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

The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics is a 2012 nonfiction book by political scientists Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. In it, the authors, who are both professors at New York University, explore the pathologies of politics. In doing so, they demonstrate how leaders of all systems, including governments, businesses, and families, follow the same set of rules, known as the rules to rule by or The Dictator’s Handbook. They follow these rules for one reason: to stay in power, often at the cost of good governance. Personal political survival over national interests drives leaders in politics. Using insights from history, businesses, and present-day politics, the authors help readers understand the essentials of ruling. Their hope is that once we understand the political world, we can begin to assess how to use the rules to rule for the better.

Summary

The Introduction and Chapter 1 outline the foundations of ruling. Each subsequent chapter probes a specific feature or pathology of politics. In the Introduction and Chapter 1, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith describe how leaders need to navigate three groups of people: the nominal selectorate (interchangeables), or the pool of potential people who could support the ruler; the real selectorate (influentials), or the group that chooses the ruler; and the winning coalition (essentials), a subset of the influentials whose support is essential for rulers to stay in power. Differences in the size of these groups across countries, organizations, and businesses determine what leaders can do, what actions they can and cannot get away with, to whom they must answer to, and the relative quality of life that the everyday people enjoy. Thus, size variations of these three groups give politics a three-dimensional structure. For this reason, the authors prefer to describe political systems based on the size of these groups, although they use the terms “democracy” and “autocracy” throughout the book for convenience.

To survive in this political system of interchangeables, influentials, and essentials, leaders must follow five rules to rule by. These five rules are: keep the coalition as small as possible, expand the set of interchangeables, take control of the treasury, reward essentials at all costs to stay in power, and do not take from the essentials to give to the everyday people. Leaders of both autocracies and democracies follow these rules to stay in power. The specific games they play change depending on the size of their coalitions.

In Chapters 2 and 3, the authors examine how leaders come to power and how they stay in power, which are two very different political elements. In both democracies and autocracies, leaders come to power by removing the incumbent (current leader), seizing command of the treasury, and sufficiently rewarding their coalition of supporters so they continue to back the new leader. Even if a leader follows all three of these mechanisms to come to power, it does not mean they will stay in power. To stay in power, leaders need to shore up their essential supporters. Sometimes this means they purge their original backers and replace them with other individuals who will be more loyal. Leaders need to keep their supporters off-balance to ensure they remain loyal. They try to do this by showing that their supporters are easily replaceable. Leaders must build coalitions loyal to them. Failure to do so puts their political survival at risk.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith explore how leaders raise funds as well as how they spend them in Chapters 4-6. There are three ways that leaders can ensure their treasury is full: taxation, revenue from natural resources, and borrowing. All political systems use a combination of these three methods. The size of the coalition helps determine whether the government is more dependent on one method over another.

Once leaders determine how they keep their treasury full, they can spend money in three ways. First, leaders can spend money on public goods, like education and clean water, which benefit everyone in society. Democratic leaders are especially beholden to this form of spending. They can only stay in power if the public supports their policies. Autocratic leaders provide just enough public goods to ensure that workers can pay taxes, generating the revenue these leaders need to pay their supporters and themselves. Second, leaders can spend money on private goods, or rewards that go towards just their supporters. This type of spending is especially pronounced in autocracies. Autocratic leaders use these rewards to buy their coalition’s loyalty at the expense of their people’s living conditions. Leaders in democracies also use private rewards since they design public policies that appeal to their constituents. This means that there are people who might not benefit from the policy. Finally, leaders can use discretionary spending, or money left over after they pay their coalitions, to either enrich themselves or help their people. In all political systems, leaders must first ensure they spend money on their coalitions, since their supporters’ loyalty keeps leaders in power.

In the final four chapters of The Dictator’s Handbook, the authors focus on several additional pathologies of politics, including foreign aid, rebellion, and war, and how to potentially fix the rules to rule by. People in democracies often believe that foreign aid, rebellion, and war are tools that can help improve the lives of people in autocracies. The authors vehemently disagree with this notion. Democratic leaders use foreign aid to force foreign governments to implement policies that constituents in the democratic country desire. Autocratic leaders use the aid money to enrich their supporters and their own pockets. This aid rarely benefits people in the aid-receiving country. While rebellions can be moments of real change for people living under oppressive regimes, democratic leaders often swoop in to either prop up the oppressive ruler or replace them with an equally terrible one. Democratic leaders prefer autocratic leaders to democratic leaders. To stay in power, the former only care about money and the latter care about the people’s desires. Thus, autocratic leaders are more compliant to the demands of democratic leaders and their people. War is also simply a tool of politics. Autocratic and democratic leaders fight over the exact same thing: staying in power.

The authors blame people in democracies for their leaders’ bad behavior. Leaders are acting on behalf of their citizen’s wishes in other countries, since this is what keeps democratic leaders in power. To improve the quality of life for people living in small-coalition systems, people in democratic nations need to care less about their own desires. Instead, they need to care about the desires of people living in autocracies.

While the authors present a cynical view of politics, they genuinely believe that we can fix the rules to rule by. They argue that one of the best tools to do so is to expand the size of coalitions. Example after example illustrates that leaders in large-coalition systems are more accountable to their people. Thus, they must create policies that improve the well-being of everyday people if they want to stay in power. With hard work and some luck, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith believe we can get to these moments of change that will help small-coalition systems move towards large-coalition systems. Doing so will allow for greater peace and prosperity around the world.