foundation and institutionalization of political leadership as discipline, following Harold Lasswell's challenge to study this field as a subject for multidisciplinary research grounded in social science theory. In this essay, Paige presents a conceptual framework through which the study of political leadership, and leadership in general, can be organized and developed following scientific bases. This framework, presented as an "multivariate, multidimensional linkage approach" considers six main factors that impact the behavior of political leaders: personality, role, organization, tasks, values, and setting. At the same time, these factors also generate patterns of behavior that can affect or be affected by 18 societal political dimensions as the extent of conflict, the use of violence, the presence of consensus, and the practice of compromise. Study of the Korean War decision making In his 1968 book The Korean Decision: June 24–30, 1950, Paige provided a significant contribution to the scientific study of international politics by exploring in a first case study the decision-making approach to analysis pioneered by Richard C. Snyder, opening new lines of inquiry. The volume presents a reconstruction of the United States government's decision to intervene in Korea in 1950, through the careful documentation of the seven days of crucial decision-making that led to the country's involvement in the war. Besides reviewing key documentation and examining the circumstances surrounding the intervention from 1945 to 1950, major players in this process, including U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson, Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson, Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter, Secretary of the Army Frank Pace and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Dean Rusk, among others, were extensively interviewed. Beside reconstructing decisions from the point of view of the decision makers, Paige analyzes them in terms of the interaction of organizational, informational, and motivational variables; evaluating and providing guidance for coping with future war-prone crisis situation. With important points in common with the decision-centered conception of the policy sciences laid out by Harold D. Lasswell and Myres S. McDougal, Paige brings forward the importance of decision-making itself. The observational standpoint, conceptions of the decision process, definition of decisional situations, crisis as a special occasion for decision, linkages among variables, and appraisal as a particular decision process function made the work unique, having been used a reference model not only in academia but also among government and the military. Ten years after the