Prime minister leadership style and the role of parliament in security policy

Abstract

This article explores how differences in prime ministers’ leadership styles may affect parliamentary influence in security policy. Drawing on work on personality differences in political psychology, I argue leadership style is a critical but often overlooked factor in the growing area of research on parliaments and foreign affairs. My key argument is that prime ministers vary in how they respond to and manage parliamentary involvement in security policymaking. I propose Leadership Trait Analysis to capture prime ministers’ orientations towards parliamentary involvement. I examine the plausibility of my argument with intra-country comparisons of Turkish and UK prime ministers’ orientations towards parliament in specific cases of security policy. More generally, this article challenges more formal-institutional approaches to parliaments’ role in security policy. A focus on prime ministers has an analytic advantage of bringing together some of the various factors (such as intraparty divisions and public opinion) to explain parliamentary influence in security policy.

Keywords

leadership style parliaments personality prime ministers security policy

Introduction

The growing area of research on the role of parliaments in foreign and security policy challenges the long-held conventional wisdom that parliaments are insignificant players (for overviews, see Mello and Peters, this issue; Raunio, 2014; Raunio and Wagner, 2017). Instead, studies demonstrate that parliaments can and have played a critical role in key security decisions. Parliaments, of course, are not always influential or even involved in security policymaking processes, and contemporary research identifies a number of factors or opportunity structures (Mello and Peters, this issue) that render parliamentary involvement and influence more likely. These factors include the particular powers and levers held by parliaments, as parliamentary powers vary greatly across states (Mello, 2012; Peters and Wagner, 2011; Wagner, 2006). Other factors are the presence of a coalition government (Auerswald, 1999; Oktay, this issue; Palmer et al., 2004); intraparty divisions (Mello, 2014); parliamentary partisan composition (Wagner et al., 2017); public opinion (Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010; Reiter and Tillman, 2002); historical analogies that point to the importance of parliament to avoid disasters (Kaarbo and Kenealy, 2017); the development of political ‘conventions’ or expectations of parliamentary involvement (Strong, 2014, this issue); and the multilateral context of the security mission (Schade, this issue).

Missing from this laundry list is the Prime Minister (PM): the most important political agent in parliamentary systems. While some have noted the importance of PM management skills in parliamentary influence (Kaarbo and Kenealy, 2016; Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010), there has been little theoretical development or focused empirical exploration of the role of the PM in parliamentary-executive relations in foreign affairs. This article explores how differences in PMs’ leadership styles may enhance or minimise parliamentary influence in security policy. Drawing on work on personality differences in political psychology, I suggest how key aspects of leaders’ beliefs, traits, orientations towards others, and management skills relate to the PM–parliamentary relationship in security affairs. I focus on PMs’ decisions to seek parliamentary support and PMs’ management of parliamentary votes.

While this article uses a few empirical examples for foundation, the emphasis here is on conceptual development, not testing, and on suggestions for future research. The exploratory nature of this article is a necessary step, given the lack of research in this area. This article provides a framework for future studies to investigate propositions suggested here. My arguments are focused specifically on PMs, on parliamentary democracies, and on security policy. There are, of course, unique aspects to PMs—they both control and are accountable to parliaments in ways that differ from their presidential counterparts. Security policy may also be distinct, and PMs may be more important in security policy as it is arguably easier to move policymaking away from ‘normal politics’ (Owens and Pelizzo, 2009; Raunio and Wagner, 2017). Yet, my general points about the importance of leaders and how they manage policymaking could theoretically apply to leaders in other types of political systems and to other policy areas.

This article proceeds by establishing the importance of leaders generally, and PMs more specifically, for security policymaking in parliamentary systems. I then argue that PMs have particular agency in parliaments’ roles in security policy given the ambiguity of that role and the undetermined nature of parliamentary voting. My key argument, using examples (primarily from the United Kingdom and Turkey), is that PMs vary in how they respond to and manage parliamentary involvement in security policymaking. A focus on the PMs’ role in parliamentary influence is consistent with an agent-based process conception of policymaking and critically challenges more formal approaches that privilege structures and institutional variables (Kaarbo, 2015). For this reason, this article takes a psychological orientation, rather than drawing on the growing area of non-psychological research on political leadership (see, for example, ‘t Hart and Rhodes, 2015). I propose Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA) as a particularly fruitful conceptual framework and method for capturing PMs’ orientations towards parliamentary involvement and advance specific expectations for how personality traits translate into PMs’ openness to parliamentary involvement, how active they will be in managing the process, and how effective their management will be. This article concludes by suggesting that a focus on PMs offers an analytic advantage of bringing together some of the various factors (such as public opinion and intraparty factions) to explain parliamentary influence but does raise normative concerns about democratic processes.

