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

"The Dictator's Handbook" is a book of political theory that aims to follow in Machiavelli's footsteps. It is provocative and has a number of useful ideas, some of which are even backed up by convincing evidence in the book (the section on foreign aid was particularly nice). But at other times, I found reading it to be frustrating.

There are a number of things to keep in mind: first of all, it is very much a work of popular non-fiction, written in common-sense language for the average reader to understand. Many of the assertions made would not hold water in a scholarly discussion because the definitions aren't very carefully defined, and small but vital details are glossed over.

Despite attempting to rise above the fray and present an overall picture of the political world that is more accurate than its predecessors, the book is very much a product of insular American political culture, and often propagates American political myths. For example, its poorly-argued assertion that the more democratic a society, the lower its taxes (pg. 13, "taxes tend to be low when coalitions are large"), which would be quite surprising to the Scandinavian countries, not to mention (at the other extreme) Dubai.

Another example is the assertion on pg.6 that the United States "has one of the world's biggest winning coalitions both in absolute numbers and in proportion of the electorate" (the authors define this as meaning that the American government is beholden to no less than about one-fifth of the American population). This point, which aligns nicely with American popular opinion, underpins many of the book's arguments as the actions of America are contrasted with the actions of other, less democratic countries (with smaller winning coalitions).

The authors don't acknowledge that this point has been seriously challenged, years before the publication of their book, in Martin Gilens' Oxford study from 2005, "Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness". Over a period of 21 years, Gilens analyzed the relationship between opinion polls showing what the American public supported, and the actual policy actions of the government, and came to the conclusion that "when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans."

If Gilens is right, it means that the de facto size of the winning coalition in America is much smaller than Smith and de Mesquita have acknowledged it to be in their book.

If we allow for this possibility that perhaps the winning coalitions of democracies are not nearly as large as advertised, many of the examples that are used in the book have their foundations pulled out from under them.

However, I still think that the authors have probably gotten a lot of things right, even if I find the writing style a bit too patronizing and some of the given evidence built on shaky foundations.

Robert Rizzo -- nicknamed "Ratzo Rizzo" by L.A. Times Columnist Steve Lopez -- is featured prominently in a new book that rivals Machiavelli's famous "The Prince" in its scope, while being much more relevant to the 21st Century. Written by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics" (PublicAffairs, 352 pages, $27.99) is a good introduction to an academic discipline I'd never heard of, selectorate theory.

Rizzo, the former city manager of Bell, California, a small community south of Los Angeles, stayed in power because he had the support of the city council, which was effectively elected by 473 voters (out of 2,235 who actually voted). The 473 constituted the essential electorate.

The other two legs of this political tripod are the nominal selectorate -- everybody eligible to vote -- and the real selectorate. In the former Soviet Union, the real selectorate -- the winning coalition-- consisted of a few members of the Communist Party who chose the candidates (some would say this has been revived under the regime of Vladimir Putin, who has the power to reject potential candidates for office).

For eighteen years, the authors have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the "national interest"--or even their subjects--unless they have to.

Selectorate theory posits that the difference between tyrants and democrats is that there is no difference. Governments don't differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.

Selectorate theory applies to Wall Street, too, where the authors (Pages 148-149 ff) describe how small coalitions are in play: "The best way to organize a business is exactly the same as the best way to organize a government: rely on a small group of essentials..."

This applies to business in general, as the recent dumping of the CEO of HP, Leo Apotheker, who walked away with a platinum parachute of more than $25 million after 11 months on the job and was replaced by billionaire Meg Whitman, formerly of CEO of eBay and a former Republican candidate for governor of California.

Rizzo was in power for 17 years, starting at $72,000 a year in 1993 and ending up in the summer of 2010 with the munificent salary of $787,000 a year in a poor, mostly Latino city. No parachute for him, he's being investigated for corruption. Rizzo and his assistant spent seven years conspiring to illegally boost their pensions, created fake contracts, secretly increased their benefits and then filed workers' compensation claims in 2010, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed March 31, 2011.
Bueno de Mesquita and Smith's "theory of political survival" provides often surprising, counterintuitive insights on issues ranging from the so-called "Arab Spring" and U.S. foreign policy to corporate governance and tax codes. Among the topics explored:

. Why countries with oil and other natural resources -- the "resource curse" -- are more likely to be autocratic, have less economic growth and more civil wars than countries without readily accessible resources. The authors explain why President Obama should focus on resource poor countries like Syria and Cuba, rather than rich ones like Libya and Venezuela.

. Why foreign aid -- from humanitarian aid and disaster relief to the funding of Pakistan to fight the Taliban and hunt down Bin Ladin -- is so ineffectual, and how -- unless we restructure the way it's given -- both aid and debt forgiveness just encourage countries to let their problems fester. Speaking of Pakistan, on Thursday, Sept. 22, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that the Haqqani "militants" who attack U.S. targets in Afghanistan are a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence secret police. Pakistan denied Mullen's charges on Sept. 23.

