Why do some leaders and segments of the public display remarkable persistence in confrontations in international politics, while others cut and run? The answer given by policymakers, pundits, and political scientists usually relates to issues of resolve. Yet, though we rely on resolve to explain almost every phenomenon in international politics—from prevailing at the bargaining table to winning on the battlefield—we don't understand what it is, how it works, or where it comes from. Resolve in International Politics draws on a growing body of research in psychology and behavioral economics to explore the foundations of this important idea. Joshua Kertzer argues that political will is more than just a metaphor or figure of speech: the same traits social scientists and decision-making scholars use to comprehend willpower in our daily lives also shape how we respond to the costs of war and conflict. Combining laboratory and survey experiments with studies of great power military interventions in the postwar era from 1946 to 2003, Kertzer shows how time and risk preferences, honor orientation, and self-control help explain the ways leaders and members of the public define the situations they face and weigh the trade-offs between the costs of fighting and the costs of backing down. Offering a novel in-depth look at how willpower functions in international relations, Resolve in International Politics has critical implications for understanding political psychology, public opinion about foreign policy, leaders in military interventions, and international security.

Aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, this book covers the theory of foreign policy analysis. Beginning with an overview, it then tackles theory and research at multiple levels of analysis, ending with an examination of the areas in which the next generation of foreign policy analysts can make important contributions.

The author helps readers figure out which leaders matter, why, and when - and what lessons they can learn from those who do matter. Leaders from politics and business are profiled, they include: Abraham Lincoln, Neville Chamberlain, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Jamie Dimon, Al Dunlap, Sir Jacky Fisher, and Judah Folkman.

The interface between psychology and politics has been an area of sustained inquiry for several decades. More recently, the nexus between psychopolitical factors and international politics--linkages among biopolitics, political psychology, elite analysis, foreign affairs, and world politics--has been explored. This volume reviews and assesses the m

America repeatedly finds itself mired in military interventions long after public buy-in to the national interest has waned. Why is the timely disengagement of military forces so difficult to achieve? Traditional international relations theories diminish the role of the individual leader in favor of the state or international institutions. Behavioral science theories have in recent years experienced a resurgence. However, the dominant behavioral explanation of foreign policy decision-making, prospect theory, while it focuses on how people tend to make decisions under risk, still minimizes the influence of the individual president. Decisions to disengage military forces are presidential decisions, just like the decisions to commit forces to foreign interventions. If we accept this, then it is important to understand if, and if so why, some presidents inherently are more or less acceptant of the risks disengagement presents. This book operationalizes a competing personality-based model of decision-making under risk. Referred to here as the trait-based model, it is assessed using disengagement opportunities in three varied levels of military intervention across four presidencies: humanitarian relief turned nation-building under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton in Somalia, compellent air campaigns turned peace-making/keeping in Bosnia and Kosovo under Clinton, and major combat operations turned irregular warfare in Iraq under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Data for the model predominantly comes from existing presidential personality profiles based on the dominant model of personality theory, the five-factor model, augmented by Myers-Briggs Type Inventory data from public sources. This study aims to explain the roughly 30 percent of cases which defy prospect theory's predictions and to better explain those cases where prospect theory might heretofore have sufficed. The results suggest specific personality traits do in fact point to presidents' predispositions toward risk, which in turn help explain their disengagement decisions. This work may be only the second to apply the five-factor model to presidential foreign policy decision-making and is the first to do so in the context of disengagement decisions. Hopefully it will foster further work in both areas.

How psychology explains why a leader is willing to use military force to protect or salvage reputation In Who Fights for Reputation, Keren Yarhi-Milo provides an original framework, based on insights from psychology, to explain why some political leaders are more willing to use military force to defend their reputation than others. Rather than focusing on a leader's background, beliefs, bargaining skills, or biases, Yarhi-Milo draws a systematic link between a trait called self-monitoring and foreign policy behavior. She examines self-monitoring among national leaders and advisers and shows that while high self-monitors modify their behavior strategically to cultivate image-enhancing status, low self-monitors are less likely to change their behavior in response to reputation concerns. Exploring self-monitoring through case studies of foreign policy crises during the terms of U.S. presidents Carter, Reagan, and Clinton, Yarhi-Milo disproves the notion that hawks are always more likely than doves to fight for reputation. Instead, Yarhi-Milo demonstrates that a decision maker's propensity for impression management is directly associated with the use of force to restore a reputation for resolve on the international stage. Who Fights for Reputation offers a brand-new understanding of the pivotal influence that psychological factors have on political leadership, military engagement, and the protection of public prestige.