The importance of PMs and PM leadership styles in security policy¹

Who leads matters in states’ foreign policy, as demonstrated by decades of research and observations by leaders themselves. Former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, once stated, ‘as a professor, I tended to think of history as run by imperial forces. But when you see it in practice, you see the differences personalities make’ (quoted in Isaacson, 1992: 13). Leaders have incredible potential to impact foreign and security policy (see, for example, Byman and Pollack, 2001; Hermann and Hagan, 1998; Horowitz and Stam, 2014; Jervis, 2013; Saunders, 2011; Weeks, 2012). ‘State leaders play a pivotal role in balancing international imperatives with those arising from, or embedded in, domestic politics’ (Hermann and Hagan, 1998: 126). Leaders shape the intentions and strategies of their states and are themselves an important part of their countries’ diplomatic capabilities (Byman and Pollack, 2001). As humans, leaders are biased, emotional, motivated, and imperfect information processers who do not always rationally respond to and control their environments. Leaders may, for example, misjudge their own domestic political constraints (Evans, 1993). Leaders and their characteristics may be more significant to their states’ foreign policies under certain conditions, such as when systemic or domestic contexts are ambiguous, complex, uncertain or dynamic, when countries’ foreign policy choices involve value trade-offs or symbolic and emotional significance, and when decision-making authority is concentrated and leaders sit in strategic positions in the policymaking process (Byman and Pollack, 2001; Hermann, 1993, 2001).

Although PMs may not enjoy the same degree of authority and institutional power as democratic presidents and authoritarian rulers, they are at the centre of the political system, where they too can influence processes and policy outputs. Prime ministers can shape decision-making through their appointments of other cabinet ministers, by setting agendas, and by choosing with whom to consult (Blondel, 1980; Dowding, 2013; Dyson, 2016; Kaarbo, 1997; Kaarbo and Hermann, 1998). As Strangio, ‘t Hart, and Walter note, PMs:

… are the drivers of collective decision making at the heart of government. They are its principal public face and its chief ambassador abroad. When adversity strikes, they are national crisis managers in chief. Switching perennially between the front stage and the back stage of politics, and between the community gathering and the international summit, they convene, mediate, broker, persuade, bargain and cajole for a living. (Strangio et al., 2013: 1–2)

The debate over whether leaders matter is rather stale, and it is essential to concentrate on how leadership and leaders’ characteristics shape states’ foreign and security policies (Byman and Pollack, 2001; Dyson, 2016; Hermann and Hagan, 1998; Jervis, 2013; Shannon and Keller, 2007). Extant research offers a number of possibilities, including a focus on leaders’ beliefs about politics; how leaders represent foreign policy problems and define international situations; leaders’ orientations towards risk; various pathologies and neuroses in leaders’ psyches; leaders’ age; leaders’ cognitive biases, motivations, and perceptions; and leaders’ images of other countries (see, for example, Dolan, 2016; Horowitz et al., 2005; Khong, 1992; Levy, 2000; McDermott, 1998; Post, 2014; Schafer and Walker, 2006; Sylvan and Voss, 1998; Ziv, 2013). Some research examines the commonalities that leaders, as humans, share. Personality approaches, however, focus on differences across leaders. A personality perspective on leadership style sees leaders, as agents of the state, responding to international and domestic challenges according to their personalities. Different personality profiles produce variation in their responses.

Following other psychologically oriented scholarship on political leadership style, I define personality as a ‘patterned relationship’ among cognition, affect, motivations, and orientations towards interpersonal relationships (Post, 2003: 77).² Leaders’ personalities vary and their responses to constraints are contingent on their individual characteristics. Personalities are not idiosyncratic but nomothetic, with personality types systematically related to behavioural patterns. Leaders’ personalities are not static across time and situation. Modern personality theory expects individual characteristics to interact with situational cues and structural demands and opportunities. The degree to which individuals respond to situational cues, incentives, and constraints is itself a personality trait that varies across individuals, including political leaders (Funder, 2001; Hermann, 1987).

PMs and parliaments’ role in security policy

Indeed, PMs may vary, both across individuals and across decision-making episodes, in terms of how they respond to and manage parliamentary processes in security affairs. This variation is important because the involvement of parliament in security policy is often constitutionally ambiguous. Even when the constitutional requirement is clear or when PMs seek parliamentary approval, the outcome of the vote is not predetermined and PMs can influence how independent and challenging parliaments are vis-à-vis PMs’ preferences. In these situations, PMs’ leadership styles—their preferences and their behaviours—are conditioned by their personalities.

