Conclusion

Jonathan Wright

Steven Casey

pp. 250-252

in: Steven Casey, Jonathan Wright (eds), Mental maps in the era of détente and the end of the Cold War 1968–91, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

In this, the last of these three volumes, which have ranged across the world in the twentieth century and examined some forty of the outstanding political leaders of their period, active in different regions and political systems, it is time to assess what the "mental maps"approach can bring to the study of political leadership. In recent years the study of political leadership "has made a comeback".¹ Alongside structuralist, institutionalist and rational choice approaches to politics, interest in leadership has again come to the fore.² This renewed recognition of the importance of political leaders, and of leadership as an interactive process in different political systems, is a welcome development. Also welcome is the recognition that, because of the complexity of the subject and the range of approaches to studying it — theoretical, institutional, administrative, psychological, biographical and regional to mention only some — the search for universal laws is futile: "The best we can offer is not prediction but informed conjecture."³