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

If you’re interested in social sciences and how people relate with government, this is a great read for you. This was one of the sources I used to write my college thesis.

Easy to read through and has a great political background. The authors tend to place themselves as observers without trying to influence the reader to a certain ideology.

A well written and excellent read, Provides insight into political leaders' justification for "why did they do that?" The authors make the handbook style work for this topic, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al have researched and written extensively on this topic and this book is consitent with those works.

A very insightful and interesting take on politics. This book focuses on leadership, how to gain it and hold on to it. It acknowledges the fact that large governments operate similarly to small companies, and it operates on the undeniable notion that money is behind everything!

Though fundamentally sound, this book takes a markedly simplistic approach to politics, and must therefore be read carefully and critically. With that caveat, however, it is a powerful analysis of authoritarian economics, providing us with a razor sharp tool that can cut away most of the elaborate and befuddling facades with which we normally cloak our sociopolitical institutions. Clearly, we need better ways than we currently employ of understanding ourselves, our human nature, and our human potentials; and healthier ways of constructing and operating our governments and other decision-making organizations. A Philosopher's Notebook: Tribalism and Sensuality: Antagonists--Proagonists: A study of Human Nature

My background in political philosophy is next to nonexistent and therefore I cannot judge the limitations of this work. However the shown principles seem to be very solid as they are repeatedly observable in many cases.

This book poses an interesting simplified model for political decision-making. That's the good part. The bad part is that it rambles on with unconvincing anecdotal "proof" of the predictive powers of the framework. The theory is stimulating but the book is a drag.

Outstanding reading, whether you have an interest in Politics or work in a Management position
in any Business. Gives you a great insight in understanding people natural selfish desires and the
risks they relate to.

This book changes the way we understand the words democracy or tyranny. Certainly there is no black and white in politics (democracy vs dictatorship) but rather various shades of grey. A must read for everyone.

The Dictator's Handbook is simply sensational. It's extremely convincing and wonderfully entertaining, and has completely changed the way I look at politics and world affairs. It's a cruel world indeed, though the authors do give some hope that in the right circumstances change can occur for the better.

It's easily one of the best books I have ever read on politics and the way we are ruled. What Machiavelli outlines in musty generalities, Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita detail with riveting real world examples.

My favourite quote is by the dictators' dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, speaking to Rwanda's embattled President Juvenal Habiyiarama - "I've been in power in Zaire for thirty years, and I never built one road." Why? As he explained to Habyiarama, "Now they are driving down your roads to get you".

But I wonder if the authors worry about current dictators reading their book and taking its lessons fully to heart. They have since applied the book's rules to Muammar Gaddafi and concluded that he was eventually toppled because he had been `too kind'. You can just imagine Saif Gaddafi reading it jail while he awaits trial and saying `Damn! If only this book had come out earlier! I would never have advised Dad to improve our education system!.'

This is one of my favorite books. It approaches the circumstances that are necessary for democratic and autocratic leaders to retain power. An excellent approach / analysis is explained in this book that helps the reader know what to look for in some of the questionable decisions leaders make. It applies from world leaders all the way down to the night shift manager at your local McDonald's.

I've always been interested in politics and power. I've read many philosophical treaties and dissertations, but this book provide an illuminating and shrewd analysis of what is power and how it works. It is an exceptional analysis of what it takes to get to power and how to keep it. The framework they define in the book can be applied to everything. Once you start thinking within that framework the world, not only politics, becomes much clearer. In the introduction the authors tell that their students call what they are explaining "A theory of everything". Well, that is an incredibly apt definition.

Please, read this book. It'll make your life better.

I was reluctant due to the title, but the subtitle caught me that this might be an interest book to scan. With a quick scan, I realized I had to read it, and I am glad I did. I have already recommended it to friends. This is a THOUGHT CHANGING book, which is my highest praise.

A decent read for the uneducated. Overly verbose with insufficiently rigorous proofs. The main ideas are sufficiently explained in the authors YouTube video of the same name.
Also it was recently published but already painfully out of date; it was published shortly before the democratisation of Myanmar (used frequently as an example of autocracy in this book) before the Trump landslide. Of course times change fast but this and other ommissions leaves the book seriously wanting for myself.

A competent primer on realpolitik, but most of the ideas in the book seem rather obvious to anyone that has read much history or studied politics for any amount of time...and isn't a Progressive.

Still, as suggested in the beginning, this is an adequate primer for realpolitik and for that reason it is valuable.

Please note, this is an abridged/popularized edition of 'The Logic of Political Survival'(also available as a Kindle). I've not read the original version and was more than a little upset when I learned I was reading an abridgement. However, this was a good book within reason, but not as good as I was hoping. I was hoping to learn something new and this work did not offer that...though it may to others.

Mild Recommendation

--Loving-- this book. I bought it because I really liked the "Rules for Rulers" video by CGP Grey on that video hosting service that shall not be mentioned.

