‘Stakes are High in the Middle East’: Comparative Risk Acceptance by Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Vladimir V. Putin of the Russian Federation through the Lens of Regionalism

Abstract

Abstract

Political leaders’ beliefs do not only change across time, the process known as political leaders’ learning, but they sometimes also change across regions of the world. The conclusion of this article is two-fold. First, the use of the method of operational coding (e.g., Walker, 1977) for decision making by U.S. President George W. Bush indicates that his risk acceptance when the Middle East is at stake is significantly lower than in cases of Western hemisphere or Europe. Second, operational codes found for the Russian President Vladimir Putin indicate that his risk acceptance does not change significantly across regions of the world. This article introduces the term “regional approach” to define situations, when leaders’ instrumental beliefs change from region to region. It furthermore suggests that the method of operational coding could be amended so that it allows also estimating risk acceptance in the latter meaning of risk. The existing method of estimating leader’s risk acceptance does not allow estimating the acceptance of risky decisions in the meaning of calculated decisions involving low probability of achievement combined with high value of possible outcome. The method nevertheless enables to evaluate the role played by the acceptance of risky decisions as a factor in pontaneous, uncalculated decisions.

Keywords: foreign policy – operational code – risk – regionalism – George W. Bush – Vladimir V. Putin

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Bibliography: Lanko, Dimitry A.: ‘Stakes are High in the Middle East’: Comparative Risk Acceptance by Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Vladimir V. Putin of the Russian Federation through the Lens of Regionalism, PCS, 1-2013, pp. 77-90. https://doi.org/10.3224/pcs.v4i1.19792