Juliet Kaarbo | School of Social and Political Science

Professor Juliet Kaarbo

Professor of Foreign Policy

j.kaarbo@ed.ac.uk

https://twitter.com/@JKaarbo/

4.21

Chrystal Macmillan Building

15a George Square

Edinburgh

EH8 9LD

Profile
Guidance and Feedback Hours

Research interests

British politics research Elections, public opinion and parties Governance & Democracy International Relations Research Group Territorial Politics Research Group

Foreign policy analysis, Political psychology

Julie’s research focuses on political psychology, leadership and decision making, group dynamics, foreign policy analysis, foreign policy roles, and parliaments and coalitions in foreign policy. Areas of specialization include German, British, Israeli, Dutch, Japanese, Turkish, and U.S. foreign policy. Her research has appeared in various journals, including International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, International Studies Review, Political Psychology, Cooperation and Conflict, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Leadership Quarterly. She has co-written multiple versions of two textbooks -- Global Politics and Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective.

Current Projects

Personalities of Political World Leaders This research includes several tracks, including a project (Breaking Bad) on how leader personalities change over time, funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-25).

National Roles: Contestation & Socialisation This research extends my prior theoretical and empirical analyses of internal disagreements over national role conceptions and their influence on foreign policy. A collaborative project examines the relationship between sovereignty and roles in world order transitions.

Coalition Cabinets, Political Parties, & Parliaments in Foreign Policy My research continues to examine the effects of coalition cabinets and political party disagreements on foreign policy. I am part of a research team doing comparative analyses of parties’ positions on military deployments and the politicization of security policy in parliamentary votes. We have created and extended a database of deployment and international treaty votes: http://deploymentvotewatch.eu/.

The Future of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) Following my editorial work on the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, I am co- editing (with Cameron Thies) the Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis. This Handbook aims to re-position FPA to a central analytic location within the study of International Relations.

Topics interested in supervising

foreign & security policy * leaders' personality * group decision-making * parliamentary systems * the role of individuals and domestic politics in international relations

If you are interested in being supervised by Juliet Kaarbo, please see the links below (open in new windows) for more information:

Background

Co-Director of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs (SCGA)

Qualifications

PhD, MA, Political Science (The Ohio State University)
BA, Political Science (University of Oklahoma)

Biography

Juliet Kaarbo joined the Politics and International Relations department in 2011 as Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Professor with a Personal Chair in Foreign Policy in 2015. She was the founding co-Director of the Centre on Security Research (CeSeR) and co-founded the Scottish Council on Global Affairs (SCGA) in 2022. She served as Associate Editor for Foreign Policy Analysis and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. She was awarded a Visiting Scientist Fellowship by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (2009), a Ferdinand Braudel Fellowship at the European University Institute (2022), and a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2023-2025).

Julie previously held posts at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and the University of Kansas where she served as Director of Faculty Programs in the Office of International Programs, and as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science.

In 2018, Julie was named the Distinguished Scholar in Foreign Policy Analysis for the Foreign Policy Analysis section of the International Studies Association. She was elected as a Vice President of the International Studies Association for 2022-23. In 2019, Julie won the Best Supervisor Award at the University of Edinburgh.

Selective Recent Publications

‘What If? Counterfactual Trump and the Western Response to the War in Ukraine’, with Kai Oppermann and Ryan Beasley International Affairs (2023)
- this article was featured in a story in The New York Times: ‘Examining Trump’s Alternate Reality Pitch’, 16 March 2024
‘New Directions for Leader Personality Research: Breaking Bad in Foreign Policy,' International Affairs (2021)
‘Brexit Stage Right: Sovereignty and Foreign Policy Roles,’ with Ryan Beasley and Kai Oppermann, Global Studies Quarterly (2021)
‘Predictably Unpredictable: Trump’s Personality and Approach Towards China’, with Oliver Turner, Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2021)
The Oxford Handbook of Political Executives, with Andeweg, Elgie, Helms, & Müller-Rommel (Eds.) Oxford University Press (2020)
‘Turkish Leaders and Their Foreign Policy Decision Making Style From a Comparative Perspective: A Multi-Method Approach’, with Esra Cuhadar, Baris Kesgin, & Binnur Ozkececi-Taner, Turkish Studies (2021).
‘British Foreign Policy After Brexit: Losing Europe and Finding a Role’, with Kai Oppermann & Ryan Beasley, International Relations (2020).
'Party Politics at the Water’s Edge: Contestation of Military Operations in Europe', with Wolfgang Wagner, Anna Herranz-Surralles & Falk Ostermann European Political Science Review (2018).
'Casting for a Sovereign Role: Socialising an Aspirant State in the Scottish Independence Referendum,' with Ryan Beasley, European Journal of International Relations (2018).
‘Prime Minister Leadership Style and the Role of Parliament in Security Policy,’ British Journal of Politics and International Relations (2018).
Domestic Role Contestation, Foreign Policy, and International Relations, Editor, with Cristian Cantir, Routledge (2016).
‘A Foreign Policy Analysis Perspective on the Domestic Politics Turn in IR’ International Studies Review (2015).

FULL CV

Recent Professional Activities

Selective Expert Testimony

Invited witness for the Scottish Parliament Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culutre Committee’s evidence session on ‘Scottish Government’s National Outcomes’, Edinburgh, 1 June 2023; video available here; written evidence submitted available here.

Written testimony submitted to the Treaty Scrutiny Inquiry, UK House of Lords, July 2020.

Written testimony submitted to the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee's Inquiry on Global Britain, July 2018.

Invited witness for the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s Inquiry on the Foreign Policy Implications of and for a Separate Scotland, London, January 2013.

Selective Blogs

‘What if Trump Were President When Russia Invaded Ukraine?’, with Kai Oppermann, and Ryan Beasley, Duck of Minerva, 25 September 2023.

‘What would Trump’s Re-election Mean for Ukraine?’, with Ruth Deyermond, Kai Oppermann, and Ryan Beasley, International Affairs, 4 September 2023.

'What an Analysis of Sunak's Personality Could Mean for UK Policy', with Consuelo Thiers and Ryan Beasley, LSE British Politics and Policy blog series, 14 November 2022

'What Happened to Vladimir Putin?' International Affairs, 1 March 2022

‘Leader Personalities: Trump vs. Biden’, with Ryan Beasley and Consuelo Thiers, Duck of Minerva, 27 October 2020

'As Others See Us: The Striking Similarities between Brexit and Scottish Independence Debates,’ Herald Scotland, 21 June 2016

Recent Interviews/Recorded Presentations

Presentation on 'Breaking Bad' Project, Bilkent University 2022

Academicus TR, 2021

Duck of Minerva podcast, 2020

The Hayseed Scholar podcast, 2020