President Obama vs. President W. Bush: can a president's leadership style be an effective and efficient influence for US diplomacy and foreign policy?

• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Joana Margarida Jacinto
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/2825
• topic: Diplomacia - Políticas externa - Estados Unidos da América; Diplomacia - Países Islâmicos - Estados Unidos da América; Bush, George Herbert Walker, Presidente, (1989-1993) - Política externa; Obama, Barack Hussein, Presidente, (2009) - Política externa

This dissertation intends, as it main purpose, to study and characterise leadership style of both George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama during the period of their first mandate regarding diplomatic and foreign affairs issues in Islamic countries. It will analyse if Muslim countries’ leaders changed the way they saw and interacted with the West, particularly the United States of America, in response to a different type of leadership. This work will also try to answer the question of whether the relationship between USA and Islamic countries can be reinvented by the diplomatic behaviour of a president and how media conveys these images and ideas in order to influence the homeland public as well as the public abroad. The present essay will examine different Islamic countries such as Iraq, with which USA is at war, and Iran, both of them antagonists of what America stands for, and Turkey an associated country of USA. The main research question guiding this analysis is: How do leadership styles and presidential charisma influence US Foreign Policy design and efficiency towards the Muslim world? This problematic will be viewed by several angles, for there a numerous theories that can help perceive this issue. As a result, both Presidents’ leadership style and charisma will be analysed. Afterwards, this dissertation will frame its most important notions giving them a conceptual delimitation, supplied by renowned authors of social sciences such as International Relations, Communications, Psychology, Sociology and Political Studies. The case study, with direct and indirect sources, will focus on relevant Islamic countries to US, some because are sworn enemies (Iraq and Iran) and others (Turkey) because are loyal to what the North America stands for. George W. Bush is a Republican who served two times as President of the USA, during which, America was offended with the most assertive and horrifying terrorist attack ever seen in US soil, in a day that forever more will live in infamy: 11th of September. On the other hand, Barack Obama is an African-American Democrat with Muslim roots of his own, who campaigned against war abroad but ended up involving his country, through NATO’S intervention, in another one (Libya). The dissertation will end with the conclusions to whatever results may be found in the pursuit of this question: Are leadership styles and charismatic behaviours an influence in efficiency and efficacy of the Foreign Affairs Policy towards Islamic Countries? In order to respond as accurately as possible all sources will be considered in this study, the statements made by the two Presidents during their first mandate, their official