Saddam Husseinwarm, friendly relationships"? As pointed out in chapter 6, however,
laboratory research findings suggest a more complicated picture of
the affiliation motive. People high in affiliation motivation are drawn
into warm, friendly, and cooperative relationships, but only with
people they perceive as similar to themselves and only when they feel
safe. Under threat, they are often quite "prickly" and defensive. In
the turbulent and dangerous world of Iraqi politics, Saddam Hussein
has acted like an affiliation-motivated person under threat, sur-
rounding himself with his own like-minded people (literally, people
from his own village and family; see Renshon 1993) and fusing his
affiliative concerns with his power motives in a messianic message of
"brotherhood" directed with defiance but also (at least in 1990—91)
with futility to the wider Arab community.
Summary: Major Dimensions of Political Motivation
Taken together, the Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein cases suggest
how the three major motives may interact to produce two underly-
ing dimensions of political motivation.
1i) The relationship between the achievement and power motives reflects the
leader's underlying approach to politics: as an arena for accomplishment, as
an arena for the expression of personal power, or both. If the achievement
motive predominates, as with Clinton during the 1992 campaign
and the early years of his first term, then the leader is vulnerable to
frustration as the political process chews up their carefully formu-
lated and rationally framed goals and aspirations. (Ross Perot was an
even more extreme example of such a profile; see Winter 1995.) On
the other hand, if the power motive predominates, as with Saddam
Hussein, then the leader may approach politics as an arena for
untrammeled and ruthless exercise of personal will and whim. (Aya-
tollah Khomeini, in the 19705, was a more extreme example of such
a profile.) In contrast, a balance of these two motives, as in the case of
Clinton in 1995—96, is associated with a more pragmatic and (in a
democratic context, at least) effective approach to politics.
(2) The affiliation motive has complex and varied political effects, depend-
ing on the leader's perceptions of comfort and threat. While affiliation
motives may temper power motivation and direct it away from
aggression and violence (see McClelland 1975; Winter 1993^, it
may also arouse a defensive, even bitter and aggressive, reaction to
situations of threat.