Class Year

2026

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Fall 2024

Department 1

Political Science

Abstract

The United States 2020 election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump led many Americans to argue the need for younger politicians and presidential candidates, as they had concerns that older presidents, like Trump and Biden, were unfit mentally and physically to lead the nation. In particular, some expressed fears that these leaders, because of their age, would be more likely to engage the United States in or escalate interstate disputes. Scholarship in the field has found conflicting results, with Horowitz et al. finding older leaders are more likely to engage their states in interstate disputes, while Bertoli et al. found the same for younger leaders. This paper reviews these works, which leads to a detailed analysis of the variable of age. I find that age cannot be isolated as the primary variable influencing conflictual behavior in world leaders, as there are simply too many factors confounding their behavior. This finding suggests that leaders, as human beings, are complex actors in international relations, and their decision-making and behavior cannot be attributed to one variable, such as age.

Comments

Written for POL 103: Introduction to International Relations

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