Why do some leaders make such irrational decisions?
Following our discussion in class about personalistic leaders and their tendency to make decisions which would appear to be ill-advised (like Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait), I wanted to find some research on how the psychology of non-democratic leaders affects their actions.
In their study, “Is Kim Jong-il like Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler? A personality disorder evaluation”, Coolidge and Segal use the testimony of a South Korean informant alongside previous psychological evaluations of Hussein and Hitler to further develop the idea of the ‘big six’ personality disorders with which notable non-democratic leaders have been diagnosed.
The test for official psychiatric disorders used in this study was from the American Psychiatric Association, suggesting that the findings are likely to be at least somewhat credible. The authors were also part of a previous study that used informant testimony and historical experts to determine the psychological traits of Hitler and Hussein. The informant who carried out the assessment of Kim Jong-il was a South Korean academic psychiatrist who was a published expert in the political psychology of North and South Korea. The authors admit that the study being guided by a sole informant is a potential limitation, advising that the findings be “cautiously interpreted.” Additionally, there may be some cultural issues and cultural biases in the psychiatric diagnoses which could have affected the study, particularly given that it was created by an American organisation. However, if future studies with more informants and a range of cross-cultural analyses produce similar results, then these findings could be hugely important in terms of diplomatic relations (and for POLS209, because it could provide another consideration in determining whether non-democratic regimes are more likely to engage in armed conflict than their democratic peers). Kim Jong-il was assessed against the same 14 personality disorder scales of the other two leaders, and was found to have had identical rank-order correlations, with sadistic tendencies and paranoia being ranked the highest, suggesting that all three leaders had fairly similar personalities. When looking exclusively at what is referred to as the ‘big six’ group of personality disorders (sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal), Kim Jong-il’s profile was closer to Saddam Hussein than Hitler.
Kim Jong-il also had a higher ranking for schizoid traits than the other two leaders. The authors note that this can often manifest itself in the form of delusions or hallucinations, something which they argue Kim Jong-il’s title of “Dear Father” seems to point to. They also suggest that a symptom like preoccupation with a grand delusion is “usually organized around a coherent theme.” This conclusion points to how a person suffering from such severe psychotic disorders may present as a focused and strong leader, and would often have a “superior or patronizing manner”. The idea that these leaders of non-democracies suffered from disorders which made them more paranoid and focused on a specific goal (such as the establishment of the Third Reich) would seem to add another piece of evidence to the argument that these states are more likely to engage in risky conflict or policy, because this extreme focus is coupled with access to a large amount of personal power.
Additionally, Coolidge and Segal note that paranoid people “often intuitively trust some people more than others.” This trust in certain individuals while severely distrusting others could perhaps further explain the willingness of leaders in non-democracies to engage in cronyism and political appointment based on loyalty rather than competence.
This study ultimately puts forward a strong argument that the leaders of some of the most notorious non-democracies were likely suffering from a potent combination of psychological disorders which caused them to engage in risky and seemingly irrational behaviour. It is worth noting that this study mentions other publications in the field which featured an analysis of world leaders such as Winston Churchill and George H. Bush according to “provocatively interesting criteria such as indifference, intolerance and grandiosity.” These studies may suggest that the ‘big 6’ psychological disorders are not exclusive to non-democratic leaders, and so the factors that push a regime into what appears to be an unwise conflict or policy decision may be due more to the structural conditions that make such a move possible without electoral accountability, rather than simply being the result of the individual personality of the leader.
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment