Assessing Political Leaders in Theory and in PracticeA fourth response is a context-contingent strategy in which the inter-
active effects of a leader's personality and the context for action are
identified. The contribution by Suedfeld, Guttieri, and Tetlock
emphasizes the necessity to take into account changes in such condi-
tions as stress, accountability, and value conflict in the arousal of dif-
ferent levels of integrative complexity and its consequences for infor-
mation processing and behavioral choice. The analysis of beliefs by
Walker, Schafer, and Young in this volume also emphasizes the
interaction effects between a leader's philosophical diagnosis of the
context and his or her instrumental propensities for action in choos-
ing strategies, tactics, and moves. Renshon's emphasis on the con-
tingent nature of the relationship between a leader's character and
different leadership roles is another manifestation of this strategy of
inquiry.
A fifth response is a typological strategy in which the different per-
sonality characteristics are subsumed or reduced to a set of types. The
typologies may be inductive and pragmatic reductions based on pre-
vious empirical or clinical research, such as the creation of leader
types by Hermann based on the psychological literature or the use of
clinical types by Post from the DSM-IV manual of personality disor-
ders (APA 1994). The operational code typology of belief systems
developed by Holsti (1977) and integrated theoretically with moti-
vations for power, achievement, and affiliation by Walker (1983)
represents a deductive strategy for developing a typology.
A sixth response is a temporal consistency strategy marked by a search
for behavior consistent with the leader's basic character acquired
early in life and manifested in a variety of contexts over a long period
of time. The classic exposition of this approach is the analysis by
George and George (1956) of Woodrow Wilson, which rests heavily
on an account of Wilson's early socialization within his family of ori-
gin and the continuity in his behavior during his terms of office, first
as the president of Princeton University, then as the governor of
New Jersey, and finally as the president of the United States. A sim-
ilar focus in this volume by Renshon on Bill Clinton's family-of-ori-
gin experiences and by Post on Saddam Hussein's childhood social-
ization is carried forward by these authors to interpret consistent
behavior patterns by each leader as an adult during their respective
political careers.