The Dictator's Handbook
Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics
PublicAffairs · Print & ebook · April 26, 2022
“A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority.” —Wall Street Journal Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s canonical book on political science turns conventional wisdom on its head.
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- Who it’s for
- A brisk, unsentimental look at why political bad behavior often pays.
- Genres
- Comparative Politics, Democracy, How Political Campaigns Work
- Published
- PublicAffairs, April 26, 2022
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Start with this bookAbout this book
“A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority.” —Wall Street Journal Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s canonical book on political science turns conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single proposition: leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they must.
Continue reading
As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction. Governments do not 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. And it is also the key to returning power to the people.
Power Mechanics
A brisk, unsentimental look at why political bad behavior often pays.
Come here for
- power, patronage, and the logic of staying in office
- a dry-eyed guide you can keep nearby
Expect
- sharp incentives over moral comfort
- the mechanics, not the pageantry
Where it sits
| Comparative Politics | 30% |
|---|---|
| Democracy | 26% |
| How Political Campaigns Work | 13% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Presidents & World Leaders
- Political Ideologies
- Fascism & Totalitarianism
- Authors
- Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith
- Publisher
- PublicAffairs
- Published
- April 26, 2022
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Presidents & World Leaders