Applicationsand experience that culminated in the observed presenting features
and the inferred underlying dynamics."
Overall, a focus on leaders explains social phenomena, such as
political decisions and outcomes, by reference primarily to the prop-
erties of the leaders as social agents. Such a focus comes at the
expense of excluding an extended analysis of how the decision-mak-
ing environment evolved and, depending on the analytical model,
may not even account for how the leader came to be who he or she is
at the point of decision. This strategy of explanation is consistent
with a position that assumes that human events and social institu-
tions are the end products of long and complex causal histories
involving actions by human agents that cannot be easily recon-
structed. That is, "faced with a world consisting of causal histories of
nearly infinite length, in practice we can only hope to provide infor-
mation on their most recent history" (Hedstrom and Swedberg
1998, 12-13).
Collectively, the following profiles tell a pair of causal stories
about each leader. Renshon and Post provide an account of how the
personalities of Clinton and Hussein were formed. The other authors
identify particular causal mechanisms and ask what the likely conse-
quences are in the form of decisions and actions under external con-
ditions either taken as givens or specified by others. The application
of these personality profiles to particular decision-making situations,
therefore, requires the user to supply information about the
macrolevel environment in which the particular leader operates
along with data about the leader. We shall address this knowledge
gap and other issues associated with profiling political leaders in the
conclusion.