Parliamentary debates and votes on security issues are often the result of decisions by the PM and cabinets to seek approval or allow for parliamentary input. Parliament’s role in security is often unclear. Even in the US political system, in which the legislative role is constitutionally prescribed and further codified in the 1973 War Powers Resolution, presidents, members of Congress, and legal experts have perennially debated the necessity of Congressional approval for the use of force. Most presidents who ask for a Congressional vote make clear they are doing so for political, not constitutional or legal reasons (Pevehouse and Howell, 2011). Post Cold War, Japan is another example of Constitutional and parliamentary constraints being successfully challenged by individual PMs (Hirata, 2016).

The ambiguity of a legislative role in security affairs is present in many parliamentary systems (Mello and Peters, this issue). The range of war powers varies considerably across parliaments (Peters and Wagner, 2011, 2014), but even when parliamentary approval is codified in legislation, there may be disagreement about when and how parliamentary involvement is to be triggered. In the Netherlands, for example, a new constitutional article (Article 100.1) was established in 2000 to ensure greater parliamentary role in the deployment of Dutch troops. This constitutional change was part of an evolving doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty over peacekeeping missions, yet ‘many debates were fought over the exact premises of this doctrine, and over the exact phrasing of government obligations’ (Hoekema, 2004: 76). In 2006 and early 2007, there was still uncertainty, and elite contestation, over the necessity for parliamentary approval to send troops to southern Afghanistan upon North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) request (Deutsch, 2005; Hoekema, 2006; Kaarbo, 2012).

When there is no constitutional basis for parliamentary involvement, there is even more scope for PMs to decide if and when to involve parliament. In the UK system, for example, foreign affairs and particularly security policy is the cabinet’s Royal Prerogative—‘the residue of discretionary or arbitrary authority, which at any given time is legally left in the hands of the Crown’, now passed to the executive (Dicey, 1959: 24). The authority to deploy the United Kingdom’s armed forces, constitutionally, resides in the collective responsibility of the cabinet, led by the PM. Any involvement of the House of Commons is in PM’s gift to grant. Most PMs have not sought parliamentary involvement. As Strong (2014: 5) notes, the Commons ‘held a substantive vote over military action on just one occasion during the 20th century, over the Korean War’. PM Tony Blair made the unusual decision in 2003 to seek support for the Iraq war with a substantive vote by parliament, but he did so unwillingly. Throughout 2002 and up through January 2003, Blair maintained that ‘he would decide and then parliament would discuss, but not vote on, war with Iraq … [refusing] for many months to back down on the procedural point’ (Strong, 2014: 6). When he eventually conceded this point, ‘by making the Iraq question into a confidence motion, Blair forced Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) who opposed war but otherwise supported the government to choose between the two’ (Strong, 2014: 7; see also Strong, 2017b). The United Kingdom’s military missions in Afghanistan were never subject to a vote between the original deployment in 2001 and continued operations through 2010. The 2011 deployment in Libya was only authorised post hoc by the Commons. In addition to Afghanistan and Libya, PM David Cameron requested approval from the House of Commons for use of military force in Syria (2013 and 2015) and against Islamic State in Iraq (2014). In only one instance (the Syrian vote in 2013) did parliament not support the PM’s preference (Gaskarth, 2016; Kaarbo and Kenealy, 2016; Mello, 2017; Strong, 2014).

Parliamentary involvement in UK security policy may have become a political convention, as Strong (2014) and others have argued, but this convention is a product of successive decisions by the PM to allow the House of Commons to have a say. Other pressures may be important in these decisions (such as public opinion and political parties divided and supportive of parliamentary involvement), but it is up to the PM to respond to those pressures. Lindsay (1993: 613) makes a similar point, arguing that US President Bush’s reluctance to request Congressional authorisation for the Iraq War in 1991 stemmed from Bush’s perception—it was too much to risk Congress not approving. Whether and when leaders respond to pressures to seek legislative approval, and in what way, are conditioned by their leadership styles, in ways discussed below.

When parliaments are asked to (or themselves initiate) a debate and vote on a matter of foreign affairs, PMs also vary in the way they manage the parliamentary process. Even in cases in which parliamentary involvement is constitutionally ordained, PMs have agency in the process and can affect the outcome of the vote. In this way, they influence how independent a role parliament plays in security and in the end, if parliament challenges PMs’ preferences. PMs may choose to play a lead in disciplining their party (and perhaps their coalition partner if the cabinet is a multiparty one), they may delegate discipline to others, or they may choose to remain above the political fray. In the UK House of Commons vote on Syria in 2013, for example, PM Cameron was visibly surprised at the outcome (which went contrary to his preference) and was criticised for recalling Parliament in a haphazard manner, attempting to rush through a vote before the United Nations (UN) inspectors completed their work, refusing to disclose comprehensively the legal advice received by the UK Government, and not doing enough to shore up support from many wavering backbenchers. These were strong indicators that he was overconfident and underestimated the opposition (Kaarbo and Kenealy, 2016; Rigby, 2013).

