84-364 Comparative Presidential Behavior: Leadership, Personality, and Decision Making
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Presidents receive universal attention for good reasons. As the most powerful politicians in the 49 countries that they govern, their behavior and decisions have enormous consequences. Given the vast amounts of energy dedicated to understanding presidents, one would expect that many questions about presidential behavior and performance have been answered. However, there is still little understanding of how presidents matter. In this course we address the pressing question of how presidents matter from a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective. We will mainly incorporate insights from political science and psychology, but also from other disciplines that study leadership e.g., management and history. In the first section we will discuss the comparative history, evolution, and characteristics of the presidency, examining crosscountry variation of presidential powers and roles. In the second part, we will discuss theories that have addressed the role of political leaders from different disciplines and methodological approaches. In the third and main section, we will study the personal presidency, or how the unique background of the leaders and their personality traits are related to relevant political outcomes. In the last section, we will examine how the broader social, political, and economic context explains presidential behavior and performance.
Prerequisites: none listed
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