The Dictator's Handbook

Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

321 pages

English language

Published Feb. 24, 2011

ISBN:
978-1-61039-044-6
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Goodreads:
11612989

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4 stars (20 reviews)

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics is a 2011 non-fiction book by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, published by the company PublicAffairs. It discusses how politicians gain and retain political power. Bueno de Mesquita is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. His co-writer is also an academic, and both are political scientists.Michael Moynihan of The Wall Street Journal stated that the writing style is similar to that of Freakonomics. Moynihan added that the conclusions the book makes originate from the fields of economics, history, and political science, leading him to call the authors "polymathic".Mesquita and Smith, with other authors, previously wrote about the "selectorate" theory in the academic book The Logic of Political Survival.: 1095 The Netflix series How to Become a Tyrant is partly based on this book.

3 editions

Review of "The Dictator's Handbook" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

An alternative title could be How the World Works. True incentives for leaders are analyzed—from the pros and cons of building better roads, to why certain school subjects are prioritized depending on the country. And it’s not limited to dictators—CEOs, democracies, and foreign aid are covered in detail.

This feels like a cross between Why Nations Fail and The 48 Laws of Power. The former for digging beneath common perceptions of how a political system works (and finding real solutions), and the latter for the Machiavellian tone that comes and goes throughout. Example of the tone: “As we all know, the victor writes history. Leaders should therefore never refrain from cheating if they can get away with it.”

Advice for foreign policy and aid is given throughout. How to help resource-rich (cursed) countries, fixing what foreign aid is spent on, a regime’s true incentives for clean drinking water, the ideal …

Review of "The Dictator's Handbook" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I read this book after watching the CGP Grey video that was based on it (link here www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs). I don't know if I would recommend the book, but I 100% recommend the video. The book offers a unique view of politics which is really insightful, but it then tries to explain everything with that same view. The book was also really repetitive, so despite the shortness of the videos they cover ~90% of the concepts in the book.

Review of "The Dictator's Handbook" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I found this book illuminating. It's probably old hat to poli-sci experts, but it put words to concepts that I've had trouble thinking about before.

It explains, for instance, why the Congressman representing my gerrymandered district is in the habit of avoiding my city, the largest concentration of people in the district. We're not in his "winning coalition", therefore his incentives as a ruler lead him to ignore us and lavish rewards on his donors and attention on his voters. If he could, he'd tax us to pay them.

It seems obvious when stated like that: rulers reward the people that keep them in power, but I kept confusing the issue with concepts like the democratic mandate or good governance, neither of which (in this book's view) are relevant to the behavior of rulers.

It's a short book, but could stand to be a little shorter. At the same time, …

Review of "The Dictator's Handbook" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book takes the glamour out of politics, and because of that, the results feel deeply cynical. But that's more to do with us wanting to believe the myths than the book's logic.

It explains the selectorate theory in easy to understand terms, which suggests that political behaviour depends solely on the size of the coalition of essential supporters one needs. Democratic ideals or autocratic ambitions barely factor into it.

It's a popular science summary of a 500 page scientific tome (mitpress.mit.edu/books/logic-political-survival), and should be read a such.

This year, I don't think I've recommended a book more often than this one.

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