Human Development and Political Leadership: The Influence of Personal History on Foreign Policy Decision.

Academics, policy makers, and the electorate all take as given that the life experiences of presidents, prime ministers, and other executives profoundly affect the way they will behave once in office. In the last presidential election, for example, we compared John McCain's background as a fighter pilot and POW in the Vietnam War to Barack Obama's experiences as a community organizer and law school professor to try to anticipate how those experiences would shape their behavior once in office. Somewhat surprisingly, however, most international conflict research focuses primarily on system and state-level variables, not necessarily because those are the variables with the largest explanatory power, but because those are the variables for which data currently exists. Our research challenges the assumptions of traditional international relations research by turning the analytic focus to leaders and their personal developmental backgrounds. Institutions do not make decisions, people do. Leaders make their choices within a context of predictable and systematic motivations, incentives, goals, and desires, both personal and professional. A growing literature within comparative politics and international relations spotlights the attributes of national leaders and the way variations in leadership style and ability may affect international politics. By focusing on leaders, our research program represents a powerful challenge to the neo-realist, or domestic institutional paradigms of international politics.We argue that the personal characteristics of leaders vary in decisive ways precisely because of background, preparatory, and psychological differences between them. In particular, we suggest that individual differences in background affect relative risk taking and competence in situations involving interstate conflict. We investigate the factors that best predict leaders willingness to entertain high levels of policy risk, and what factors best predict competence and keen judgment in the context of interstate crises. We test these propositions by developing and employing a unique data set encompassing factors such as education, family structure, age, and the military and occupational background of leaders across the globe from 1879-2004. We examine the influence of these forces on the initiation and escalation of interstate disputes and the outcomes and costs of associated wars. Systematically testing what are called "first image" variables within international relations scholarship, will serve an important role within the literatures on international relations literature and foreign policy. Our research has the potential to contribute to growing debates across a number of academic disciplines, including political science, psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and others. Our data will serve as a locus for future research by scholars interested in how the background experiences of leaders shape their behavior in a number of areas. While we are primarily concerned with the initiation and escalation of armed conflicts, other scholars will be able to use our research to study how leader backgrounds influence things like economic and social policy choices, as well as a host of other issues.

Academics, policy makers, and the electorate all take as given that the life experiences of presidents, prime ministers, and other executives profoundly affect the way they will behave once in office. In the last presidential election, for example, we compared John McCain's background as a fighter pilot and POW in the Vietnam War to Barack Obama's experiences as a community organizer and law school professor to try to anticipate how those experiences would shape their behavior once in office. Somewhat surprisingly, however, most international conflict research focuses primarily on system and state-level variables, not necessarily because those are the variables with the largest explanatory power, but because those are the variables for which data currently exists. Our research challenges the assumptions of traditional international relations research by turning the analytic focus to leaders and their personal developmental backgrounds. Institutions do not make decisions, people do. Leaders make their choices within a context of predictable and systematic motivations, incentives, goals, and desires, both personal and professional. A growing literature within comparative politics and international relations spotlights the attributes of national leaders and the way variations in leadership style and ability may affect international politics. By focusing on leaders, our research program represents a powerful challenge to the neo-realist, or domestic institutional paradigms of international politics.We argue that the personal characteristics of leaders vary in decisive ways precisely because of background, preparatory, and psychological differences between them. In particular, we suggest that individual differences in background affect relative risk taking and competence in situations involving interstate conflict. We investigate the factors that best predict leaders willingness to entertain high levels of policy risk, and what factors best predict competence and keen judgment in the context of interstate crises. We test these propositions by developing and employing a unique data set encompassing factors such as education, family structure, age, and the military and occupational background of leaders across the globe from 1879-2004. We examine the influence of these forces on the initiation and escalation of interstate disputes and the outcomes and costs of associated wars. Systematically testing what are called "first image" variables within international relations scholarship, will serve an important role within the literatures on international relations literature and foreign policy. Our research has the potential to contribute to growing debates across a number of academic disciplines, including political science, psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and others. Our data will serve as a locus for future research by scholars interested in how the background experiences of leaders shape their behavior in a number of areas. While we are primarily concerned with the initiation and escalation of armed conflicts, other scholars will be able to use our research to study how leader backgrounds influence things like economic and social policy choices, as well as a host of other issues.