Political cultural roots of assertive foreign policy roles: A cross-country speech analysis (2000–2024)

This study explores the political cultural foundations of assertive foreign policy roles. By utilizing cultural dimensions widely used in comparative behavioral research, it shows how leaders’ emphasis on different cultural frames influences their choice of assertive foreign policy roles differently. For this purpose, the study uses a novel, longitudinal dataset comprising 2000 speech texts delivered between 2000 and 2024 by leaders in Germany, Russia, Türkiye, the UK, and the US. The findings provide evidence of a positive and significant influence of survival values, and a negative and significant influence of self-expressive values and rational-secular values on the use of assertive roles. The present study bridges comparative behavioral research and foreign policy analysis within a single analytical framework, and, by doing so, it contributes to the systematic, comparative study of culture in foreign policy analysis.