Individuals Matter: The Impact of Beliefs and Leadership Styles on German Foreign Policy

无论是国内还是国际上关于德国外交政策的学术研究都没有太多地关注个别决策者。相反，现有的研究主要从制度、自由或建构主义的角度进行辩论，并将结构因素作为解释变量。考虑到德国总理的卓越地位，尤其是在外交政策领域，这一点更加令人惊讶，阿登纳的西方一体化政策、勃兰特的东方政治以及默克尔的欧元救援政策都是例证。在对德国外交政策进行的理论驱动的分析中，忽视个别决策者的主要原因之一是缺乏关键的方法工具。因此，该项目的重点是：(A)将国际上建立的编码方案翻译成德语，以便自动定量识别决策者的领导风格和政治信仰；(B)将这些编码方案经验地应用于德国外交政策。该项目的主要理论基础是在对德国外交政策的实证研究和外交政策分析领域中两种最成熟的方法之间建立联系。这些方法是领导特质方法(LT)和操作代码方法(OC)，前者用于调查领导风格，后者用于调查决策者的政治信念。这两种方法都允许通过自动化程序对各自的特征进行系统的、定量的识别。后者基于内容分析程序Profiler Plus。然而，到目前为止，这个程序只能对英语文本进行编码。因此，这项研究项目在方法论方面的附加值来自于将嵌入Profiler Plus的编码方案翻译成德语。附加的经验价值在于，通过使用成熟的分析方法得出更严格、系统和基于计算机的见解，来补充德国外交政策决策者现有的、主要是描述性的领导风格和政治信念(该项目涵盖1949年以来的所有德国总理和外交部长)。在两个研究设计的框架内，该项目将导致对领导风格和政治信念对德国外交政策的影响进行有效的比较洞察。第一个研究设计确立了领导风格和政治信念相对于结构变量的自主性。第二个设计探讨了领导风格和政治信念对外交政策领域中两个不同问题领域(欧洲政策、德国武装部队的外交部署)的解释力。为了增加这些调查结果的稳健性，该项目系统地考虑了可能的替代解释，如缔约方或社会规范。

Neither national nor international scholarship on German foreign policy devotes much attention to individual decision-makers. Rather, existing studies argue predominantly from institutional, liberal, or constructivist perspectives and focus on structural factors as explanatory variables. This is all the more surprising given the pre-eminent position of the German chancellor not least in the realm of foreign policy, as exemplified in Adenauer's policy of Western integration, Brandt's Ostpolitik, and Merkel's Euro rescue policy. One of the main reasons for this neglect of individual decision-makers in theory-driven analyses of German foreign policy is the unavailability of crucial methodological tools. Therefore, this project focuses on (a) the translation into German of internationally established coding schemes for the automated quantitative identification of leadership styles and political beliefs of decision-makers and (b) the empirical application of those coding schemes to German foreign policy. The main rationale of the project is to establish a link between empirical research on German foreign policy and two of the best-established approaches in the field of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). These approaches are the leadership trait approach (LT), which is used to investigate leadership styles, and the operational code approach (OC), which probes into the political beliefs of decision-makers. Both approaches allow a systematic, quantitative identification of the respective characteristics through an automated procedure. The latter is based on the content analysis programme Profiler Plus. However, this programme can so far only code English language texts. Thus, the added value of this research project in methodological terms comes from the translation into German of the coding schemes embedded into Profiler Plus. The added empirical value is in complementing the existing, predominantly descriptive accounts of leadership styles and political beliefs of German foreign policy decision-makers (the project covers all German chancellors and foreign ministers since 1949) with more rigorous, systematic, and computer-based insights that are derived by using well-established analytical approaches. Within the framework of two research designs, the project will lead to valid comparative insights on the impact of leadership styles and political beliefs on German foreign policy. The first research design establishes the autonomy of leadership styles and political beliefs vis-à-vis structural variables. The second design explores the explanatory power of leadership styles and political beliefs for two distinct issue areas within the realm of foreign policy (European policy, foreign deployments of the German armed forces). In order to increase the robustness of these findings, the project systematically takes into account possible alternative explanations such as parties or societal norms.