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

“Each explanation, each story, treats the errant leader and his or her faulty decision making as a one-off, one-of-a-kind situation. But there is nothing unique about political behavior. These stories of the horrible things politicians or business executives do are appealing in their own perverse way because they free us to believe we would behave differently if given the opportunity. They liberate us to cast blame on the flawed person who somehow, inexplicably, had the authority to make monumental—and monumentally bad—decisions.”

In the Introduction, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith refute the myth that bad leaders are unique one-offs who behave poorly because they are flawed human beings. This myth is popular because it frees people to believe they would act differently if given the opportunity to lead a country or business. Instead, the authors argue that these individuals are following a set of rules that promotes bad behavior as good politics. The authors want readers to learn the rules to understand how we are governed and organized and the reasons politics works the way it does. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith believe that knowing the how and why of politics is the first step in towards learning how to make politics better. 

“The prime mover of interests in any state (or corporation for that matter) is the person at the top—the leader. So we started from this single point: the self-interested calculations and actions of rules are the driving force of all politics.”

Journalists, authors, and academics often explain politics in terms of community or national interest and welfare. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith argue against this explanation. Instead, they believe that the self-interests of leaders drive politics. Leaders only care about getting into power and then staying in power. All their choices and actions come back to this basic desire to maintain their political survival.