Authoritarian personality and foreign policy

Attempts to understand the foreign pol-icy of particular nations or the course of international relations generally have tradi-tionally been guided almost entirely by his-torical-sociological points of view. The chief foci of analysis have been in the realms of power politics, geopolitics, national econom-ic interests, and the like. Recently, we have seen a growing interest in the role of psy-chological factors in international relations (3, 11, 12). This interest stems in part from the recognition of irrationality in foreign-policy viewpoints. However, it would seem overly narrow to limit our psychological con-cern to the problem of irrationality. The the-