In a similar case, Turkish PM Gül and soon-to-be PM Erdoğan³ were surprised when, in 2003, the Turkish parliament declined to support the United States’ request to use Turkey as a base for operations in the Iraq War. This outcome was highly unusual in Turkish politics and was against Erdoğan’s and much of the ruling Justice and Development party’s preference. The vote was influenced by the leadership’s inconsistency and poor management skills. So confident that their preference would prevail, the leaders did not enforce party discipline (Çuhadar et al., 2017a; Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010; Robins, 2003; Taydaş and Özdamar, 2013). This outcome was in stark contrast to the Turkish parliament’s approval of the deployment of troops in the 1991 Gulf War. In that case, there was clear opposition to President Özal who supported a strong alliance with the United States against Iraq and who acted more like a PM. In addition to conducting secret negotiations with the United States and spearheading the process to approve US requests, Özal even argued that as President, he was the Chief of the Army and therefore empowered with the mandate of parliament to authorise Turkish troops when parliament was in recess (Çuhadar et al., 2017a). Özal’s orientation to parliament stands in stark contrast to that of President Gül and PM Erdoğan in 2003. Özal pushed and persuaded MPs to change a previous vote granting him permission (not power) to declare war to vote for unconditional authorisation. In the end, the Turkish parliament allowed the stationing of foreign forces in Turkey, in line with Özal’s preferences (Çuhadar et al., 2017a; Hale, 2000). This comparison illustrates remarkable differences in leaders’ orientations towards parliamentary involvement in security policy.

PMs’ strategies for managing (or not) parliamentary procedures and votes are undoubtedly influenced by many factors (Strong, this issue), including intraparty divisions and the perception of what the outcome of the vote will be; but, as these examples indicate, leadership style is a plausible variable independent of these other factors and as an intervening variable in PMs’ orientations towards parliament. PMs, for example, may differ in their overall involvement with parliament, and they may differ in how they react to intraparty politics. They may also vary in the extent to which they engage in denial of opposition or wishful thinking that the vote will be in their favour. These differences, I argue, stem from personality traits.

LTA

Among the numerous ways for conceptualising leader personalities, Margaret Hermann’s LTA is particularly suited to explore which individual characteristics are most promising for future research on PMs’ orientations towards parliament in security policy. The LTA framework is one of the most prominent approaches to the study of political leaders’ personalities. First developed by Hermann (1980), LTA has been used to study the personality and leadership style of many world leaders.

LTA research has demonstrated that its seven personality traits—belief in ability to control events, conceptual complexity, need for power, distrust of others, in-group bias, self-confidence, and task orientation (see Table 1)—systematically link to leaders’ propensity to challenge or respect constraints in their environments, their openness to information and advice, the structure of their advisory systems, the quality of decision-making processes, and the policies leaders choose for their country or organisation (see, for example, Dyson, 2006; Hermann, 2003; Kille and Scully, 2003; Schafer and Crichlow, 2010). According to Hermann, the seven traits combine in particular ways to produce specific leader behavioural propensities. Compared to other approaches to leaders’ personalities, LTA is a more composite approach, combining elements of leaders’ beliefs, motives, traits, and style. It incorporates insights from motive theory (McClelland, 1961; Winter, 1973) with its need for power and task orientation traits.

Table 1.

Personality characteristics in Leadership Trait Analysis.

LTA trait	Description
Belief in ability to control events	Perception of own degree of control over political world
Need for power	Interest in developing, preserving, or reinstituting own power
Self-confidence	Notion of self-importance and of capacity to take on political environment
Conceptual complexity	Ability to distinguish complexities of political life
In-group bias	Belief that own group constitutes centre of political world
Distrust of others	Suspicions, scepticism, worry of others outwith own group
Task focus	Focus on problem-solving (achievement motivated) versus building relationships (affiliation motivated)

Source: Çuhadar et al. (2017b), drawing on Hermann (2003).

LTA: Leadership Trait Analysis.

LTA research infers personality characteristics from leaders’ words and has demonstrated that this inference can be done reliably, that it produces valid assessments, and that these assessments confidently explain how leaders make decisions and the particular policies they choose. This research is systematic with standard coding rules and a computer programme to process speeches into leader profiles.⁴ As Schafer (2015: 5) notes, ‘there is actually plenty of evidence that supports the effectiveness of using prepared speech acts as psychological indicators’.

