Charismatic leadership is an integral yet understudied aspect of foreign policy in liberal democratic states. Combining insights from recent developments on charismatic leadership in organization and management studies with literature on foreign policy, we construct a novel theoretical framework for understanding how foreign policy leaders exercise charismatic leadership. We argue that charismatic leadership makes sense of who ‘we’ are and where we are going through communicative practices. We specify these practices and discuss why charismatic leadership is important in foreign policy analysis; what it is; and how and why sense-making matters for a charismatic leadership style. We contribute with new empirical knowledge by probing our theoretical propositions in a comparative case-study of the charismatic leadership practices of Donald Trump and Angela Merkel. The case-studies illustrate the importance of charismatic communication for both leaders, while disclosing variations in both the ‘thickness’ of charismatic leadership practices and their compatibility with rational legal authority and liberal democratic values.

中文翻译：

---

外交政策中的魅力领导

魅力型领导是自由民主国家外交政策不可或缺的一个方面，但尚未得到充分研究。将组织和管理研究中魅力型领导的最新发展与外交政策文献相结合，我们构建了一个新的理论框架，以了解外交政策领导人如何行使魅力型领导。我们认为，魅力型领导可以理解“我们”是谁，以及我们通过交流实践在哪里。我们详细说明了这些做法，并讨论了为什么魅力型领导在外交政策分析中很重要；这是什么; 以及为什么意义建构对于魅力型领导风格很重要。我们通过在唐纳德特朗普和安吉拉默克尔的魅力领导实践的比较案例研究中探索我们的理论命题，贡献了新的经验知识。案例研究说明了魅力沟通对两位领导人的重要性，同时揭示了魅力领导实践的“厚度”及其与理性法律权威和自由民主价值观的兼容性的差异。