Is Our Leaders Learning?

Abstract

When Leaders Learn and When They Don't: Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung at the End of the Cold War. By Malici Akan. Albany, NY: SUNY University Press, 2008. 194 pp., $18.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-7304-7). In this intriguing and empirically rich book, Akan Malici argues that the most important variable in international relations (IR) is how political leaders view themselves and each other. Theories of international politics tend to slide by this point, Malici suggests, and so are unable to escape chronic under-specification. The oft-cited methodological problem of making leaders preferences visible is, to Malici, perfectly surmountable, and he makes his case with the study of two consequential leaders during a time of international systemic change: Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung at the end of the Cold War. Malici's approach is to take the speeches leaders give as demonstrative of their “operational codes”: the core beliefs an individual holds about the nature of the political universe and their place within it. Speeches are scanned for indicators—specifically, transitive verbs—of who the political leader believes has power and how it can best be employed. Quantitative summaries of these beliefs are …