The Experts below are selected from a list of 291 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Stephen Benedict Dyson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
The Operational Code approach to profiling political leaders: understanding Vladimir Putin
Intelligence & National Security, 2017Co-Authors: Stephen Benedict Dyson, Matthew J. ParentAbstract:AbstractContent analytics applied to open source material can assist in understanding, predicting, and influencing the behavior of foreign political leaders. We provide evidence to this effect by profiling Russian President Vladimir Putin, who remains a source of consternation to the academic, intelligence, and policy communities. We apply the Operational Code scheme to a corpus of over one million words spoken by Putin across his time in office, and use the results to adjudicate between the competing portraits of him in the extant literature. We find Putin to hold broadly mainstream beliefs about international politics, albeit qualified by hyper-aggressiveness toward terrorism and a startling preoccupation with political control. His approach is that of an opportunist rather than a strategist. These data represent a stream of information that must be combined with other sources and integrated, through policy judgment, into a comprehensive approach to a foreign political leader.
-
drawing policy implications from the Operational Code of a new political actor russian president vladimir putin
Policy Sciences, 2001Co-Authors: Stephen Benedict DysonAbstract:The task of both foreign policy makers and foreign policy scholars is complicated by the appearance on the international stage of a ‘new actor,’ about whom little information is available. The lack of information concerning such ‘new actors’ makes the job of explaining, predicting, and influencing that decision-maker’s choices many times more difficult. It is the argument of this paper that a multi-disciplinary approach, combining the political-psychology concept of an individual’s ‘Operational Code’ with the policy tasks of formulating guidelines for those who must deal with such ‘new actors,’ offers a way to overcome this problem. The case of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation and a classic ‘new actor,’ is explored in depth on these terms.
-
Drawing policy implications from the ‘Operational Code’ of a ‘new’ political actor: Russian President Vladimir Putin
Policy Sciences, 2001Co-Authors: Stephen Benedict DysonAbstract:The task of both foreign policy makers and foreign policy scholars is complicated by the appearance on the international stage of a ‘new actor,’ about whom little information is available. The lack of information concerning such ‘new actors’ makes the job of explaining, predicting, and influencing that decision-maker’s choices many times more difficult. It is the argument of this paper that a multi-disciplinary approach, combining the political-psychology concept of an individual’s ‘Operational Code’ with the policy tasks of formulating guidelines for those who must deal with such ‘new actors,’ offers a way to overcome this problem. The case of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation and a classic ‘new actor,’ is explored in depth on these terms.
Huiyun Feng - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
prospect theory Operational Code analysis and risk taking behaviour a new model of china s crisis behaviour
Contemporary Politics, 2018Co-Authors: Huiyun FengAbstract:ABSTRACTIntegrating prospect theory and Operational Code analysis, this paper introduces an innovative approach to studying the decision making of Chinese leaders during crises. The unique contribution of this paper is to adopt the methodology of Operational Code analysis to measure the domain of actions of policy makers in the application of prospect theory. We suggest that leaders’ Operational Code beliefs can help us to identify in which domain of actions (gains or losses) leaders are located during crises. Xi Jinping experienced two notable foreign policy crises in 2014, the ‘oil rig’ crisis with Vietnam and the ‘P-8 crisis’ with the United States, which are examined in detail to illustrate Xi’s Operational Code beliefs and risk-taking behaviour of ‘confident accommodation’ behaviour during crises. To test the process validity of integrating Operational Code analysis and prospect theory, Hu Jintao’s Operational Code beliefs and crisis behaviour in 2011–2012 are then compared to Xi’s beliefs and decisi...
-
Prospect theory, Operational Code analysis, and risk-taking behaviour: a new model of China’s crisis behaviour
Contemporary Politics, 2017Co-Authors: Huiyun FengAbstract:ABSTRACTIntegrating prospect theory and Operational Code analysis, this paper introduces an innovative approach to studying the decision making of Chinese leaders during crises. The unique contribution of this paper is to adopt the methodology of Operational Code analysis to measure the domain of actions of policy makers in the application of prospect theory. We suggest that leaders’ Operational Code beliefs can help us to identify in which domain of actions (gains or losses) leaders are located during crises. Xi Jinping experienced two notable foreign policy crises in 2014, the ‘oil rig’ crisis with Vietnam and the ‘P-8 crisis’ with the United States, which are examined in detail to illustrate Xi’s Operational Code beliefs and risk-taking behaviour of ‘confident accommodation’ behaviour during crises. To test the process validity of integrating Operational Code analysis and prospect theory, Hu Jintao’s Operational Code beliefs and crisis behaviour in 2011–2012 are then compared to Xi’s beliefs and decisi...
