In the past two decades, there has been an upsurge of interest in how prime ministers manage the foreign policymaking process in parliamentary systems. Whereas students of comparative politics propose that structural constraints (e.g., ministerial autonomy, the existence of a pivotal party within a coalition) limit what a prime minister can do, scholars engaged in leadership studies emphasize the personality factor and leadership style. Structural approaches tend to downplay the extent to which individual prime ministers can shape the process, while psychological perspectives understate the importance of external constraints. In seeking to improve upon this literature, the present study will attend simultaneously to institutional constraints and the leadership styles of prime ministers using the comparative case study method. The research is guided by the following question: How does the interaction between leadership style and institutional constraints shape the prime ministerial management of the foreign policymaking process in parliamentary systems? The research will examine six cabinet decisions in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Israel providing a systematic evaluation of the extent to which prime ministers control foreign policymaking in parliamentary systems that range from single party cabinets to grand coalitions. The data will be collected through archival research in United Kingdom, Germany and Israel. Evidence for the case studies and the decision making processes will come from the analysis of government and parliamentary documents. Using the structured, focused comparison method, the study will allow for cross-country as well as within-country comparisons of prime ministerial management of the foreign policymaking process responding to a call for more comparative research in the field of foreign policy analysis. Broader Impacts: This research has implications for assessing the stability of foreign policymaking within coalition governments and the quality of decisions made by different types of cabinets. The findings will improve our understanding of decision making in parliamentary systems which constitute a good portion of the world's democracies and yet are relatively understudied.
