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, their description of their political model is a little mushy, and didn't always seem to map well onto their examples. The core concepts are simple enough though, and I expect their model to be a useful way to think about politics.