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

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Bell presents a number of lessons to teach us about the rules to rule by. First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of “We, the people.” Second, political survival is best assured by depending on few people to attain and retain office. That means dictators, dependent on a few cronies, are in a far better position to stay in office for decades, often dying in their sleep, than are democrats. Third, when the small group of cronies knows that there is a large pool of people waiting on the sidelines, hoping to replace them in the queue for gorging at the public trough, then the top leadership has great discretion over how revenue is spent and how much to tax. All that tax revenue and discretion opens the door to kleptocracy from many leaders, and public-spirited programs from a very few. And it means enhanced tenure in power. Fourth, dependence on a small coalition liberates leaders to tax at high rates, just as was true in Bell. Taxing at high rates has a propensity to foment the threat of popular uprisings, just as happened in Bell. Of course, in Bell it was easy for the people to rise up and end Rizzo’s rule because they have essential freedoms: the rights to free speech and assembly. We shall see that how the structure of government and the economy works explains variation in how many of these rights people have. This in turn accounts for whether the people take to the streets and whether they can succeed in orchestra...

the self-interested calculations and actions of rulers are the driving force of all politics.

To understand politics properly, we must modify one assumption in particular: we must stop thinking that leaders can lead unilaterally.

For leaders, the political landscape can be broken down into three groups of people: the nominal selectorate, the real selectorate, and the winning coalition.

Rule 1: Keep your winning coalition as small as possible.

Rule 2: Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible.

Rule 3: Control the flow of revenue.

Rule 4: Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal.

Rule 5: Don’t take money out of your supporter’s pockets to make the people’s lives better.

Autocratic politics is a battle for private rewards. Democratic politics is a battle for good policy ideas.

“The throne, once you have been crowned, is where you had best remain seated, without moving, day and night. All your previous life has been only a waiting to become king; now you are king; you have only to reign. And what is reigning if not this long wait?

Waiting for the moment when you will be deposed, when you will have to take leave of the throne, the scepter, the crown, and your head.”

Democrats tax heavily too and for the same reason as autocrats: they provide subsidies to groups that favor them at the polls at the expense of those who oppose them. We will see, for instance, that Democrats and Republicans each use taxation when they can to redistribute wealth from their opponents to their supporters. So democratic governments also have an appetite for taxation but they cannot indulge that appetite to the extent autocrats can.

Who makes revolution? It is the great in-between; those who are neither immiserated nor coddled. The former are too weak and cowered to revolt. The latter are content and have no reason to revolt. Truly it is the great in-between who are a threat to the stability of a regime and its leaders.

Leaders want to stay in power and must take whatever actions are needed to do so. Successful leaders are not above repression, suppression, oppression, or even killing their rivals, real and imagined. Anyone unwilling to undertake the dirty work that so many leaders are called on to do should not pursue becoming a leader. Certainly anyone reluctant to be a brute will not last long if everyone knows he is unprepared to engage in the vicious behavior that may be essential to political survival. If an aspiring leader won’t do terrible things, they can be sure that there are plenty of others who will. And if they don’t pay their backers to do terrible things, they can be pretty confident that those cronies will be bought off, exchanging terrible deeds for riches and power.

The truth is, foreign aid deals have a logic of their own. Aid is decidedly not given primarily to alleviate poverty or misery; it is given to make the constituents in donor states better off.

the right amount of aid is given to achieve its purpose—improving the welfare of the donor’s constituents so that they want to reelect their incumbent leadership. Likewise, aid is not given to the wrong people, that is, to governments that steal it rather than to local entrepreneurs or charities that will use it wisely.

The fact is, aid does a little bit of good in the world and vastly more harm. Unless and until it is restructured, aid will continue to be a force for evil with negative consequences—moreover it will continue to be promoted by well-meaning citizens who in making themselves feel good are blinded to the harm they are inflicting on many poor people who deserve a better lot in life.

Aid is a tool for buying influence and policy. Unless we the people really value development and are willing to make meaningful sacrifices towards those ends then aid will continue to fail in its stated goals. Democrats are not thuggish brutes. They just want to keep their jobs, and to do so they need to deliver the policies their people want. Despite the idealistic expressions of some, all too many of us prefer cheap oil to real change in West Africa or the Middle East. So we really should not complain too much when our leaders try to deliver what we want. That, after all, is what democracy is about.

From the beginning we said we would focus on what is rather than what ought to be. Now we need to talk a bit about what ought to be. In doing so, we want to lay down the ground rules. First among these is that we should never let the quest for perfection block the way to lesser improvement. Utopian dreams of a perfect world are just that: utopian. Pursuing the perfect world for everyone is a waste of time and an excuse for not doing the hard work of making the world better for many.

Sometimes the problems of the world seem beyond our capacity to solve. Yet there is no mystery about how to eradicate much of the world’s poverty and oppression. People who live with freedom are rarely impoverished and oppressed. Give people the right to say what they want; to write what they want; and to gather to share ideas about what they want, and you are bound to be looking at people whose persons and property are secure and whose lives are content. You are looking at people free to become rich and free to lose their shirts in trying. You are looking at people who are not only materially well off but spiritually and physically, too.