New Research on Leaders in International Politics

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Over the past two decades, the study of leaders and individuals has made a significant comeback in International Relations (IR). This panel brings together cutting-edge works in this thriving research program, showcasing an array of new theoretical insights and empirical discoveries.

The first two papers investigate understudied attributes that shape leader behaviors and their outcomes. Madison Schramm, Alex Stark, and Lori Crasnic examine how leader gender affects the consequences of corruption scandals. Using a new dataset of leaders spanning from 1945 to 2015, they find that female politicians are at once more likely to be charged with corruption but less likely to be imprisoned. Joshua Byun and Austin Carson shed new light on the impact of leader age, challenging a literature preoccupied with “objective” age. Drawing on insights from gerontology and detailed case studies of U.S. relations with two aging leaders of the Cold War, they show that subjective judgments about aging informed by face-to-face encounters profoundly affect how old leaders are appraised and treated by foreign interlocutors.

The next two papers further enrich the conversation by looking beyond specific leader attributes. Swati Srivastava and Erin Lockwood expand the purview of “first-image” analysis to modern-day corporate leaders. Using historical comparisons of corporate titans such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murduch, Jamie Dimon, and Jeff Bezos, they develop a typology of the forms of international political authority possessed by these individuals. Finally, Michael Goldfien, Michael Joseph, and Daniel Krcmaric use nearly 5,000 presidential daily briefs (PDBs) declassified by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to identify the conditions under which a foreign leader’s background characteristics become salient to policymakers, finding that personal traits are considered uniquely informative during leadership transitions.

Much remains to be learned about the conditions under which leaders shape international outcomes, the kinds of power and authority they can wield, and the manner in which they view and interact with one another. Taken together, the papers in this panel promise to significantly enhance our understanding of leaders in international politics.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security 

Individual Presentations

• Leaders, Corruption, and Gender: Are Female Leaders Penalized More Heavily? - Madison V. Schramm, U.S. Army War College; Alexandra Stark, Georgetown University; Loriana Crasnic, University of Zurich

• Perception and Misperception of Aging Leaders in International Politics - Joshua Byun, The University of Chicago; Austin Carson, University of Chicago

• Four Faces of Firm Power: Corporate Titans and the First Image of World Politics - Swati Srivastava, Purdue University; Erin Lockwood, University of California, Irvine

• When Do Leader Attributes Matter? Evidence from the President's Daily Brief - Michael Goldfien, Yale University; Michael Frederick Joseph, George Washington University; Daniel Krcmaric, Northwestern University

Chair

• Keren Yarhi-Milo Princeton University

Discussants

• Elizabeth Nathan Saunders Georgetown University

• Michael Horowitz University of Pennsylvania