Margaret Hermanns Explaining Foreign Policy Behaviour...

Margaret Hermanns Explaining Foreign Policy Behaviour Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders Margaret Hermann’s main conclusion in her 1980 article â€Å"Explaining Foreign Policy Behaviour Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders†, is that the personal characteristics and orientations of foreign affairs of political leaders are important. However, one needs to be cognizant of the fact that personal characteristics is only a first step in the process of trying to explain why governments do certain things in the foreign policy arena. Moreover, individual actions are constrained by political, social, bureaucratic, environmental and context. Hence this limits the importance†¦show more content†¦Moreover, the personal characteristics and orientations of heads of government are likely to have more impact on a government’s foreign policy under some circumstances than under others (Hermann 13). With this Hermann categorized the personality traits of leaders into two orientations. On one hand, there are the aggressive leaders who are l eaders with high levels of nationalism, a strong belief in their own ability to control events, a strong need for power, low levels of conceptual complexity, and high levels of distrust for others. Such leaders tend to develop an independent orientation to foreign affairs. On the other hand Hermann finds the conciliatory leader to be high in need for affiliation, conceptual complexity, trusting of others, low in nationalism and likely to exhibit little belief in their own ability to control the events in which they are involved (Hermann: 8). Another type of personal characteristic is that of interpersonal style, which is the characteristic way in which a policy maker deals with other policy makers. There are two interpersonal style characteristics according to Hermann, they are: 1) Paranoia – excess