Autocracy

by Gordon Tullock

My first serious thought about a scientific approach to politics was in Communist China. When the Communists seized China, the American Department of State, which was planning to recognize them, left its entire diplomatic establishment in place. At the time, I was a Vice Consul in Tientsin, so I found myself living under the Communists. While the Department of State was planning on recognizing the Communists, the Communist plans were obscure. In any event, they weren't going to recognize us in the Consulate­ General until formal relations were established between the two governments, so I had a great deal of leisure. As a man who then intended to spend his life as a political officer in the Department of State, I decided to fill in this time by reading political science. I rapidly realized, not only that the work was rather unsatisfactory from a scientific standpoint, but also that it didn't seem to have very much relevance to the Communist government under which I was then living. ! I was unable to solve the problem at the time, and after a number of vicissitudes which included service in Hong Kong and South Korea, neither of which was really a model of democracy, I resigned and switched over to an academic career primarily concerned with that mixture of economics and political science which we call Public Choice. Most of my work in Public Choice has dealt with democratic governments.

243 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 1987

Reviews

[Ion Sterpan]

The book considers the costs and options personally faced by self-interested political actors in dictatorial regimes.

[Booksearcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving it 5 stars because of:
-Innovative approach. Explains actions and motivations of political actors in a dictatorship from a rational choice perspective, including the dictator, coup plotters and revolutionaries.
-Though innovative, it follows the path already established by Machiavelli. It is maybe the first book to approach the problem of dictatorship from a rational choice perspective, the only predecessor being perhaps Machiavelli, the author himself mentions this and he may be correct.
-Historical background. The author recognizes that there may be not enough data to support some of his explanations, this is due to the new approach that he proposed. Nevertheless, he supplies this by bringing up a lot of historical support from the most ancient civilizations to the times when the book was written.
-The ideas are presented clearly, with simple but convincing arguments that support his propositions.

[Didier "Dirac Ghost" Gaulin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gordon, an extraordinaire public choice theorist, economist and historian, attempt to condense the subject of autocracy, a complex one, into too few pages. Full a great takes and great historical references, Tullock goes an explore too vast of a plane to fully walk across it, for example, over the subject of socio-anthropological evolution of society and their Darwinian imperatives vis a vis the autocratic impetus that most society seems to take and associate with. Autocracy is a seed that would require a while field in the study of political economy. I still recommend the book, as it is a quick and fun read, albeit incomplete from an intellectual perspective.