tionships by no means consistantly follow changes of leaders; in the Cold War, for example, variations in the level of tensions have little relationship to the replacement of one leader on either side by someone else (Sullivan, n.d., pp. 34-36).
A more subtle approach to the interpretation of international behavior through the examination of leaders is to examine the conditions under which leaders reach particular decisions.
One of the consequences of adopting a decision-making approach which focuses on the behaviour of the decision- makers themselves is that we must confront the difficult problem of how they perceive the environment (Vogler, 1989, p. 135).
That is, we are drawn to examine the cognitive processes by which leaders reach conclusions about their environment, and what decisions they believe they should take in responding to it.
A range of theories, clearly cognitive in character, have sought to identify the source of tensions in the "images" that leaders on one side hold of the other (Sullivan, n.d
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