Description
Scholars have long debated why major foreign policy shifts occur at certain moments rather than others, yet existing explanations often rely on structural conditions or assume a rational, linear conception of time. This paper introduces leadership psychology into temporal analysis, arguing that leaders act through subjectively constructed political time. We conceptualize time as a psychologically mediated factor that interacts with leaders’ temporal orientations and, in triangular contexts, with the competing temporalities of rivals and allies. Drawing on narrative analysis and the Temporal Definition of the Situation (TDoS) framework, the paper traces how U.S., Chinese and Taiwanese leaders—facing broadly similar structural conditions between 1969 and 1979—nonetheless defined political time differently across four dimensions: initiation, pace, duration and order. Archival evidence from the Foreign Relations of the United States series, presidential tapes, and public opinion data reveals how temporal misalignments among Nixon, Carter, Mao, and Chiang generated diplomatic delay, crisis, and eventual re-alignment over the Taiwan issue. This study challenges rationalist models that treat time as an objective backdrop and demonstrates that variation in leaders’ temporal orientations helps explain when and how transformative diplomatic moves become possible—offering fresh insight into the temporal dynamics of contemporary great-power competition.
