Papers by Baris Kesgin
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Personality approaches to politics are often criticized for not examining the effect that institu... more Personality approaches to politics are often criticized for not examining the effect that institutional role constraints have on individual beliefs and preferences. When leaders appear to change their stance when they change roles, it is assumed that roles have a determining influence. Modern personality theory and contemporary sociological role theory, however, view the effects of roles as interacting with agents’ personalities. In this article, we investigate this question by comparing personality profiles of three Turkish leaders (Özal, Demirel, and Gül) during their tenure as prime minister and during their subsequent time as president. For Gül, we perform an additional comparison during his time as foreign minister. The personality profiles are in the form of quantitative scores generated from machine-coded content analysis of leaders’ words using the Leadership Trait Analysis method. We hypothesize that different leaders will be more susceptible to changing role contexts, depending on core personality traits, and that different traits are more likely to change with new roles. Overall, our results suggest that leaders’ traits are fairly resistant to changes across roles and that task orientation is the most likely trait to change as leaders adapt to different role demands and expectations. This study makes a contribution to our understanding of the interaction between personality and political contexts by offering specific theoretically derived hypotheses and by empirically and statistically examining a preliminary set of expectations that could be applied more broadly to other leaders.
21st Century Political Science: A Reference Handbook, 2011
International Studies Perspectives, 2010
Turkey’s decision on its role in the Iraq war in 2003 illustrates the power—and limits—of parliam... more Turkey’s decision on its role in the Iraq war in 2003 illustrates the power—and limits—of parliaments as actors in foreign policy. Traditionally, assemblies are not seen as important players in the foreign policies of parliamentary democracies. Instead, cabinets are generally considered the chief policymaking authorities. If the government enjoys a parliamentary majority, legislatures typically support the cabinet, if they are brought into the process at all. The March 1, 2003 vote by the Turkish parliament to not allow the United States to use Turkey as a base for the Iraq invasion challenges this conventional wisdom on parliamentary influence (in addition to many interest-based explanations of foreign policy). This paper examines this decision in the context of the role of parliaments in foreign policies and explores the relationships between parliamentary influence, leadership, intraparty politics, and public opinion.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
ABSTRACT This paper explains the design of a simulation at Susquehanna University in which studen... more ABSTRACT This paper explains the design of a simulation at Susquehanna University in which students in Introductory Environmental Science and World Affairs classes participate together in an online international relations simulation, Statecraft. Environmental science students will be integrated into the simulation, either as environmental advisers to each country or as independent environmental actors (e.g., Greenpeace, ExxonMobil, UNEP). The goal in integrating the two courses is that students gain an appreciation for the multiple tradeoffs that decision-makers must face in dealing with resources, pollution, immigration, education, health, defense, and other sustainability-related subjects as they are challenged simultaneously by realpolitik. The paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of designing and running interdisciplinary simulations and concludes with a discussion about ways to enhance students’ understanding through such simulations.
Political Science Quarterly, 2014
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Papers by Baris Kesgin
BlogPosts, Others by Baris Kesgin