-
China under Xi Jinping: Operational Code beliefs, foreign policy, and the rise of China
2017Co-Authors: Huiyun FengAbstract:Griffith Business School, School of Government and International RelationsNo Full Tex
-
Transcending rationalism and constructivism: Chinese leaders’ Operational Codes, socialization processes, and multilateralism after the Cold War
European Political Science Review, 2014Co-Authors: Huiyun FengAbstract:This paper challenges both rationalist and constructivist approaches in explaining China’s foreign policy behavior toward multilateral institutions after the Cold War. Borrowing insights from socialization theory and Operational Code analysis, this paper suggests a ‘superficial socialization’ argument to explain China’s pro-multilateralist diplomacy after the Cold War. Using Operational Code analysis to examine belief changes across three generations of Chinese leadership and on different occasions, we argue that China’s pro-multilateralist behavior is a product of ‘superficial socialization’, in which Chinese foreign policy elites change their beliefs about the outside world and regarding the future realization of their political goals in multilateral institutions. However, Chinese policy makers have not changed their instrumental beliefs regarding strategies even in multilateral institutions. China is indeed socialized through multilateral institutions, but its scope is still far from the ‘fundamental socialization’ stage when states’ interests, preferences, and even identities change.
-
xi jinping s Operational Code beliefs and china s foreign policy
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2013Co-Authors: Huiyun FengAbstract:What will China’s foreign policy be under Xi Jinping, the new Chinese leader in Beijing? Will Xi follow Hu Jintao—his predecessor—or change the course of China’s foreign policy orientation in the next decade? Engaging in the current debates over rising China’s foreign policy and its implications for regional security, we suggest ‘bringing the leaders back in’ for a study of China’s foreign policy under Xi. We apply Operational Code analysis, a political psychology approach, to examine the differences and similarities of Xi and Hu’s belief systems. We suggest that Xi shares Hu’s philosophical and instrumental beliefs, which implies more continuities than changes in China’s foreign policy under Xi. In addition, Hu and Xi share similar cooperative worldviews, but the latter’s strategy tends to be more assertive. This suggests that although Xi is a status quo leader, optimistic about the existing international system, he may adopt an assertive foreign policy to achieve his strategic goals if external pressure grows too great. Other states, especially the United States, need to review and revise their foreign policy on China should they have adopted, or intend to adopt, a containment policy towards the PRC, because although a rising China may not be a threat, an angry China indeed will be.
Mark Schafer - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
The Operational Codes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Political Science, 2018Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, Gary SmithAbstract:This chapter profiles the bounded rationality of two major candidates for US president in the 2016 presidential election. It identifies their philosophical beliefs regarding (1) the friendly or hostile nature of the political universe, (2) the achievement of fundamental political values, (3) the predictability of the future, (4) control over historical development, and (5) the role of chance in political life. It also examines their instrumental beliefs regarding (1) the optimum strategic approach to political goals, (2) tactical flexibility in carrying out a strategy, (3) calculation and management of risk, (4) role of timing, and (5) utility of various means in taking political action. These beliefs define a leader’s “Operational Code” regarding the exercise of power by self and others in world politics. The chapter extrapolates from these beliefs some game theory predictions for how Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton as the next US president would exercise power in world politics.
