IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v9y1997i1p89-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gorbachev's Strategy of Political Centrism

Author

Listed:
  • Susan E. Batty
  • Vesna Danilovic

Abstract

The theoretical arguments of Breslauer, Brown and Hough identify Gorbachev's leadership approach as a strategy of radical centrism, fulfilling the theoretical expectations of a successful transitional leader. However, we know that in terms of Gorbachev's personal success as a leader, the strategy ultimately failed, casting doubt on the individual rationality of centrism as a valid leadership approach in periods of transition. In this paper, we argue that Gorbachev's strategy was indeed rational. But the argument of rationality depends on an understanding that Gorbachev was acting simultaneously in multiple political arenas, and that he was fully aware of these interwoven power structures. Thus, he is assumed to have been a sophisticated strategist. The paradox remains, why did a rational actor using sophisticated strategies eventually fail? We develop an argument based on rational choice theory using multiple-level game analysis to demonstrate the sequential process that may explain this paradox.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan E. Batty & Vesna Danilovic, 1997. "Gorbachev's Strategy of Political Centrism," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(1), pages 89-106, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:9:y:1997:i:1:p:89-106
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692897009001009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692897009001009
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951692897009001009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gokan, Toshitaka & Kichko, Sergey & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2019. "How do trade and communication costs shape the spatial organization of firms?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:9:y:1997:i:1:p:89-106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.