For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the national interestor even their subjectsunless they have to.
This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.
Review
Enlightenment Economics, July 14, 2011Machiavelli's The Prince has a new rival. It's THE DICTATOR'S HANDBOOK by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. This is a fantastically thought-provoking read. I found myself not wanting to agree but actually, for the most part, being convinced that the cynical analysis is the true one.
R. James Woolsey Director of Central Intelligence, 1993-1995, and Chairman, Foundation for Defense of Democracies*, *July, 2011
''In this fascinating book Bueno de Mesquita and Smith spin out their view of governance: that all successful leaders, dictators and democrats, can best be understood as almost entirely driven by their own political survivala view they characterize as 'cynical, but we fear accurate.' Yet as we follow the authors through their brilliant historical assessments of leaders' choicesfrom Caesar to Tammany Hall and the Green Bay Packerswe gradually realize that their brand of cynicism yields extremely realistic guidance about spreading the rule of law, decent government, and democracy. James Madison would have loved this book.''
Roger Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, July, 2011''In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith teach us tosee dictatorship as just another form of politics, and from thisperspective they deepen our understanding of all political systems.''
Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2011
A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority. In a style reminiscent of Freakonomics, Messrs. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith present dozens of clever examples The most fascinating chapter in The Dictator's Handbook concerns the rewards that governments provide other governments. The authors make the obvious, but nevertheless controversial, argument that almost all aid money is dispersed not to alleviate poverty but to purchase loyalty and influence. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are polymathic, drawing on economics, history and political science to make their points. In other words, the reader will be hard-pressed to find a single government that doesn't largely operate according to Messrs. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith's model. So the next time a hand-wringing politician, Democrat or Republican, claims to be taking a position for the ?