As you surely know if you're reading this review, the premise of the book is that leader's actions are most understandable when viewed as attempts to keep power. Not attempts to do good or to serve any other agenda, excepting the agenda of getting, consolidating, and keeping power. The CGP Grey video is a nice appetizer, but book is way better and goes way beyond the video. Most especially, the book has case studies and explains why or how particular actions worked or failed. The cases are from all over, ranging from dictatorships, corporate board rooms, city hall, democracies, etc.

These are not particularly fluffy case studies either. The authors take the time to show how many -influential- or key supporters were actually needed (always surprisingly few) and how their support was obtained, kept, and used.

Read this book. It'll change how you see the world.

Extremely interesting ideas that go beyond the standard rhetoric of today's political leaders and parties. It exposes at least one of the dimensions of the forces that shaped modern national and international politics.

Bought this after the election to understand what to expect. "Believe me": don't read it at night before bed if you want to sleep!
On the other hand, it you want the 'how-to' manual, this is just for you.

(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.

If you thought that Hobbes and Machiavelli were just a tad too synical about politics for your tastes, you have to read this book. With a simple, elegant theory about how politics has always worked, the authors show us why things are as they are rather than what we might like them to be. So, if you are in favor of debt relief for poor countries ruled by dictators, or if you think that donating your labor by painting a school in a poor village somewhere might save the world, read this book and you may think otherwise. The authors' optimistic conclusions (I won't give them away)are based on clear thinking, a broad and deep knowledge of history and current affairs, but definitely not wishful thinking.

This book is a pessimists dream. If you feel that all governments are crooked and all politicians are bad then this book will definitely reinforce your perspectives. Actually, the basic premise is that democracies are good for the people and autocracies are good for the leaders, at least after they get started. Well researched and well presented. It may be that the pessimistic message from the Dictators Handbook gives us a more honest and accurate world view. The authors make several recommendations for how their rules for dictators can be used to improve the effectiveness of the aid provided by more wealthy countries. I give The Dictators Handbook four stars.

The subtitle "Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" says it all. Empathy and a strong conscience are fatal weaknesses in governance, while heartlessness, unbridled greed, and ability to murder one's own supporters without hesitation are requisite attributes. Murder your own supporters? Why that makes no sense! But it does as Mesquita and Smith explain and document many times over.
The ruler's overwhelming motivation is to stay in power, not only because it is good to be the king, but also because failure to maintain power can sometimes result in his gruesome death. To stay in power, he needs strong allies to support him, and these supporters must be rewarded. The ruler might be a dictator, but he might also be the CEO, a senator, or any elected official. The rules work the same.
A dictator's most important supporters might be leaders of the military. If he does not reward the military sufficiently and they think they might be better off under a new leader, they will not protect him. Mesquita and Smith have a number of examples of where the military was not rewarded sufficiently, often with horrific consequences for the former leader. And the number one reason for not supporting the military is that the dictator runs out of cash. Dictator Sam Doe did not pay up sufficiently, was captured by the rebels and tortured in an attempt to find where he had hidden money. (I would speculate that he had no money, which may have been why he was in that fix in the first place. On the other hand, if he did reveal where his money was, they would just kill him anyway.)
The authors break the spectrum of supporters into three categories of constituents: the interchangeables; the influentials; and the essentials. The interchangeables have a nominal voice in government but don't really matter. The influentials matter to some degree. The essentials are critical to keeping the leader in power and form the winning coalition. In a dictatorship, the group of essentials might be very small, perhaps as few as ten or so, and includes the top military commanders. In a democracy, the essentials might be a huge group, consisting of tens of millions. Either way, the leader wants to keep the number of essentials as small as possible in order to have as few people to pay off as possible and keep more money for himself.
To get in power, the leader, say a dictator, might need many supporters. However, once the revolution is complete, he may find some of these supporters to be expendable and/or potential rivals. Eliminating these supporters would save him a lot of money and increase his job security. I would assume he might also confiscate their property.
The authors referred to a video of Saddam Hussein doing just that. This black and white video shows Saddam Hussein and several others seated at a table in a decent sized auditorium filled with those who brought him to power. Saddam was quite calmly smoking a large cigar and reading the names of people from a list. As he named each one, soldiers would go into the audience grab the unfortunate person and remove him from the room to be imprisoned or executed, eliminating 66 people
The author's premise is that the larger the number of essentials, the better things are for the average citizen. For example, if you have to answer to most of the voters, you have to pay them back with roads, civic improvements, social care etc. Conversely, with a fewer number of essentials things are worse. If you only have to answer to a few generals, you can abuse the general population with impunity. However, in all cases, the essentials must be rewarded, be they generals in an oppressive regime, or large campaign donors, or any group that has the power to change leaders.
One memorable example was the Bell, California fiasco, whereby a city manager, Rizzo, increased his pay to $787,000 a year. Through a well-planned sequence of moves, including changing Bell to a "Charter City", Rizzo was able to reduce the number of essentials he needed to stay in power to only a few. He then could pay himself and the councilmen enormous but well-disguised compensation. Rizzo et al only went to jail for claiming to go to meetings they didn't attend, not for the political manipulation, which was apparently legal.
Anyway, this was a terrific book, explaining a lot of things I suspected, but wasn't sure of. One dictator, Barre, summed up the theme of the book nicely when he said "I believe neither in Islam, nor socialism, nor tribalism, nor Somali nationalism, nor pan-Africanism. The ideology to which I am committed is the ideology of political survival." It was well written and managed to be entertaining as well as informative, although a lot of it was heart wrenching due to the callousness of these psychopaths who lack the most basic emotions of human empathy. But perhaps that's why they are the leaders, and people like me are the sheep.

