Individual Leaders and the State: The Case of Israel as a Complex Adaptive System

Yıl 2025, Cilt: 22 Sayı: 87, 105 - 122, 18.09.2025

Stephen G. Walker Mark Schafer Joshua Lambert

https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.1616778

Cited By: 2

Öz

This paper focuses on foreign policy processes of states as social entities, which are made manifest as the “psychology of the state” and specified as learning effects due to external causes (object appraisal); steering effects due to internal causes (ego defense); and social interaction effects from learning and steering processes (self-other mediation).The cases under investigation are the manifest psychology of the state of Israel across three individual Israeli leaders: Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu. The dependent variables are their beliefs about the nature of the political universe (friendly/hostile), the most effective strategies for exercising power (cooperation/conflict), and historical control (low/high). The independent variables are the personality processes of object appraisal (terrorist attacks and fatalities), ego defense (mistrust and self-confidence), and mediation of self-other relations (task v. process orientation and belief in ability to control events. They are analyzed within the context of game theory models of complex adaptive systems.

Anahtar Kelimeler

operational code analysis , role theory , Israel , cooperation , conflict

Kaynakça

• Achen, Christopher. 1988. A State with Bureaucratic Politics is Responsible as a Unitary State. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1-4, Washington, DC.
• Axelrod, Robert and Michael Cohen. 1999. Harnessing Complexity. New York, Free Press.
• Brams, Steven. 1994. Theory of Moves. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• George, Alexander. 1969. The Operational Code. International Studies Quarterly 13: 190-222.
• Hermann, Margaret. 2001. How Decision Units Shape Foreign Policy. International Studies Review 3: 47-81.
• Hermann, Margaret. 2003. Assessing Leadership Style: A Trait Analysis. In The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders, ed. Jerold Post. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan: 178-214.
• Holland, John. 2014. Signals and Boundaries. Cambridge, MIT Press.
• Johnson, Dominic. 2009. Overconfidence and War. Cambridge, Harvard.
• Leites, Nathan. 1951. The Operational Code of the Politburo. New York, McGraw-Hill.
• Leites, Nathan. 1953. A Study of Bolshevism. New York, Free Press.
• Leites, Nathan. 1964. Kremlin Moods. Santa Monica, RAND.
• Malici, Akan and Stephen Walker. 2017. Role Theory and Role Conflict in U.S.-Iran Relations. New York, Routledge.
• Ozdamar, Ozgur, B. Toygar Halistoprak and Michael Young. 2023. Do Campaign Speeches Predict Foreign Policy Policy? Uluslararası İlişkiler 20, 80: 73-91.
• Rapoport, Anatol and Melvin Guyer. 1966. A Taxonomy of 2 x 2 Games. General Systems Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research 11: 203-214.
• Schafer, Mark. 2000. Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance. Political Psychology 21: 511-528.
• Schafer, Mark and Joshua Lambert. 2022. Psychological Characteristics of Leaders (PsyCL): A New Data Set. Foreign Policy Analysis 18, 2: https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orac008.
• Schafer, Mark and Stephen Walker. eds. 2006. Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics. New York, Palgrave.
• Schafer, Mark and Stephen Walker, eds. 2021. Operational Code Analysis and Foreign Policy Roles. New York, Routledge.
• Simon, Herbert. 1981. Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MIT Press.
• Smith, M. Brewster.1968. A Map for the Study of Personality and Politics. Journal of Social Issues 24: 15-28.
• START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). 2021. Global Terrorism Database (GTD) [Data set]. University of Maryland. https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd
• Stoessinger, John. 1979. Crusaders and Pragmatists. Movers of Modern American Foreign Policy. New York, W.W. Norton.
• Tetlock, Philip, and Aaron Belkin. 1996. Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
• Walker, Stephen. 1983. The Motivational Foundations of Political Belief Systems. International Studies Quarterly 27: 179-201.
• Walker, Stephen. 2003. Operational Code Analysis as a Scientific Research Program. In Progress in International Relations Theory, eds. Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman. Cambridge, MIT Press: 245-276.
• Walker, Stephen. 2013. Role Theory and the Cognitive Architecture of British Appeasement Decisions. New York, Routledge.
• Walker, Stephen, Mark Schafer, and Michael Young. 1998. Systematic Procedures for Operational Code Analysis. International Studies Quarterly 42: 175-190.
• Walker, Stephen and Akan Malici. 2011. U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
• Walker, Stephen and Akan Malici. 2021. An Operational Code Analysis of Foreign Policy Roles in U.S-Iran Relations. In Operational Code Analysis and Foreign Policy Roles, ed. Mark Schafer and Stephen Walker. New York, Routledge: 339-370.
• Young, Michael. 2001. Building Worldviews with Profiler+. In Progress in Communication Sciences, ed. Mark West. Vol. 17. Westport, Ablex Publishing: 17-32.