From The Journal of Improbable Research:
The Wikipedia entry for the Madman Theory informs :
“The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy. He and his administration tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile. According to the theory, those leaders would then avoid provoking the United States, fearing an unpredictable American response.”
The theory, however, has not, until now, been empirically ‘tested’ in a ‘large-N’ context (that’s to say with a large number of leaders who were, or are, regarded, by some, at least in part, as ‘mad’).
A new article in the British Journal of Political Science, from Professor Roseanne McManus at Penn State University, US, examines the Madman Theory in some depth.