Leadership and Foreign Policy: Nuanced Approaches

Thursday 30 Sept 2021, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/London

The Foreign Policy Working Group extends a warm welcome at the beginning of the new academic year to all of its members with a new virtual event, 'Leadership and foreign policy: nuanced approaches'. The FPWG is delighted to continue its partnership and collaboration with The Council for International Relations (Greece). 

Speakers

• Athanassios G. Platias (Professor of Strategy, the University of Piraeus) will present a neoclassical realist perspective of the leader through the case of the Chinese vs the US model of leadership, in particular within the frame of Sino-US strategic competition and China’s potential to evolve into a world power. The approach argues that the key concept for international leadership is strategic credibility advanced by a prudent statesman or stateswoman. As such, it seeks to explain how structures play a pivotal role in the shaping of a leader.  
   
• Vasileios Syros (Director of the Early Modern Greek Culture Program at the Medici Archive Project in Florence, Italy and Osk. Huttunen Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge) will focus on the nexus between technocracy and the EU’s foreign policy. Syros will argue that key leaders of the EU, such as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, are often perceived to exemplify a technocratic model of leadership with little room for personal charisma. This presentation will examine how the prevalence of this technocratic style of leadership bears upon EU’s foreign policy, especially in light of the recent developments in Afghanistan. 

Registration for the event will close 2 hours before it is due to begin.