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

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

When it comes to foreign policy, a democrat is prone to behave more like a devil than an angel.

However, these very domestic constraints can lead them to exploit the peoples of other nations almost without mercy.

For instance, trucks meant for delivering aid were requisitioned to forcibly move people into collective farms all around the country. Perhaps 100,000 people died in these relocations.

Githongo now makes a meager living as a lecturer and consultant. Edward Clay became persona non grata in Kenya and was discreetly retired by the British government. Both Githongo and Clay effectively ended their careers by “doing the right thing.”

And the United States got a lot in return: “We [US] were getting fabulous support from him on international issues. He never wavered [in] his support for us against Libya and Iran. He was somebody we had to live with. We didn’t feel that he was such a monster that we couldn’t deal with him. All our interests were impeccably protected by Doe.”

The logic of how coalitions operate gives us a good handle on who gives how much aid to whom. Getting the people what they want helps democratic leaders stay in office. It is therefore no surprise that most foreign aid originates in democracies.

As we have noted, the aid-for-peace-with-Israel deal could be struck exactly because the autocratic Egyptian leadership and its coalition were compensated for the anti-Israeli sentiment among its citizenry, a sentiment they helped preserve.

In fact, careful analysis shows that even the seemingly generous Scandinavians give aid in exchange for policy concessions rather than for altruistic reasons. They particularly like to use aid to gain trade concessions and prosocialist ideologies in recipient regimes.13

“Aid offers an easy way out for Egypt to avoid reform.”

The United States wanted to promote an economically powerful bloc as a means of combating Soviet expansion. The plan therefore promoted economic growth.

The most recent manifestation of this is the Millennium Development Goals.

Still, we don’t need to be completely pessimistic about aid. Our knowledge of how it works has greatly improved. For instance, we know that aid works much better in the presence of good governance (just as we know that more often than not it goes to places with bad governance).

Carter Center started a plan to combat Guinea worm disease, a parasite transmitted via dirty drinking water that affected about 3.5 million people in seventeen nations across Asia and Africa. By 2009, worldwide infections had been reduced to about 3,000, mostly in southern Sudan.

However, in practice, recipients are very skilled at converting aid into the kinds of rewards they want rather than the kind of rewards donors want them to provide.

Well, painting classrooms, while fun, deprived a local worker of a much-needed job.

This is because rural areas are disproportionately represented in some countries and so farmers tend to be the essential backers of leaders in many European countries.

Allowing farmers from developing nations to compete on the basis of comparative advantage would go much further toward promoting economic growth than providing poorly targeted and highly bureaucratized aid.

Areas with ethnic minorities and large numbers of opposition supporters were particularly likely to flood.

Undoubtedly there are many operational and procedural problems with implementing an aid-in-escrow scheme. And these problems would be even more difficult in terms of designing escrowed aid relief for disaster management. Yet, it is better to tackle these tricky technical issues within a framework that incentivizes leaders to solve the donor’s problem than to carry on with failed policies.

The reality is that in most cases democracies don’t want to create democracies.

Undermining democracy was the story behind US opposition to the Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba.

Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani was overthrown in 1893. Her sin? She wanted Hawaii and Hawaiians (no doubt including herself) to profit from the exploitation of farming and export opportunities pursued by large American and European firms operating in Hawaii. As these business interests organized to depose her, the United States sent marines ostensibly to maintain peace from a neutral stance, but in fact making it impossible for the Hawaiian monarch to defend herself.

But rather than deplore European and Japanese prime ministers and US presidents on principle, we need to pause for a moment and consider what they are doing and why.

However, as long as we the people want cheap gasoline and an abundance of markets in which to dump agricultural products,

A SUCCESSFUL LEADER ALWAYS PUTS THE WANTS OF his essential supporters before the needs of the people.

