184 CHAPTER Six ■ The IndIvIdual
same situation, would dif er ent individuals have made dif er ent decisions, thus
charting dif er ent courses through international relations?
With re spect to elites, two questions are most pertinent to determining the role of
individuals: When are the actions of individuals likely to have a greater or lesser efect
on the course of events? And under what circumstances do actors’ dif er ent personal
characteristics cause them to behave diferently?
the Impact of elites: external conditions
An individual’s actions afect the course of events when at least one of several factors
is pres ent (see Figure 6.1). When po liti cal institutions are unstable, young, in crisis,
or collapsed, leaders are able to provide power ful influences. Founding fathers, be
they the United States’ George Washington, India’s Mohandas Gandhi, Rus sia’s
Vladimir Lenin, or South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, have a great impact because
they lead in the early years of their
nations’ lives, when institutions and
practices are being established.
Thus, Mandela’s informal style and
his genius for the gesture of recon
ciliation made the transition to a
multiracial regime smoother. And
Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roo se velt,
Mikhail Gorbachev, and Vladimir
Putin had more influence precisely
because their states were in eco
nomic crises when they came to
power.
Individuals also afect the course
of events when they have few insti
tutional constraints. In dictatorial
or highly centralized regimes, top
leaders are relatively free from
domestic constraints, such as po liti
cal opposition or societal inputs,
and thus are able to chart courses
and implement foreign policy rela
tively unfettered, as illustrated by
the Soviet and Chinese examples.
In younger and struggling democ
Mohandas Gandhi tirelessly led a mass nonviolent
movement for indian in de pen dence from British
rule. His actions helped to establish india as an
in de pen dent state, with major international
ramifications. Here, Gandhi visits the British prime
minister’s residence in London in 1931.