., Deutsch, 1960; Lutzker, 1960), prior experience (e.g., Bass, 1966; Krauss and Deutsch, 1966), expectations (e.g., Siegel and Fouraker, 1960), strategies (e.g., Bartos, 1965; Blake and Mouton, 1961), and attitudes toward the reference group (e.g., Campbell, 1960; McGrath, 1966) than with leader-delegate differences in role. When examined, the emphasis has been on roles emerging in the negotiation process (McGrath and Julian, 1962, 1963; Vidmar and McGrath, 1965). Negotiators frequently differ in how

Teaching with Inter-Nation Simulation and Case Studies

“Simulation” and “case studies” are supplementary teaching aids available for university courses in political science and international relations. The newer technique, simulation, has been used at several universities to augment instruction in international relations, foreign policy making, national security policy, urban politics, and political parties and elections. In fields other than political science, similar techniques abound. The number of business games or simulations exceeds 100, and less numerous games exist for educational administration, legislatures, career choices, and diplomacy, to name a few. Case studies also supplement a wide range of politics courses, including introduction to American government, public administration, party organization, legislative processes, and public law. The case method is the hallmark of schools of law and schools of business, and it is now emulated in teaching the history of science and in training in research methodology in sociology. Different types of simulations and cases and their uses have been described and discussed elsewhere. Evaluation of games and cases as supplementary instructional aids has almost invariably been impressionistic. The consumers of these teaching methods have reported their personal experiences with them and have advanced claims for and criticisms of them, but they have undertaken little empirical research to determine whether the claims for particular simulations or cases are valid or to compare the actual effects of alternative methods. Moreover, the Ford Foundation expended thousands of dollars to induce business schools to try business games, but their investment in evaluating the success or failure of this innovation extended to convening a conference to discuss the subject, not to carrying out research on it.

The U.S. use of military intervention to promote democracy: Evaluating the record

Given the foreign policy priority that the Clinton administration has placed on the “enlargement” of the democratic community, a relevant question is whether military intervention is an effective instrument for achieving such a purpose. This research explores the impact of American interventions since 1945 on the political systems of the targets. What happens when U.S. presidents pursue “pro‐liberalization policies” through military interventions? Merging several inventories of interventionary actions, we examine what sorts of interventions are associated with liberal changes in the nature of the targets’ political regimes.

Putting Military Intervention into the Democratic Peace A Research Note

Although many empirical investigations have demonstrated that democracies almost never wage war against one another, there remains some doubt whether this empirical law applies to other kinds of armed conflict. The present research note combines two streams of evidence that speak to this question. Looking cross-nationally at the incidence of overt military intervention between 1974 and 1991, an inventory of 225 discrete cases is produced with the distributions disaggregated by regime type. Comparing initiators and targets dyadically, the study uncovers 51 instances in which democracies have used this form of coercive diplomacy to influence the policies and practices within other democratic states. Presenting the trends exhibited in these indicators and juxtaposing them with an alternative measure of intervention, this research communication advances some observations about the obstacles to convergence among research findings in the study of the democratic peace, and some hypotheses about the kinds of research questions that warrant investigation with the inventory of cases generated.

People and Processes in Foreign Policymaking: Insights from Comparative Case Studies

The previous articles in this special issue have elaborated a framework for classifying the people involved in foreign policymaking into decision units. Of particular interest has been examining the circumstances under which one type of decision unit takes responsibility for making the choice regarding how to deal with a foreign policy problem and the effect of the nature of that decision unit on the substance of the action selected. The present article is intended to report the results of the application of the framework to sixty-five case studies involving foreign policy issues facing thirty-one countries from all regions of the world. A list of the cases can be found in the appendix.