There are two diametrically opposed ways in which a leader can respond to the threat of a revolution. He can increase democracy, making the people so much better off that they no longer want to revolt. He can also increase dictatorship, making the people even more miserable than they were before while also depriving them of a credible chance of success in rising up against their government.

the people. Nations awash with natural resource wealth or lavished with foreign aid rarely democratize. They are the world’s most oppressive places. Their leaders have resources to reward their essential supporters without having to empower the people.

Effectively the government told these survivors to go away and die quietly: inhumane in the extreme, but good small-coalition politics. Dead people cannot protest.

An earthquake alone does not threaten the survival of democrats. However, if there are more than 200 people killed by the quake then a democratic leader is almost certain to be removed from office.

George Washington, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino

Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, aimed at restructuring the Soviet political and economic system, can be understood as his effort to increase the government’s revenue to forestall just such problems as the secessionist movements and their political aftermath.

Washington needed the support of a broad base of colonists and so he was stuck with a large coalition from the get-go. In that circumstance he had to do what large coalition leaders do—disproportionately deliver public goods rather than private benefits.

Today Ghana is an economically vibrant democracy. Its transition from autocracy to democracy took place under the leadership of the larger than life J. J. Rawlings.

Democratic war fighting emphasizes public welfare, exactly as should be the case when advising a leader who relies on a large coalition. Sun Tzu’s advice is exactly right for a small-coalition leader.

Leaders who rely only on a few essential supporters, in contrast, are prepared to fight even when the odds of winning are not particularly good.

Democratic leaders try hard to win if the going gets tough. Autocrats make a good initial effort and if that proves wanting they quit. These strategies are clearly in evidence if we consider the Six Day War in 1967.

that is, the Israeli side represented only 17 percent of the available soldiers.

Better training and equipment enable democracies to leverage the impact of each soldier so they can achieve the same military output while at the same time putting few soldiers at risk.

For that reason, he was not beholden to the wives and mothers who scream about the avoidable deaths of their loved ones. Israeli prime ministers are elected by those mothers and wives, and this is reflected in the superior equipment, armor, and training given to Israeli soldiers. Give our troops the best, is a democratic refrain.

Let’s have a look at why it is that democrats, like Israel’s prime minister Levi Eshkol, try hard to win wars and autocrats, like Egypt’s Nasser, don’t.

Whereas Israeli coalition members were only asked to sacrifice about $60 to help their country win the war, Egypt’s coalition members would have had to personally give up $150,000 in income to help their country win.

In Israel, everybody takes part in war, but in the Arab countries—only the army.

They know their fate depends more upon the loyalty of their coalition than success on the battlefield. They don’t generally make that extra effort.

Michela Wrong, for instance, reports that the Soviets eventually worked out that Mengistu’s devotion to the fight was not all it was cracked up to be: “‘He kept telling us that if we helped him he could achieve this military victory,’ remembers Adamishin, with bitterness. ‘I remember how he told me with tears in his eyes: “We may have to sell our last shirt, but we will pay you back. We Ethiopians are a proud people, we settle our debts.” Looking back, I almost feel I hate him. Because I believed that what mattered to him was what was best for the country. While really all that mattered to him was his own survival.’”

As his military collapsed to the much weaker Eritrean forces, Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe, where he lives in luxury with around fifty former colleagues and family members.

believe neither in Islam, nor socialism nor tribalism, nor Somali nationalism, nor pan-Africanism. The ideology to which I am committed is the ideology of political survival.”

Although the operation was a debacle, the US commitment to its soldiers was unwavering.

This democratic propensity to pick on weak foes is nothing new. Looking at all wars for nearly the past two centuries, we know that about 93 percent of wars started by democratic states are won by them. In contrast, only about 60 percent of wars started by nondemocracies are won by them.

This makes it cheaper and easier to sustain puppets and buy policy. US foreign policy is awash with examples where the United States overtly or covertly undermines the development of democracy because it promoted the policies counter to US interests. Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii in 1893, Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran in 1953,

Anyone who thinks a democratic Egypt attacking Israel is too fanciful a scenario might ask democratic Native American tribes from the American plains about their dealings with the expanding United States in the 1800s. Democratization sounds good in principle only.