Assessing Political Leaders in Theory and in PracticeWhile many government practitioners grasp this insight intu-
itively, they tend to go further than their academic counterparts and
want to abandon the task of explanation in favor of interpreting each
leader and situation as sui generis. They are not interested in ideal
types so much as in the real case that a model is attempting to
explain. They thereby commit "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"
(Whitehead [1925] 1948, 52; cited in Hedstrom and Swedberg
1998, 15). Decision-making theorists who search for causal mecha-
nisms join with adherents to the quest on behalf of structural-cover-
ing laws in rejecting this move. They argue that a given concrete rep-
resentation of a case is just one of an infinite number of possible
models, which only an abstract formulation of the interpretation sus-
ceptible to counterfactual reasoning can reveal (Hedstrom and Swed-
berg 1998, 13-21; see also Little 1998, 237-40).
So what are the implications of these debates within and between
academics and practitioners for assessing the contents of this vol-
ume? The good news associated with a microfoundations approach to
social science is that a focus on leaders as causal agents turns out to
be a good bet for specifying strong explanations of social processes
and outcomes. The bad news is that the prospects for making strong
general predictions based on a universal structural theory are not so
promising. Instead, middle-range theories informed by ideal types
and the careful empirical examination of differences among cases
within each type become the basis for fine-grained analyses and short
causal stories of political processes and outcomes (Little 1998,
247-55; Hedstrom and Swedberg 1998, 11-13). In turn, a focus on
individual differences may generate valid contingent generalizations
and predictions about specific actors (George 1993, 125—45).
The Gap between Parts and Wholes
The contributions in this volume by political psychologists illustrate
a range of analytical models and empirical tools for identifying
causal mechanisms within a leader's personality that impact political
decisions and outcomes. One question that immediately presents
itself for examination is how these different analyses are related to
one another. Asking this question is likely to point the way to future
research directions and to illuminate both the possibilities and the