-
Operational Code Theory: Beliefs and Foreign Policy Decisions
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 2018Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark SchaferAbstract:The process of foreign policy decision making is influenced in large part by beliefs, along with the strategic interaction between actors engendered by their decisions and the resulting political outcomes. In this context, beliefs encompass three kinds of effects: the mirroring effects associated with the decision making situation, the steering effects that arise from this situation, and the learning effects of feedback. These effects are modeled using Operational Code analysis, although “Operational Code theory” more accurately describes an alliance of attribution and schema theories from psychology and game theory from economics applied to the domain of politics. This “theory complex” specifies belief-based solutions to the puzzles posed by diagnostic, decision making, and learning processes in world politics. The major social and intellectual dimensions of Operational Code theory can be traced to Nathan Leites’s seminal research on the Bolshevik Operational Code, The Operational Code of the Politburo. In the last half of the twentieth century, applications of Operational Code analysis have emphasized different cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms as intellectual dimensions in explaining foreign policy decisions. The literature on Operational Code theory may be divided into four general waves of research: idiographic-interpretive studies, nomothetic-typological studies, quantitative-statistical studies, and formal modeling studies. The present trajectory of studies on Operational Code points to a number of important trends that straddle political psychology and game theory. For example, the psychological processes of mirroring, steering, and learning associated with Operational Code analysis have the potential to enrich our understanding of game-theoretic models of strategic interaction.
-
Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis : States, Leaders, and the Microfoundations of Behavioral International Relations
2011Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Akan Malici, Mark SchaferAbstract:Part I: Foreign Policy Analysis 1. Foreign Policy Analysis and Behavioral International Relations (Stephen G. Walker) 2. Macropolitics and Foreign Policy Decisions: The Billiard Ball Model of IR (Stephen G. Walker) 3. Micropolitics and Foreign Policy Decisions: The Behavioral Model of IR (Stephen G. Walker) 4. Quantum Politics and Operational Code Analysis: Theories and Methods (Stephen G. Walker) Part II: Foreign Policy Decision Making 5. The United States and Rogue Leaders: Understanding the Conflicts (Akan Malici) 6. Deceptive Bargaining and Nuclear Ambitions: Prospect Theory and North Korea's Decision to Go Nuclear (Kai He and Huiyun Feng) 7. Small Group Dynamics: The Psychological Characteristics of Leaders and the Quality of Group Decision Making (Mark Schafer, Jonathon Nunley, and Scott Crichlow) 8. Alliances and Their Microfoundations: France and Britain in the 9/11 Era (Akan Malici) Part III: Foreign Policy Learning 9. Learning to Resist or Resisting to Learn? The Operational Codes of Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung (Akan Malici) 10. Stability and Change in Belief Systems: The Operational Code of George W. Bush from Governor to Second Term President (Jonathan Renshon) 11. Experiential Learning by U.S. Presidents: Domestic, International, and Psychological Influences in the Post-Cold War World (Samuel Robison) 12. Cognitive Responses by U.S. Presidents to Foreign Policy Crises: Belief Changes in Response to Positive and Negative Experiences (B. Gregory Marfleet and Hannah Simpson) Part IV: Foreign Policy Dynamics 13. Dueling with Dictators: Explaining the Strategic Interaction Patterns of U.S. Presidents and Rogue Leaders (Stephen G. Walker and Mark Schafer) 14. Binary Role Theory: Reducing Uncertainty and Managing Complexity in Foreign Policy Analysis (Stephen G. Walker) 15. The Integration of Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations (Stephen G. Walker) Appendix. Formal Models of Symbolic and Strategic Interaction (Stephen G. Walker)
-
Structural International Relations Theories and the Future of Operational Code Analysis
Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics, 2006Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark SchaferAbstract:It is relatively easy to respond to Waltz (1999) by making the claim that models and methods from the general cognitivist research program in world politics can strengthen structural theories of international relations (Hagan 2001; Tetlock 1998). It is harder to demonstrate that the additional effort to become familiar with cognitive theories is worth it for several reasons. Beliefs and other individual-level mechanisms have not always been easily accessible inside the “black box” of decision-making processes by states, groups, and individuals, and they often need to be observed with “at-a-distance” methods (Hermann 2002; Post 2003; Schafer 2000). It has also been very time-consuming to do the process-tracing necessary to reach the microfoundations of complex processes generated inside a political system.