LTA has generated an expansive area of research. It has been used to study the personalities of many leaders, including US presidents and presidential advisors, British PMs, sub-Saharan African leaders, Iranian leaders, Israeli PMs, Soviet Politburo members, and heads of international organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the UN (see, for example, Crichlow, 1998; Dyson, 2006, 2009, 2016; Foster and Keller, 2014; Hermann, 1984, 1987, 2003; Keller, 2005a, 2005b; Kille and Scully, 2003; Mastors, 2000; Preston, 2001; Schafer and Crichlow, 2010; Shannon and Keller, 2007; Taysi and Preston, 2001; Van Esch and Swinkels, 2015). This research has shown that leaders’ personality traits do indeed vary and that its seven personality traits systematically link to policies leaders choose for their country or organisation. LTA traits also have been linked to decision-making processes. Dyson, for example, convincingly demonstrated that Tony Blair’s low complexity, high need for power, and high belief in his ability to control events was seen in his ‘proactive policy orientation, internal locus of control in terms of shaping events, a binary information processing and framing style, and a preference to work through tightly held processes in policy making’ (Dyson, 2006: 303).

LTA research has also demonstrated profound effects of personalities on decision-making processes in terms of leaders’ propensities to challenge or respect constraints in their environments and their openness to information. In other words, leaders with different traits are expected to relate to their context, institutional setting, costs and benefits of various policy options, and other agents in theoretically meaningful and predictable ways. Put simply, leaders vary in how they respond to their environments. Some confront structural barriers and pressures; others defer to or work within them (see, for example, Çuhadar et al., 2017a, 2017b; Dyson, 2007; Hermann, 1983, 1987, 1993; Hermann and Kegley, 1995; Keller, 2005a, 2005b; Shannon and Keller, 2007). Variation in responsiveness, or sensitivity, to the environment is captured by a variety of comparative terms, such as ‘crusader versus pragmatist’, ‘ideologue versus opportunist’, ‘directive versus consultative’, ‘dominators versus consensus seekers’, and ‘ideologically driven versus contextually sensitive’ (see, for example, Dowding, 2013; Hermann and Kegley, 1995; Shannon and Keller, 2007).⁵ As Keller (2005a: 840) notes, ‘constraint challengers and respecters … represent ideal types. Some leaders resemble these vivid portraits, but most leaders fall in between these two poles. Nevertheless, leaders generally exhibit a tendency toward one or the other profile’ (see also Keller, 2005b). Leaders’ orientations to structures are based on personality differences captured by LTA. Orientation to constraints also acts as an intervening variable for other traits. For leaders who challenge constraints, for example, their own beliefs and style will be more reflected in policymaking processes and foreign policy choices.

Researchers differ as to which LTA traits are, individually or in combination, most indicative of leaders’ orientations to constraints. Hermann (2003), for example, argues that leaders who have a high belief in their ability to control events and a high need for power are expected to challenge constraints. Hermann (2003) also argues that conceptual complexity and self-confidence predict leaders’ openness to information. Some studies have found support for these combinations of traits producing different patterns of leaders’ sensitivity to their environments (Dyson, 2007, 2016; Kille and Scully, 2003; Schafer and Crichlow, 2010).

Keller (2005a, 2005b) constructed a different composite for constraint challengers and respecters. Like Hermann, he included need for power, but combined this with leaders’ task emphasis, distrust, and nationalism (in-group bias) traits. Constraint challengers are (1) task-oriented, with ‘a more directive management style, viewing others as tools to be used to accomplish the all-important mission rather than as actors with legitimate views that must be respect or accommodated’ (Keller, 2005b: 210; see also Blake and Mouton, 1964); (2) high in need for power, seeing politics as a zero-sum game and willing ‘to circumvent institutional mechanisms of accountability and power-sharing’ (Keller, 2005b: 211; see also Winter, 1973); (3) high in distrust with suspicions of others, have enhanced threat perceptions, and are prone to taking risks (Keller, 2005b; see also Driver, 1977; Levy, 1997); and (4) high in nationalism (or in-group bias) in which institutional constraints are circumvented when ‘leaders fear exploitation by adversaries’ or ‘view domestic opponents as enemies’ (Keller, 2005b; see also Druckman, 1968). Keller related the composite of these four traits to policy outcomes and policy processes. For the latter, he derived specific hypotheses for constraint challengers and respecters and traced the decision-making process of constraint challengers and respecters, finding considerable plausibility for his hypotheses. Shannon and Keller (2007) found that the LTA trait distrust is a particularly important element of leaders’ orientations towards international norms.

