8. The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decisionmaking

American Foreign Policy (London: G. Allen, 1980) pp. 316, 318.

(Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1953), hereafter cited as Study.

In his review article, “Politics, History, and Psychology,” World Politics, 8 (October 1955), p. 117.

In this connection see, for example, Michael Waltzer’s study of the origins of modem radical politics in the sixteenth century and his effort to construct a general model of radical politics that encompasses Bolshevism as well as Puritanism. The Revolution of Saints (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).

I have suggested elsewhere (“Power As A Compensatory Value for Political Leaders,” Journal of Social Issues, 24 (July 1968)) that political scientists interested in applying personality theories to the study of political leaders need to build a number of conceptual ‘bridges’ that reflect the problems, theoretical interests, and available data of their discipline in order to make more effective use of personality theories rooted in psychoanalysis. The “operational code” construct is one such ‘bridge.’ The belief system about politics is part of the cognitive and affective portion of the ego structure of personality; as such it serves an adaptive function for coping with reality. But at the same time the emergence of a belief system may be affected by developmental problems encountered in personality formation; if so, beliefs may then also serve ego defensive functions vis-a-vis unconscious wishes and anxieties.

This point was well made recently by John Weakland in a perceptive and balanced appraisal of A Study of Bolshevism. Weakland notes that Leites’ work is “remarkably simple in overall organization, and for a work aiming to present a code, it gives little attention to synthesis and systematization. … We are presented with a list of themes, but these parts of the code are not interrelated. … And there is even less attention given to questions of more complex structure, such as possible relationships between themes or principles of different levels. …” John H. Weakland, “Investigating the Operational Code of the Chinese Communist Leadership,” an unpublished paper written for the Politburo Feasibility Study Conference, Stanford University, 16–18 December 1966.

For a more general discussion of political belief systems, see Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), particularly the ‘Introduction’ by L. Pye and “Conclusion: Comparative Political Culture” by S. Verba.

These were considered by Leites in Study especially pp. 99–144.

In recent years a number of social scientists have attempted to draw upon the field of cognitive psychology in order to elaborate better decisionmaking models for studies of world politics. While cognitive theory is relevant and suggestive, it does not lend itself readily to the task. Considerable adaption and development is needed. In particular, investigators will have to articulate the substantive beliefs and cognitive problems that are relevant in decision-making in political settings, and they will also have to define more specifically the special contexts in which these political beliefs originate, operate in decision-making, and change. For a useful discussion and statement of a still quite general model, see Richard A. Brody, “Cognition and Behavior: A Model of International Relations,” in O. G. Harvey (ed.), Experience, Structure, and Adaptability (New York: Springer, 1966).

For interesting developments in this direction, however, see Albert Hirschman’s effort to identify some characteristic features of the problem-solving and decision-making styles of Latin American reform leaders, in his Journeys Toward Progress (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1963); and the research by Wendell Bell and James Mau on “images of the future” as a key variable in social change in developing countries.

I have borrowed here and adapted the general distinction between ‘epistemological’ and ‘instrumental’ beliefs made by O. G. Brim, D. C. Glass, D. E. Lavin, and N. Goodman, Personality and Decision Processes: Studies in the Social Psychology of Thinking (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). In attempting to apply their useful distinction to the subject matter of the “operational code” I have found it necessary to formulate differently the specific issues and questions related to the problem of political action.

Leites himself did not overlook these problems or oversimplify the task of utilizing the operational code, with its ambiguous and inconsistent prescriptions, for explaining or predicting Soviet behavior. See Study pp. 16–18.

This point has been emphasized particularly in the writings of Charles E. Lindblom. See also March and Simon, op. cit, pp. 139, 151.

The summary presented here is drawn from Study, pp. 27–30 (“Politics Is a War”) and pp. 429–41 (“Who-Whom?”).

The summary which follows draws from Study, pp. 404–16 (“The Incessant Danger of Attack,” and “The Uncertainty of Survival Before Victory”).

The summary presented here draws from Study, pp. 32, 77–85 (“Unpredictable Aspects of the Future”).

See Study, pp. 85–92 (“Transforming Opportunities Into Realities”).

See Study, pp. 67–73 (“The Denial of Accidents”).

See Study, pp. 49, 264–68.

The discussion of this question draws from and freely interprets materials in Study, pp. 32, 77–92, 47–49, 514–24.

On this point see, for example, March and Simon, op. cit., pp. 140–41, 169.

During the course of efforts to assess Soviet intentions in placing missiles in Cuba, Charles Bohlen, a leading U.S. specialist on the Soviet Union, cited one of Lenin’s adages which compared national expansion to a bayonet drive: If you strike steel, pull back; if you strike mush, keep going. Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 677.

For a discussion of the possibility that the Bolshevik tendency to push to the limit led to an underestimation of the undesired consequences of such conduct, see Leites, Study, pp. 33–34, 36–37, 39.

See Study, pp. 30–34, 505–12, 442–49, 52–53, 514–24.

A similar “tension of opposites” has been noted in the Chinese Communist approach to the problem of strategy and action. See Tang Tsou and Morton H. Halperin, op. cit., p. 89.

See Study, p. 34.

See Study, pp. 34–42.

Kremlin Moods, The RAND Corporation, RM-3535-ISA (January 1964), p. 126.

Interestingly, Khrushchev’s period also saw the emergence of a less favorable image of the United States as an opponent. There was both less idealization of, and less respect for the U.S. elite than in the old Bolshevik view. The historic class enemy was now perceived as an ‘aging,’ ‘declining’ elite, one which was weaker, less intelligent, less determined than in the past. The changed characteristics imputed to the United States leadership, however, were seen as making it in some respects possibly more dangerous. (See Kremlin Moods, pp. 91–126, 1–13.)

This point was emphasized in Leites’ Kremlin Moods. There is, in the writer’s knowledge, no similar study of further changes in the belief system that may have emerged in the post-Khrushchev era. However, Vernon V. Aspaturian is studying Soviet images of the Kennedy Administration.

Ole Holsti, “Cognitive Dynamics and Images,” D. J. Finlay, O. R. Holsti, and R. R. Fagen, Enemies in Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1957).

For example, Arnold Horelick, “The Cuban Missile Crisis: Analysis of Soviet Calculations and Behavior” World Politics 16 (April 1964).