-
Belief Systems as Causal Mechanisms in World Politics: An Overview of Operational Code Analysis
Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics, 2006Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark SchaferAbstract:As the quotation from Smith (1988) indicates, research programs in foreign policy analysis have always maintained that who decides matters. Since the end of the cold war, more scholars and policy makers have come to appreciate the need to study belief systems as causal mechanisms in the post-cold war world. Following their failure to anticipate and explain the end of the conflict between the superpowers, rational choice and international relations theorists have also begun to recognize the need to include the analysis of beliefs and norms in their research programs (Bueno De Mesquita and Lalman 1992; Geva and Mintz 1997; Johnston 1995a; Keohane and Martin 2003; Schweller 2003). The cold war constrained both the foreign policy choices of the superpowers as well as the actions of others within a bipolar system. In its aftermath, the absence of clear external focal points on which to calculate strategies and tactics has forced policy makers to rely more on the internal focal points offered by their own subjective beliefs about the nature of the political universe and the most effective means for realizing political goals.
Stephen G. Walker - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
The Operational Codes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Political Science, 2018Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, Gary SmithAbstract:This chapter profiles the bounded rationality of two major candidates for US president in the 2016 presidential election. It identifies their philosophical beliefs regarding (1) the friendly or hostile nature of the political universe, (2) the achievement of fundamental political values, (3) the predictability of the future, (4) control over historical development, and (5) the role of chance in political life. It also examines their instrumental beliefs regarding (1) the optimum strategic approach to political goals, (2) tactical flexibility in carrying out a strategy, (3) calculation and management of risk, (4) role of timing, and (5) utility of various means in taking political action. These beliefs define a leader’s “Operational Code” regarding the exercise of power by self and others in world politics. The chapter extrapolates from these beliefs some game theory predictions for how Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton as the next US president would exercise power in world politics.
-
Operational Code Theory: Beliefs and Foreign Policy Decisions
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 2018Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark SchaferAbstract:The process of foreign policy decision making is influenced in large part by beliefs, along with the strategic interaction between actors engendered by their decisions and the resulting political outcomes. In this context, beliefs encompass three kinds of effects: the mirroring effects associated with the decision making situation, the steering effects that arise from this situation, and the learning effects of feedback. These effects are modeled using Operational Code analysis, although “Operational Code theory” more accurately describes an alliance of attribution and schema theories from psychology and game theory from economics applied to the domain of politics. This “theory complex” specifies belief-based solutions to the puzzles posed by diagnostic, decision making, and learning processes in world politics. The major social and intellectual dimensions of Operational Code theory can be traced to Nathan Leites’s seminal research on the Bolshevik Operational Code, The Operational Code of the Politburo. In the last half of the twentieth century, applications of Operational Code analysis have emphasized different cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms as intellectual dimensions in explaining foreign policy decisions. The literature on Operational Code theory may be divided into four general waves of research: idiographic-interpretive studies, nomothetic-typological studies, quantitative-statistical studies, and formal modeling studies. The present trajectory of studies on Operational Code points to a number of important trends that straddle political psychology and game theory. For example, the psychological processes of mirroring, steering, and learning associated with Operational Code analysis have the potential to enrich our understanding of game-theoretic models of strategic interaction.
-
Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis : States, Leaders, and the Microfoundations of Behavioral International Relations
