Leadership Styles and War and Peace Policies in the Spanish–Basque Conflict: A Discourse Analysis of José María Aznar and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to establish possible links between leadership styles and war and peace policies in the Spanish-Basque conflict. To this end, an analysis was performed of the styles of two Spanish premiers, José María Aznar (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011), both of whom were involved in the same conflict with similar peace policies. The structure of the paper is as follows: an overview of the literature on leadership styles in armed conflict situations and the construction of a theoretical framework; a review of the historical and biographical context; a description of the interview content analysis methodology for measuring leadership styles; a classification of Aznar and Zapatero on the basis of their leadership styles and a comparative analysis of their policies and those enforced by other leaders in a context of internal armed conflict; and the conclusions.