The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin

By Kiron Skinner, Serhiy Kudelia, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Condoleezza Rice
University of Michigan Press, 2007

Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin were successful campaigners because they mastered the art of heresthetic—framing a situation so that others want to join you and structuring the world so you can win—according to a new book whose co-authors include Condoleezza Rice, who is on leave from Stanford University and currently serving as U.S. secretary of state. The work, The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin, is also co-authored by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at NYU; Kiron Skinner, an associate professor of history and political science at Carnegie Mellon University; and Serhiy Kudelia, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The book examines Reagan’s 1968, 1976, and 1980 presidential campaigns and Boris Yeltsin’s 1991 campaign, asking: does the nature of the campaign have any impact on the process of government that comes afterward? “What makes the book important is the ability of the authors to relate this rich factual material to ideas about strategy—ideas from which future campaigners can benefit,” writes former Secretary of State George Shultz in the book’s introduction.

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