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

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

is better to have loyal incompetents than competent rivals.

From a leader’s point of view, the most important function of the people is to pay taxes. All regimes need money.

A naïve person might look at any number of awful regimes and yet come to the conclusion that, because they provide such public benefits as nationalized health care or sound primary education, they’re actually better to their people than many democratic states are to theirs. This is nonsense, of course—in the vast majority of cases autocrats are simply keeping the peasants healthy enough to work and educated enough to do their jobs. Either way, literate or not, they’re still peasants and they’re going to stay that way.

People support leaders who deliver policies that specifically benefit them.

Everyone should specialize in what they are relatively good at and then trade their goods and services.