Keller and Foster (2012) combine two LTA traits—the belief in the ability to control events and self-confidence—to create a scale indicating leaders’ locus of control. The higher the leaders are in both, they argue, the more they have an internal locus of control and ‘… when faced with difficult political and economic conditions, will be much more confident in their ability to take the reins and manipulate the environment to protect their political position’ (Keller and Foster, 2012: 587–588). They expect leaders with external locus of control to respect the constraints that domestic problems put on them and ‘will have little confidence in their ability to reverse these conditions’ (Keller and Foster, 2012: 587). Their study of US presidents facing economic problems and declining presidential approval ratings generally support these expectations. Keller and Foster’s locus of control construct relates to what Lord David Owen refers to as the ‘Hubris Syndrome’. Hubris includes, among other indicators, excessive confidence and an exaggerated belief in what they, the leaders, can personally achieve (Owen and Davidson, 2009). We would expect leaders high in hubris to challenge constraints.

LTA and PMs’ orientations to parliaments

From this research on what types of leaders challenge or respect constraints, including institutional procedures and norms of decision-making, we can derive expectations about PMs’ orientations towards parliamentary influence in security policies. These involve three questions: (1) Is the PM open to parliamentary involvement? (2) Are they actively engaged in the management of the parliamentary process? and (3) If active, how effective are they in the management of that process? For each question, there are theoretical bases for linking PMs’ orientations to parliament to some LTA characteristics. These links are presented in Table 2, where there is sufficient theoretical basis. These PMs’ orientations can, in turn, affect the role of parliament in security policies.

Table 2.

LTA personality characteristics and PMs’ orientations to parliament.

LTA trait	Open to parliamentary involvement?	Active management of process?	Effective management of process?
High belief in ability to control events	No	Yes	*
High need for power	No	Yes	Yes
High self-confidence	No	Yes	No
High conceptual complexity	Yes	Yes	Yes
In-group bias	No	No	*
Distrust of Others	No	No	*
Problem task focus (achievement motivated)	No	No	*

LTA: Leadership Trait Analysis.

Insufficient basis for expectation.

The first question concerns which PMs are most likely to seek parliamentary support and which are most likely to challenge parliamentary influence. Some leaders may dismiss parliamentary constraints as a distraction, while others believe it prudent or normatively ideal to be open to parliamentary input. Those who will challenge or ignore parliament are PMs who have a high belief in their ability to control events, a high need for power, a task focus on solving problems, have high levels of distrust, in-group bias and self-confidence, and have low conceptual complexity. PMs with a low belief in their ability to control events, a low need for power, a task focus on building relationships, low levels of distrust, in-group bias, and self-confidence, and high conceptual complexity will more likely seek parliamentary approval or work constructively with parliament if parliament’s role is unambiguous. Which of these traits, individually or in combination, are more important indicators of PMs’ orientations to parliaments, is an open question, given the lack of consensus in previous research.

LTA research on leader traits and decision-making processes also provide some insights into how PMs will manage the process and how much they will become involved. This second factor is important for leaders who choose or welcome a parliamentary role and for leaders who have no choice for parliamentary involvement. Generally, leaders are more involved themselves if they have a strong belief in their ability to control events, have a high need for power, high self-confidence, and have high conceptual complexity (Çuhadar et al., 2017a; Dyson, 2006, 2016; Fodor and Smith, 1982; Hermann, 2003; Preston, 2001; Preston and ‘t Hart, 1999). Leaders will delegate management of the decision-making process or avoid the process if they have high distrust, high in-group bias, and have a problem-focused task orientation.

Combining the first two questions (columns 2 and 3 in Table 2) on these critical questions of openness to parliamentary involvement and active management of the process, we can derive expectations about parliamentary influence in security policy. Parliamentary influence in security policy is least likely when PMs are not open to their involvement and when they actively manage the process (‘no’ in column 2 and ‘yes’ in column 3 in Table 2). Parliamentary influence in security policy is most likely when leaders have opposite scores for belief in ability to control events, need for power, and conceptual complexity and are thus open to parliamentary involvement and do not actively manage the process. The other combinations of traits generate mixed messages regarding parliamentary involvement. Leaders might be opposed to involvement but are then hands-off regarding the process or are open to involvement and then direct the process. In these situations, the influence of parliament would hinge on other factors or on how the PM directed the process. We would expect leaders who are open to parliamentary involvement and then are actively involved (those with high self-confidence) to be able to use the authority of the office of the PM to address and diminish parliamentary challenges to PM preferences. These are merely speculations requiring empirical investigation but they flow, theoretically, from previous work on leadership styles and leader personality.