. Why natural disasters seem to disproportionately strike poorer nations, like Haiti.

. Why the easiest way to encourage political reform is to force a leader to rely on tax revenue.

The authors ask us to consider why it's important to not take a coalition's loyalty for granted -- why it's essential that you don't underpay your coalition.

The advice applies, they say, to Mafia boss "Big" Paul Castellano and an Italian of a different era, Julius Caesar. Both didn't give the coalition that brought them to power their due.

Castellano, who inherited the leadership of the Gambino crime family in 1976, neglected the Mafia's traditional businesses of prostitution, extortion and loan sharking that kept his coalition happy. Instead, he shifted the focus to racketeering and the construction business, which wasn't profitable to members of his coalition, that included John Gotti and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. This lead to the Dec. 16, 1985 gunning down of Castellano at Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan.

Similarly, Julius Caesar, they write, was not assassinated because he was a despot, as the common view holds, but because he was a reformer! Being a reformer who got ride of the policy of tax farming, which gave the job of tax collecting to persons outside government, instead rationalizing tax collection and reducing the tax bite. This was great for the common people, but not for the coalition that had put him in power -- the powerful "influentials and essentials" -- who ended up cutting him down -- literally.

The takeaway from "The Dictator's Handbook" that Castellano and Caesar both neglected: always attend to the interests of whatever group put them in power and kept them in office. Whether its the Oligarchs of Russia, who found out that crossing Vladimir Putin was a major mistake (see my review of "The Oligarchs" link: [...]) or a small coalition dictator like Egypt's Mubarak who outlived his usefulness to the Egyptian army, this rule applies.

"The Dictator's Handbook" is an important book -- a "must read" -- to anyone who wants to understand how politics really works in the political sphere and the world of business, in democracies and dictatorships alike.

(I agree with the review by Esn024.)

The authors put forth a theory: A leader spends most of his efforts just to keep his job. If the leader has to please only a few influential people to keep his job (e.g., the generals of the army), the leader is autocratic and many of the actions you associate with dictators becomes the "logical" thing to do if you want to keep your job. If the leader has to please many people, the leader is democratic and tends to do things that are good for the people.

It's a simple theory, but it (may) explain a lot of behavior. And it leads to some interesting consequences (e.g., autocrats want productive (but docile) workers, so they invest in health care and (limited) education.) Most of the examples are political, but the "leader" term applies to CEOs, mob bosses, and others.

This is a "wide-audience" book. It's not supposed to be "bogged down" with definitions and numbers and technical mumbo-jumbo. It's supposed to be a fun-to-read version of the theory. Still, I've read a lot of "wide-audience" books and, while this was fun to read, it wasn't very well crafted.

* It uses awkward terms: "leader" and "winning coalition" are fine, but "interchangables", "influentials" and "essentials" are unclear and too long.
* It does not clearly define these terms.
* It only gives a hazy definition of the theory. (Not much more than I gave above.)
* It does not have separate terms for "good policy" (effective at keeping job) vs. "good policy" (good for the populace).
* It doesn't define "good for the populace" at all.
* It doesn't do a strong job of convincing the reader that the theory is true.
* It has multiple examples where it's doubtful that their theory is the major thing at work.

The authors have the problem that every action by a leader is colored by so many specifics of what was going on and the people involved. It's hard to pull out clear examples that demonstrate a principle clearly. But the authors stick to examples, rather than present graphs, numbers, or any form of generalizations. (E.g., On page 256 is one of the few graphs and it shows why things tend towards autocratic or democratic and there's few in-between. This should have been earlier when they said they would generalize things to autocratic and democratic.)

For all this book's negatives (and there are more), I gave it 5 stars for a reason. This a book worth reading. It's a theory presented with a lot of anecdotal evidence and, by the end, I was convinced that there was at least something to their theory. The anecdotes are clear and the book is a fast read. The insights of the theory are fascinating and I won't interpret foreign affairs the same way again. (Especially the US's interactions with dictators!) If this book sounds at all interesting to you, I'd recommend buying it. But expect pangs of regret that the theory deserved a much better book.

I picked up this book after seeing Fareed Zakaria's interview with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on CNN's "GPS."

Good interview; below average book.

As some other reviewers stated, there are no earth-shattering ideas, theories, or historical anecdotes contained within the book. Any (casual) student of political science or history would draw the same conclusions as to why certain individuals (dictators or democrats) are able to obtain and keep power (and/or eventually lose it).

You are better served reading a biography of your favorite politician, military leader, or leader in the field of your choice to see how they succeeded. "Team of Rivals" immediately comes to mind.

I gave up on p100. I will acknowledge that I was put off by the authors' denigration of Machiavelli, and their arrogance as to what they have accomplished. Their rules of politics could be a useful repackaging of old ideas (p.17ff), but I found the exemplification of those ideas surprisingly uninteresting. Perhaps if they had attempted to provide a layman's introduction to all those "technical articles" they and their colleagues had written, it would have been more interesting. Incidentally, I don't think Congress gerrymanders to keep the coalition as small as possible (p.19), but to make the seats safe as possible for incumbents. I did find it interesting how the parties, through the village leaders, kept the followers voting properly.

