The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Give us your poor and let’s see if they can make a better life. Give us your tired and let’s see if they can be energized by participating in making a more public goods–oriented government work better. Give us your huddled masses longing to be free and let’s see if their children’s children don’t grow up to be the foundation of a stronger, more peaceful, and more prosperous society than they first came to. For generation after generation, the waves of immigrants to the United States have made our winning coalitions bigger and better. They have turned from poor, tired, huddled masses into modern America’s success story. This was no happenstance of time or place. This was the straightforward consequence of easy citizenship and, with it, an expanded winning coalition that makes for better governance.