Nathan Leites (July 10, 1912, in Saint Petersburg – 1987) was an American sociologist and political scientist of Russian origins. Leites earned his doctorate in 1935 at the University of Freiburg. After emigrating to the United States, he joined the RAND Corporation in 1949 and earned himself a reputation as a knowledgeable analyst of the system of government of the Soviet Union. He also taught at the University of Chicago. He is considered to be the initiator of the operational code approach to the analysis of foreign relations. His selected works were published in 1977 by Sage as Psychopolitical analysis : selected writings of Nathan Leites.
