Images, Motivations and Values

Abstract

The notion of ‘the will of the people’ or of ‘the nation’ is not meaningless but is too nebulous for the purposes of behavioural analysis. It is more rewarding to concentrate upon the actual decision makers who act on behalf of the people or nation and to regard the latter as an element of their domestic environment from which they obtain support and receive de mands, which prescribes the parameters between which national interest can be determined. The nature and the numbers of the decision makers greatly vary from system to system but we can generalize about them as individuals all engaged in the same specific social roles.