The Personalities and Leadership Styles of Indira: A Case Study
Keywords:
Personalities, Leadership, Political LifeAbstract
This paper explores the relationship between Indira Gandhi's personality profile in the period before she became Prime Minister and her leadership style during the time she was Prime Minister. The instrument for assessing the personality profile was compiled and adapted from criteria for normal personality types and pathological variants. Gandhi emerges as a multifaceted individual with four of her personality scales - the Ambitious, the Reticent, the Contentious, and the Dominating - approaching the level of mildly dysfunctional. Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher were all described at various times as the "only man" in their respective cabinets - a reference to their tough, controlling behaviour. For each of her subjects, Steinberg provides a personality profile based on biographical information, an analysis of the patterns that comprise the personality profile using psychodynamic insights, and an examination of the relationship between personality and leadership style through an exploration of various aspects of political life - motivation, relations with the cabinet, the caucus, the opposition, the media, and the public.
References
Crossette, B. (2008). Indira Gandhi’s legacy: vying for mastery in South Asia. World Policy Institute, 25(1), 36-44.
International Food Policy Research Institute. (2002). Green revolution: Curse or blessing. Washington D.C: IFPRI.
Malhotra, I. (1989). Indira Gandhi: A personal and political Biography. London: Holder and Stougton.
Steinberg, B. (2005). Indira Gandhi: the relationship between personality profile and leadership style. Political Psychology, 26(5), 755-789.
Immelman, A. (2000). The political personality of U.S. vice president Al Gore. Paper presented at the Twenty-third Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Seattle.
Immelman, A. (2002). The political personality of U.S. presidential candidate George W. Bush. In L. O. Valenty & O. Feldman (Eds.), Political leadership for the new century: Lessons from the study of personality and behavior among American leaders (pp. 81-103). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Immelman, A. (2003). Personality in political psychology. In I. B. Weiner (Series Ed.), T. Millon & M. J. Lerner (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Vol. 5. Personality and social psychology (pp. 599-625). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Millburn, T. W. (1977). The Q-sort and the study of political personality. In M. G. Hermann (Ed.), The psychological examination of political leaders (pp. 131-144). New York: Free Press.
Millon, T. (1969). Modern psychopathology: A biosocial approach to maladaptive learning and functioning. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. (Reprinted 1985 by Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, IL).
Simonton, D. K. (1990). Personality and politics. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality: theory and research (pp. 670-692). New York: Guilford.
Steinberg, B., Kotsovilis, S., & Osweiler, J. (2002). Leadership style inventory. In B. Steinberg, Indira Gandhi: The relationship between personality profile and leadership style. Paper presented to the International Society for Political Psychology, Berlin.
Strack, S. (1997). The PACL: Gauging normal personality styles. In T. Millon (Ed.), The Millon inventories: Clinical and personality assessment (pp. 477-497). New York: Guilford.
Walker, S. G. (1977). The interface between beliefs and behavior: Henry Kissinger's operational code and the Vietnam War. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 21, 120-168.
Walker, S. G. (1995). Psychodynamic processes and framing effects in foreign policy decision-making: Woodrow Wilson's operational code. Political Psychology, 16, 697-717.
Downloads
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.