Prime minister leadership style and the role of parliament in security policy
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117745679 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Author | Juliet Kaarbo |
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117745679
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(1) 35 –51
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117745679
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Prime minister leadership
style and the role of
parliament in security policy
Juliet Kaarbo
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 coali-
tion government (Auerswald, 1999; Oktay, this issue; Palmer et al., 2004); intraparty
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Corresponding author:
Juliet Kaarbo, School of Social and Political Science, The University of Edinburgh,15a George Square,
Edinburgh EH8 9LD UK.
Email: j.kaarbo@ed.ac.uk
745679BPI0010.1177/1369148117745679The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsKaarbo
research-article2018
Special Issue Article
36 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(1)
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 manage-
ment 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 parliamen-
tary 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 con-
ception 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 parlia-
mentary 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 norma-
tive concerns about democratic processes.
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