Finally, we can also speculate on how effective PMs will be in the management process (addressing the third question, also presented in Table 2). Certain personality traits, for example, are related to faulty decision-making processes such as wishful thinking and misperceptions. Schafer and Crichlow (2010) found that the combination of higher self-confidence than complexity was significantly related to faulty decision processes, and Brummer (2016) found that British PMs with high self-confidence were associated with foreign policy fiascos. Van Esch’s (2014) study of EU leaders in the Euro crisis indicates that those with low complexity were more likely to stick rigidly to prior beliefs. Winter’s (2010) work on motive theory (which is related to LTA’s need for power and task orientation traits) suggests that political leaders who are high in the need for power (relative to their need for achievement and affiliation) are more successful than leaders who are high in their need for affiliation. Interestingly, this differs from business leaders who are more successful if they score high on need for achievement. Winter’s research suggests that political leaders with strong motives for achievement find politics frustrating, whereas power-motivated leaders enjoy the give and take of political processes (Winter, 2010). Brummer’s (2016) study is consistent with this finding—leaders low in power were associated with policy fiascos. Ferguson and Barth (2002) found that US governors with high scores on power and achievement were more likely to be successful in achieving their goals in the legislature. From this work, we can expect that leaders who are less power-oriented, low in complexity, and high in self-confidence will be more likely to blunder the process through mismanagement and/or underestimating the degree of opposition in parliament.⁶ This type of PM opens the door for greater parliamentary influence.

Carefully designed studies are needed to further explore the explanatory value and accuracy of this approach and the hypotheses embedded in Table 2. We can, however, draw on previous studies of LTA personality profiles and leaders’ interactions with parliaments over security policy initially to assess the plausibility of these theoretically based expectations. Çuhadar et al. (2017a), for example, profiled Turkish President Özal and PM Erdoğan. These leaders faced similar international and domestic constraints. The US government was pressuring Turkey, in both instances, to support its planned intervention in Kuwait (1991) and in Iraq (2003), respectively. In both cases, single party governments controlled the parliament and the leaders’ (Özal and then Erdoğan) personal preferences were to cooperate with the United States, despite public and military opposition.

As noted above, however, the executive–legislative interactions in the two cases were very different. Although the leaders had no choice but to accept parliamentary involvement (constitutionally, the Turkish Grand Assembly must approve the stationing of foreign troops on Turkish soil), the degree of management and the effectiveness of the management varied considerably across the two cases. Özal was very much involved, dominating parliamentary deliberations, and he effectively managed the process to secure his preferred outcome. Erdoğan, on the other hand, remained in the background during parliamentary processes and poorly managed the process, so confident he was that parliament would support his position (Çuhadar et al., 2017a; Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010; Robins, 2003; Taydaş and Özdamar, 2013). Çuhadar et al. (2017a) attribute these different processes and outcomes to the differences in the leaders’ personalities and styles. The key differences in their LTA profiles were for the traits self-confidence and complexity (with Özal higher than Erdoğan for both) and power (with Özal lower than Erdoğan). The leaders did not differ significantly on the other four LTA traits. This comparison supports the expectation in Table 2 for self-confidence and complexity, but not for power.

We can also use Dyson’s (2006) LTA profile of Tony Blair and LTA profiles of David Cameron (Levine and Young, 2014; Strong 2017a) to assess how differences in their leadership styles played out in the House of Common’s role in UK security policy. As previously noted, although Blair eventually asked parliament for approval for the United Kingdom’s participation in Iraq, he did so very reluctantly, arguing for a good while that parliamentary involvement was not necessary (Strong, 2014, 2017b). In contrast, Cameron sought parliamentary approval for a number of UK military missions. These two PMs’ management of parliamentary involvement also differed. While Blair effectively made the Iraq vote into a confidence motion and passionately delivered an impressive rhetorical case, Cameron was less involved. In the 2013 vote on Syria, for example, Cameron was arguably overconfident and underestimated the opposition to his preference (Gaskarth, 2016; Kaarbo and Kenealy, 2016; Rigby, 2013). As a result, he mismanaged the vote and became the first UK PM since 1782 to have his preference on a security matter over-ruled by parliament. He then quickly conceded the point, although technically most MPs had actually voted, in principle, for a UK military response against Syria.⁷ It is difficult to imagine Blair losing or conceding in this way.

