general criteria, requirements, and norms the subject attempts to meet in assessing opportunities
that arise to make desirable gains, in estimating the costs and risks associated with them, and in
making utility calculations."
George believes that while simple traits and attitudes of political
leaders fail to demonstrate cross-situational consistency, operational code beliefs satisfy this
criteria. The operational code is concerned with fundamental, unchanging issues, and thus has
centrality to the political actor. Further, George concludes that an individual's operational code
has an internal consistency or interconnectedness.
Daryl J. Bem demonstrates that beliefs are arranged vertically (highly elaborated or
differentiated), horizontally (the conclusion following from more than one "syllogistic chain of
reasoning"), and by centrality ("underlying importance to other beliefs").
political belief systems, George hypothesized that the first philosophical issue, that of the
fundamental nature of politics and political conflict, is central. Thus, a change in that central belief
will require some change in the status of the other beliefs.
For example, Robert Putnam found
that the view of politics as either conflictual or harmonious had a great effect on other beliefs in
the elite belief systems in Italy and Britain. The politicians' assumptions about social conflict
strongly influences his/her interpretation of policy problems, such as crime, poverty, and
unemployment, and the specific policy proposals he/she will support. As illustration, if a politician
views society as harmonious, then crime will be attributed to individual problems, such as
immorality or ignorance, and the chosen prescription for the problem will be changes in the
individual by educational means or moral improvement.
George defines the role of the operational code in the decision-making process as "a set of
general guidelines - heuristical aids to decision, not a set of mathematical algorithms that are
applied by the actor in a mechanical way in his decision-making. Viewed from a slightly different
standpoint, a person's operational code beliefs structure and channel the way in which he copes
17
Alexander L. George. "The'Operational Code', 200.
18
Daryl J. Bem, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs (Belmont: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1970) 10-12.
19
Alexander L. George. "The Causal Nexus between Cognitive Beliefs and Decision-Making Behavior", 100-101.
20
Robert D. Putnam, The Beliefs of Politicians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973) 119-120.
Convention