Fascinating book, otherwise I would have thrown it away in disgust over the terrible editing job. It's rife with typos, garden path sentences, misattributions, and other signs of slipshod editorial work. It's perhaps telling that nowhere in the acknowledgements do the authors thank their editors. My advice would be to wait for a revised edition.

Interested in this topic? Your time would be much better spent reading Machiavelli's 'The Prince.' To be fair, the authors do some modern-day illustrations (eg. Bell, Ca.), but even the value of those examples is circumscribed. Example: Why might a revolutionary leader or despot banish or even execute his supporters? Examples include Castro in Cuba, Stalin in Russia. The authors don't make that clear.

Another weakness - the authors fail to address the fact that some supporters are more important than others. Example: China's Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping accomplished the amazing feat of turning China's economic system from extreme Maoism to a form of capitalism that outperforms American capitalism. Deng, though an extremely skilled leader, might not have been able to accomplish this without having the support of China's military. Yet, today, there are few, if any, military representatives at the top of the CCP.

The book's basic point is that a successful leader must control sources of revenue, and need to dole it out to as few supporters as possible. Translation: Democrats reward labor unions and public employees, and they in turn help elect Democrats. Similarly for Republicans. Unfortunately, any reader who hadn't figured that out long, long ago is beyond help by this or any other book.

'The Dictator's Handbook' makes the point that even dictators can't do anything they want - example, North Korea's leader might not survive (literally) trying to democratize that nation. On the other hand, this is a distinction of little practical value - . As for pointing out the purpose of gerrymandering - again, readers should have learned that long, long ago - elsewhere.

Save your time and money - read something else.

They make a point pretty early on in the book and then draw it out with examples throughout the book. It's pretty hard to get through the whole book once you've read the first few chapters as any insights are far and few between. The subtitle "why bad behaviour is almost always good politics" is pretty misleading.

I saw the authors interviewed on C-Span II Book TV. When I couldn't remember all that I had heard, I listened to the interview again online. Then I bought the book and read it as if it were a thriller.

One disappointment is that the blurb on the dust jacket makes a promise the authors don't fulfill. The blurb reads: "Don't Ever Take Money Out of Your Supporters' Pockets. Barack Obama appeared to do this to Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis. If you do, it won't be long before your former pals will abandon you...."

What the authors do say about the financial crisis is: "For large coalition leaders bailouts are a curse, or a least an necessary evil. A poorly performing economy is likely to be understood by voters as a policy failure by the leadership, resulting in their being thrown out by the voters at the first opportunity. That was very much a part of the story of the defeat of the Republican Party in 2008 and, when the economy did not turn around fast enough to satisfy voters, the defeat of the Democrats in the House of Representatives in 2010. So the need of an economic bailout strongly signals the voters to find new leaders with new policy ideas. . . . Both the Bush and Obama administrations sought to stem the worst of the crisis by providing massive financial bailouts to save the banking industries and other large businesses..." (page 105. See also 148-149 for a discussion of Wall St without any mention of Obama.)

The blurb suggests that the authors had much more to tell but pulled their punch. I wish they had told it.

Note added 8/14: I heard Hillary Clinton on CSpan state that no one could have foreseen the Arab Spring. But she could have and should have. As The Dictator's Handbook explains, when a country has an aging strongman approaching the end of his time, as that both Egypt and Libya did, others will plan, scheme and connive to be the power that comes next. The Arab Spring was highly predictable.

The {Dictator's Handbook} gives a solid account of how, when a relative few suffice to uphold the power of a regime, that regime has every incentive to milk the many who don't matter and reward the few who do. The account is even more solid than one would think from the logic of its pages, for the authors have done their homework most thoroughly. The claims made in the book are not merely claims that stand to reason, in the usual sense; they are claims buttressed by a mass of careful numerical analyses of historical evidence. For fans of Isaac Asimov, Mesquita and his colleagues are in the process of inventing "psychohistory".

Beneath this innocent book lies a formidable mass of mathematics. It pokes above the waves in figure 10.1, a nice graph illustrating why, once the ruling coalition becomes large enough, robbing the public to enrich one's supporters just doesn't work any more.

At the end of the book, the authors propose some modest reforms. The reforms differ from most proposed reforms in their cold attention to realism. This can lead to counter-intuitive conclusions...if corruption is pervasive and harmful, it might seem obvious that penalties for corrupt behavior should be stiffened. But not according to the authors. When everyone is corrupt, it will be the whistle blower who is brought before the law. He too, after all, will be guilty to some degree.

Better, perhaps, to give out cell phones. Rather than try to present their case for this, I'll just say read all about it. What you'll learn will apply up and down the scale. The theories presented in the book, and strongly supported by evidence and logic worked out in other writings referenced there, are not just about nation-states.