2011Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Akan Malici, Mark SchaferAbstract:Part I: Foreign Policy Analysis 1. Foreign Policy Analysis and Behavioral International Relations (Stephen G. Walker) 2. Macropolitics and Foreign Policy Decisions: The Billiard Ball Model of IR (Stephen G. Walker) 3. Micropolitics and Foreign Policy Decisions: The Behavioral Model of IR (Stephen G. Walker) 4. Quantum Politics and Operational Code Analysis: Theories and Methods (Stephen G. Walker) Part II: Foreign Policy Decision Making 5. The United States and Rogue Leaders: Understanding the Conflicts (Akan Malici) 6. Deceptive Bargaining and Nuclear Ambitions: Prospect Theory and North Korea's Decision to Go Nuclear (Kai He and Huiyun Feng) 7. Small Group Dynamics: The Psychological Characteristics of Leaders and the Quality of Group Decision Making (Mark Schafer, Jonathon Nunley, and Scott Crichlow) 8. Alliances and Their Microfoundations: France and Britain in the 9/11 Era (Akan Malici) Part III: Foreign Policy Learning 9. Learning to Resist or Resisting to Learn? The Operational Codes of Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung (Akan Malici) 10. Stability and Change in Belief Systems: The Operational Code of George W. Bush from Governor to Second Term President (Jonathan Renshon) 11. Experiential Learning by U.S. Presidents: Domestic, International, and Psychological Influences in the Post-Cold War World (Samuel Robison) 12. Cognitive Responses by U.S. Presidents to Foreign Policy Crises: Belief Changes in Response to Positive and Negative Experiences (B. Gregory Marfleet and Hannah Simpson) Part IV: Foreign Policy Dynamics 13. Dueling with Dictators: Explaining the Strategic Interaction Patterns of U.S. Presidents and Rogue Leaders (Stephen G. Walker and Mark Schafer) 14. Binary Role Theory: Reducing Uncertainty and Managing Complexity in Foreign Policy Analysis (Stephen G. Walker) 15. The Integration of Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations (Stephen G. Walker) Appendix. Formal Models of Symbolic and Strategic Interaction (Stephen G. Walker)
-
Structural International Relations Theories and the Future of Operational Code Analysis
Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics, 2006Co-Authors: Stephen G. Walker, Mark SchaferAbstract:It is relatively easy to respond to Waltz (1999) by making the claim that models and methods from the general cognitivist research program in world politics can strengthen structural theories of international relations (Hagan 2001; Tetlock 1998). It is harder to demonstrate that the additional effort to become familiar with cognitive theories is worth it for several reasons. Beliefs and other individual-level mechanisms have not always been easily accessible inside the “black box” of decision-making processes by states, groups, and individuals, and they often need to be observed with “at-a-distance” methods (Hermann 2002; Post 2003; Schafer 2000). It has also been very time-consuming to do the process-tracing necessary to reach the microfoundations of complex processes generated inside a political system.
-
A World of Beliefs: Modeling Interactions Among Agents with Different Operational Codes
Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics, 2006Co-Authors: B. Gregory Marfleet, Stephen G. WalkerAbstract:The organization of the Operational Code research program spans levels of analysis as well as levels of foreign policy decisions. It has an “inside-out” structure in which the beliefs of individuals are at the core of the research program. Its focus then expands across leaders, advisors, and groups within the state in order to aggregate a prevailing set of shared beliefs or identify differences that require resolution in order to generate an Operational Code for the state (Malici 2005; Marfleet 2000; Walker and Schafer 2000). The resolution of contending beliefs held by the leaders of a government are strategic decision-making episodes with the results appearing in the public statements accompanying a foreign policy decision (Lake and Powell 1999b).
Joseph Molnar - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
An Operational Code Analysis of China’s National Defense White Papers: 1998-2015
Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2018Co-Authors: Yi Edward Yang, Jonathan W. Keller, Joseph MolnarAbstract:Scholarly efforts to predict the future character of the U.S.-China relationship abound. Few however looks to leaders’ beliefs as valid explanatory variables. In this paper, we argue that state leaders’ belief systems are key to understanding both the states’ intentions and policy choices. We analyze China’s national defense white papers (1998–2015) published to date as the source material to gauge the core collective beliefs of three generations of Chinese leadership. The Operational Code framework is employed to conceptualize and measure these beliefs. Our results identified important crossgenerational changes in a few belief indicators. In the Xi Jinping era, for instance, the political world is seen as less friendly and cooperative strategies are viewed less favorably. In terms of tactics, the policy tools “threaten” and “promise” are viewed as significantly more useful by the current leadership than by past Chinese leaders.
-
an Operational Code analysis of china s national defense white papers 1998 2015
Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2018Co-Authors: Yi Edward Yang, Jonathan W. Keller, Joseph MolnarAbstract:Scholarly efforts to predict the future character of the U.S.-China relationship abound. Few however looks to leaders’ beliefs as valid explanatory variables. In this paper, we argue that state leaders’ belief systems are key to understanding both the states’ intentions and policy choices. We analyze China’s national defense white papers (1998–2015) published to date as the source material to gauge the core collective beliefs of three generations of Chinese leadership. The Operational Code framework is employed to conceptualize and measure these beliefs. Our results identified important crossgenerational changes in a few belief indicators. In the Xi Jinping era, for instance, the political world is seen as less friendly and cooperative strategies are viewed less favorably. In terms of tactics, the policy tools “threaten” and “promise” are viewed as significantly more useful by the current leadership than by past Chinese leaders.
