Compare methods

	Operational Code Analysis	Prospect Theory in International Relations
Field	International Relations	International Relations
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1969	1997
Originator	Nathan Leites (origin); Alexander George (construct); Walker, Schafer & Young (VICS)	Kahneman & Tversky (theory); Jack Levy and others (IR application)
Type	Content-analytic measurement of leaders' political belief systems	Behavioral decision-theoretic framework for foreign-policy choice
Seminal source	George, A. L. (1969). The 'operational code': A neglected approach to the study of political leaders and decision-making. International Studies Quarterly, 13(2), 190–222.	Levy, J. S. (1997). Prospect theory, rational choice, and international relations. International Studies Quarterly, 41(1), 87–112.
Aliases	Operational Code, Verbs in Context System (VICS), Belief System Analysis, Operational Code Construct	Prospect Theory IR, Loss Aversion in Foreign Policy, Framing and Risk in International Relations, Behavioral Decision Theory in IR
Related	3	3
Summary	Operational code analysis measures a political leader's belief system — their fundamental assumptions about the nature of politics and the best strategies for pursuing goals — from the leader's own words. Originating in Nathan Leites's study of the Bolshevik mindset and reformulated by Alexander George (1969) into a structured set of philosophical and instrumental questions, it later became a quantitative method through the Verbs in Context System (VICS). By coding how a leader talks about conflict, cooperation, control, and risk, analysts characterize the cognitive framework through which that leader interprets the world and chooses action.	Prospect theory, the behavioral account of choice under risk developed by Kahneman and Tversky, has been applied across international relations to explain foreign-policy decisions that expected-utility models struggle with. As surveyed and assessed by Jack Levy (1997), the key ideas are that leaders evaluate outcomes as gains and losses relative to a reference point rather than in absolute terms, that losses loom larger than equivalent gains (loss aversion), and that people are risk-averse for gains but risk-seeking to avoid losses. These departures from rationality illuminate why states gamble to recover losses and take excessive risks to defend the status quo.