Can the differences between these two PMs’ orientations towards parliament’s role in security policy be captured by LTA profiling? Comparing the two leaders, Blair is higher than Cameron in his belief in the ability to control events and need for power. Cameron is higher than Blair in his complexity, self-confidence, and in-group bias (Dyson, 2006; Levine and Young, 2014; Strong, 2017a). The two leaders are fairly similar for task orientation and distrust of others. Strong (2017a) argues that, compared to Blair, Cameron is more likely to respect constraints and more open to information, given their LTA profiles. These differences are consistent with some of the expectations presented above. Blair’s higher belief in his ability to control events and his higher need for power may explain his lower openness to parliamentary involvement and his higher level of active involvement. Blair’s higher need for power may also explain his more effectiveness. In addition, Cameron’s comparatively higher complexity may explain his more openness to parliamentary involvement, his in-group bias may explain his level of involvement, and his higher self-confidence may explain his ineffective management. The differences between the two leaders’ complexity do not relate to their activity and effectiveness, as expected. Blair’s lower self-confidence does explain his high level of involvement as expected (although Blair has a higher than average self-confidence score compared to other leaders, but not to Cameron).

Conclusion

The examples of Turkish and UK security policy demonstrate plausibility and potential for this article’s framework to investigate PMs’ orientations to parliamentary involvement in security affairs. This framework is built on a psychological-based personality approach to leadership style and offers a rigorous and theoretically grounded path for exploring how PMs respond to parliaments. The propositions put forward here are only suggestive and future research should focus on exploring which personality traits—individually and in combinations—distinguish PMs’ orientations to parliament and how PMs’ orientations affect the role of parliament in security policy. While this framework is not necessarily unique to PMs or to security issues, the theoretical foundations, prior empirical research, and the examples referenced in this article all point to fruitful contributions from the application of this framework to this topic.

Prime ministers are important agents in the security policy of states with parliamentary systems. If the role of parliaments in security policy is increasing in significance and if the relationship between executives and legislatures is being recalibrated in modern parliamentary democracies (Wagner et al., 2017), the executive, led by the PM, has considerable authority to interpret, manage, and even manipulate this relationship. Parliamentary powers, both formal and informal, in security policy are, in Keller’s terms (2005a, 2005b) potential constraints, rather than direct constraints, and ‘are open to multiple interpretations or can be overcome in the short term (though the longer-term political or personal consequences may be very serious)’ (Keller, 2005a: 838). ‘Contrary to prevailing structure-based theories, potential constraints in any political environment must be activated by leaders’ responsiveness to them before they can influence policy behavior’ (Keller, 2005a: 836–837).⁸

This approach challenges more institutional perspectives and is consistent with this Special Issue’s argument that parliamentary influence on security policy is not narrowly determined by formal constitutional powers. PMs, as agents, are important interpreters and managers of parliament’s role and can play a key role in activating, and suppressing, the various informal sources of parliamentary influence discussed by Mello and Peters (2018) and other articles in this special issue. Furthermore, a focus on PMs as human agents has an analytic advantage of bringing together the various opportunity structures in the growing area of research on parliamentary influence in foreign policy. Current research suggests a number of factors, including intraparty divisions, critical junctures, trends of politicisation, and public opinion, which influence how parliament affects security policies. From an agent-based foreign policy analysis perspective (see Kaarbo, 2015), these other factors are important but are filtered through leaders’ actions and understanding. How the PM and other key political leaders perceive, believe, and act on intraparty divisions or public opinion, for example, are the critical mechanisms for translating these factors into the policymaking process and policy outcomes.

PMs’ orientations towards parliaments also relates to this special issue’s second theme on the effects of parliamentary involvement. Whether or not parliaments constrain war-prone executives to produce more peaceful policies, for example, may depend on the content of the PMs’ personal beliefs (some are more war-prone than others); on any bargains the PMs make with parliament; and on the degree to which PMs even allow parliamentary involvement. In other words, the outcomes of parliamentary involvement are intrinsically connected to the process of parliamentary involvement and a focus on leadership style puts the PMs’ management of the process front and centre in the analysis.

Finally, PMs’ orientations towards parliamentary involvement in security policy address the third theme of this special issue on the politics of security. While parliamentary involvement may foster public debate, the PM can be an important agent to trigger or suppress the ‘normalisation’ of security policy. This agency does raise normative concerns about democratic processes. If parliaments’ functions are to represent the people and to serve as a check on the executive, then PMs who ignore or manipulate parliamentary involvement contribute to a democratic deficit. This deficit is particularly evident in parliamentary systems where the central leader, the PM, is not directly elected. This article suggests that some PMs are more likely to contribute to such a deficit than others.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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Prime minister leadership style and the role of parliament in security policy

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The importance of PMs and PM leadership styles in security policy 1

PMs and parliaments’ role in security policy

LTA

LTA and PMs’ orientations to parliaments

Conclusion

Footnotes

Funding

Notes

References

The importance of PMs and PM leadership styles in security policy¹