The profits of personality: advancing the fourth ‘I’ in international political economy research

Two decades after Hay’s classification of political economy research, not much has changed. Interests, institutions, and ideas continue to dominate, especially in international political economy (IPE) scholarship. Despite calls for more actor-centred and psychological approaches, the individual remains a missing ‘I’ in most IPE research. This paper advances the fourth ‘I’ in IPE by drawing on psychological work in foreign policy analysis (FPA) and demonstrating the utility of personality analysis in accounting for ways that political leaders manage integrated national economies. We use corporate taxation and tax competition as our illustrative case study, focusing in particular on the different ways leaders in Ecuador and Peru responded to windfall profits during the 2003–2013 commodities boom. We argue that interests, institutions, and ideas do not completely account for variation in the taxation of windfall profits in these countries and we employ leadership trait analyses of Presidents Correa and Humala to provide the missing link. Our results suggest personality differences, when combined with contextualised understandings of the pressures that leaders face, best explain their different approaches. Overall, the paper points to the profits of including personality in IPE and forges stronger links between IPE and FPA research.