Margaret Hermann

Professor, Political Science

Director, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs

Degree

Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1965

Specialties

Political leadership, political psychology, international politics

Biography

Margaret (Peg) Hermann is Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School.  Her research focuses on political leadership, foreign policy decision making, and the comparative study of foreign policy.  Hermann has worked to develop techniques for assessing the leadership styles of heads of government at a distance and has such data on over 150 leaders. She is currently involved in exploring the effects of different types of leaders and decision processes on the management of crises that cross borders and boundaries as well as in a large interview study of the governance challenges facing the leaders of transnational non-governmental organizations.

She has been president of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) and the International Studies Association (ISA) as well as editor of the journal, Political Psychology.  At present she is editor of the International Studies Review, a journal of the ISA, and Advances in Political Psychology, an annual sponsored by ISPP.  She developed the Summer Institute in Political Psychology and was its director for nine years.  Her books include The Psychological Examination of Political Leaders; Describing Foreign Policy Behavior; Political Psychology:  Issues and Problems; and Leaders, Groups, and Coalitions: Understanding the People and Processes in Foreign Policymaking.  Among her journal articles are “Presidents, Advisers, and Foreign Policy,” “Leadership Styles of Prime Ministers,” “Rethinking Democracy and International Peace: Perspectives from Political Psychology,” “International Decision Making: Leadership Matters,” “Ballots, a Barrier Against the Use of Bullets and Bombs,” and “The US Use of Military Intervention to Promote Democracy: Evaluating the Record.”  Hermann received her Ph.D. in psychology from Northwestern University.