ABSTRACT
Abstract This chapter presents a political personality and leadership style analysis of Angela Merkel, Germany’s successful Christian democratic federal chancellor and one of the European Union’s (EU’s) most powerful leaders. How does her personality and leadership style contribute to her success, and what can we still expect from Merkel? Political psychology has generated several studies into the personality of political leaders (Post, 2013; Winter, 2013). We follow this research tradition as we draw a psychological profi le of Angela Merkel and analyze her leadership style. The elaborated MIDC profi ling method we employ (Immelman, 2004) and the leadership style analysis that is derived from it (Steinberg and Immelman, 2008) are based on the Millon’s (1990) personality approach. The case study explains how Angela Merkel’s personality and leadership characteristics, besides her personal history, affect her performance and policies at the EU level.
