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 (1996–2004) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004–2011), 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.
Highlights
Leadership is one of most important topics in the social sciences
This paper focuses on leadership styles by applying personal traits and behavioral approaches to the study of leadership
Qualitative content analysis involves a detailed examination of a text, but does not include a quantification process (Hermann and Milburn 1977), while quantitative analysis directly accesses the meaning of the different segments making up a text, without considering the textual material itself, and is performed in two stages
Summary
Leadership is one of most important topics in the social sciences. American political science has never abandoned leadership studies, in recent years there has been a general resurgence of publications in this regard, because contemporary politics, heavily influenced by the media, focuses increasingly more on leaders and less on political parties (Blondel and Thiébault 2010; Helms 2012), even in parliamentary political regimes (McAllister 2007). Some works on international relations and social psychology in the interdisciplinary field of political psychology relate leadership to war and peace policies in turbulent and critical contexts (Korzenny and Ting-Toomey 1990; Burke and Greenstein 1991; Byman and Pollack 2001; Conway et al 2001, 2003; Hermann 2003; Mares and Palmer 2012) This literature considers individual factors such as leadership (Byman and Pollack 2001), contributing to supplement conflict resolution studies focusing on structural variables. In Spain, since the democratic transition in 1975, this has enhanced the role of the premier in the institutional structure, giving rise to the “presidentialization” of the political regime (Picarella 2009) This tendency was consolidated during José María Aznar’s two terms in office, it diminished somewhat during José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s first premiership (Picarella 2009).
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