John F. Kennedy

Highlighting the role of individual leaders, the broader study explores when and why great powers seek to transform foreign institutions and societies through military interventions. The shared data were collected primarily during trips to the Kennedy Library in 2006 and 2008 and cover the Cold War period. Kennedy’s pre-presidential papers, which include travel diaries, personal letters, and speech drafts, are used as a rich source for measuring his foreign policy beliefs and attitudes.