Karen_A._Mingst,_Ivan_M._Arregu_n-Toft]_Essentia

Foreign Policy Elites: Individuals Who  Matter 185

racies, the institutions may not be well established. Indeed, Hamid Karzai of Af ghan­
i stan admitted that he relied “the very least” on his own governmental institutions,
but rather, he depended on informal networks and ad hoc governance.^3
In demo cratic regimes, too, top decision makers occasionally are able to change
policy in a dramatic fashion. For example, U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1972 was
able to engineer a complete foreign policy reversal in relations with the People’s
Republic of China, secretly sending his top foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger,
for several meetings with the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and his advisers. These
moves were an unexpected change, given Nixon’s Republican Party affiliation and
prior anticommunist rec ord. President Barack Obama in 2015 also announced an
unexpected policy reversal, opening up dialogue with Cuba after almost five de cades,
and the administration negotiated a framework nuclear agreement with Iran after almost
four de cades of little contact. But such reversals may be the exception since many
demo cratic leaders are constrained by bureaucracies and societal groups, as illustrated
by some strong domestic opposition in the United States over both the Cuban “open­
ing” and the Iran nuclear agreement.
The specifics of a situation also determine the extent to which individuals matter.
Decision makers’ personal characteristics have more influence on outcomes when the
issue is peripheral rather than central, when the issue is not routine— that is, standard
operating procedures are not available—or when the situation is ambiguous and
information is unclear. Crisis situations, in par tic u lar when information is in short
supply and standard operating procedures are inapplicable, create scenarios in which a
decision maker’s personal characteristics count most. Such a scenario arose during the
Cuban missile crisis, when President John F. Kennedy’s personal openness to alterna­
tives and attention to group dynamics played a role in the resolution.

FIGuRE 6.1 ThE IMPacT oF IndIvIdual ElITEs

Individual leaders

affect the course

of events

When political

institutions are

unstable

young

in crisis

collapsed

When the issue

or situation is

peripheral

unusual

ambiguous

When

institutional

constraints

are limited