The British choice in Iraq has been characterized as ''Tony Blair's War,'' with many believing that the personality and leadership style of the prime minister played a crucial part in determining British participation. Is this the case? To investigate, I employ at-a-distance measures to recover Blair's personality from his responses to foreign policy questions in the House of Commons. I find that he has a high belief in his ability to control events, a low conceptual complexity, and a high need for power. Using newly available evidence on British decision making, I show how Blair's personality and leadership style did indeed shape both the process and outcome of British foreign policy toward Iraq. The research reemphasizes the importance of individual level factors in theories of foreign policy, as well as offering a comprehensive explanation of a critical episode.

The linkages between individual characteristics of political leaders and their usage of historical analogy during foreign policy decision-making episodes were examined. The individual characteristics studied were conceptual complexity and policy expertise, while usage of analogy was studied in terms of the sophistication and source of historical comparisons. The great majority of the analogies used by low-complexity individuals were nonsophisticated, whereas high-complexity individuals consistently used more sophisticated analogies. Low-complexity individuals drew analogies solely from their own generational and cultural context, while high-complexity leaders drew their analogies from a wider range of sources. More expert leaders drew from their personal experiences to a marginally greater degree than less expert individuals but, interestingly, both types of individual relied on generally available rather than personally experienced events for their analogies. The value added of the approach is to demonstrate that different types of leaders use history differently during political decision making.

In the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, British Prime Ministers were asked to contribute forces to an American-led war that was deeply unpopular in the United Kingdom. This presented Harold Wilson and Tony Blair with conflicting incentives and constraints: to support their senior ally or to make policy based upon domestic considerations. Why did Harold Wilson decline to commit British forces while Tony Blair agreed to do so? With situational factors generating conflicting predictions, I argue that investigation of individual-level variables is necessary. In particular, I suggest that leaders vary systematically in their willingness to subordinate the concerns of constituents to strategic imperatives, and that introducing the leadership style categories of "constraint challenger" and "constraint respecter" can make more determinate the linkage between domestic politics and strategic concerns.

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Margaret Thatcher was a key late-20th-century political figure, with a major part of her influence felt in international affairs. Her colleagues and interlocutors agree that Thatcher was a distinctive and forceful individual. Yet, few studies have sought to systematically investigate her worldview and leadership style, and evaluate their impact upon her policy choices. Here, I apply Hermann's conceptual complexity content analysis scheme to the entirety of Thatcher's responses to foreign policy questions in the House of Commons, finding that she scores significantly lower in complexity than both the average world leader and the average post-1945 British prime minister. This aspect of cognitive style, which has been associated with stark, black-and-white worldviews, is shown to have strongly conditioned Thatcher's foreign policy decisions in the Falklands crisis, her relationship with Ronald Reagan, her evaluation of the Soviet Union and of Mikhail Gorbachev, and her attitude toward German reunification. I conclude, then, that Thatcher's personality is key to understanding her time in office, and that she presents a vivid example of how individuals matter in politics.