Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In

Abstract

Daniel Byman of RAND and Kenneth Pollack of the National Defense University challenge scholars to reconsider the role of individuals in international relations. Asserting that the time has come “to rescue men and women, as individual, from the oblivion to which political scientists have consigned them,” Byman and Pollack use five case studies to debunk standard explanations for why individuals do not “matter” in international affairs.