An investigation into political dealings and how leaders act in their own self-interest, even when they seem to be benevolent. The author presents many examples (some of which are pretty out there, like how the straightness of a road between a country's capital and its nearest airport is an indicator of a country's citizen-support), presents how you would think of them, presents the good and the bad of it, then presents how the good and bad are balanced to maximize the individual leader's benefit. One thing I particularly liked about this book is that he always starts with the obvious Leader X of autocratic country Y is really corrupt and behaves THIS way... but don't get too comfortable ye of Democratic leadership because Leader A of democratic country B behaves THIS way. And while the two behaviors may not be identical, they share origins or commonalities enough to illustrate what my freshman year Political Science professor said on day 1 of class: "there is no such thing as a benevolent leader"

This is one of those special books that will help you update your mental model of the world. If you want to understand why politicians behave as self-interested louts than this book is for you. There were many fascinating points that the author mentioned in his book. But, for me, I found the author’s answer to the following two questions most interesting: What are the rules of ruling?, What can we do to remove misery for the world’s poor?

We must understand the rules of ruling from the leaders perspective because their in charge.

* The first is that leaders will do whatever they can to stay in power regardless of all factors
* From the leader’s perspective, there are three groups of people: All voters which the author called interchangeables( don’t have much influence ), Influentials ( people who can influence the leader), and Essentials (the smallest group of voters that can change an election )
* The main difference between autocratic and democratic governments is the different size of the influential and essential groups

So, no leader governs alone; the only question you have to ask is how many backs do you need to scratch. The author made many compelling arguments that the most effective way to improve a political system is to change the size of interchangeable, influentials, and essentials. Democratic regimes tend to have larger coalitions or essentials and autocratic states tend to have smaller coalitions.

As a rule of thumb, leaders are fond of taxes because they have increased revenue to dole out to their key supporters. Autocratic nations without natural resources will tax their people heavily so the leader can pay off his coalition. But, autocratic nations with lots of natural resources tend to grow slowly because autocrats can extract natural resources without the help of the local population. As a result, they don’t invest in the local economy. Democracies tend to have a lower tax burden because of their large coalition. For instance 40% of the US population don't pay income taxes.

Economists continue to preach bailouts and debt forgiveness to help poor countries. But, what really needs to change is governance and how resources are allocated. For autocrats, a bailout will help them stay in power because it will help them pay off their small coalition. In Democracies, when the economy is doing poorly, voters search for new leaders with new ideas. Look at 2008 with the election of Obama but his party paid a price in 2010 in the interim election because their policies were not working “fast enough”.

Highly educated people in the social sciences are a threat to autocracies. Look at the university rankings of China and Russia while compared to much smaller democracies such as Belgium, Finland, and Israel. The mindset of autocratic leaders: there should be enough education in the math and sciences but social sciences should be limited because we don't want the people to question government authority.

Natural Disaster reliefs are poorly handled by autocracies and international aid is siphoned off into the pockets of the leaders. For instance, in Myanmar, the cyclone of 2007, foreign aid workers were not allowed in the country. The leadership asked for cash only and didn’t distribute the money to help the people. As a result, more than 100,000 people died

In governments with a small number of essentials, police are paid so little that they have to be corrupt to survive. This makes the police more loyal to the regime because they don't want to be prosecuted. This ensures loyalty to the regime without them having to pay good salaries

Increasing the penalty of corruption in autocratic government actually help leaders stay in power. Yassr Arafat kept a file on all Palestinian government officials and if they didn't remain loyal to him, he would use the data to prosecute them. As a result, legal approaches to eliminating corruption rarely work. The best way to deal with corruption is to change the underlying incentives by increasing the size of the winning coalition.

Another example is corporate governance, if politicians want to end massive bonuses for bankers than they should past legislation to restructure corporate boards so the size of the board increases and more shareholders have a say in governance. The current structure of having a small number of regulators that need to be re-elected to provide corporate governance isn't working because their easily influenced by a small number of institutions

So, what additional policies can we try to remove misery?

More people need to be connected for change to happen. Cell phones and social media help fostered the Arab spring that changed the governments in Tunisia and Egypt

Place foreign aid in an escrow account and set simple measurable benchmarks for the regime to receive aid. We need to provide the right incentives for leaders to change

Grant amnesty for dictators which is equivalent to how we grant amnesty to criminals that testify in the court

In the US, politicians and state legislatures draw up congressional boundaries. They design the boundary easier for their party to win. When politicians pick who vote for them, it’s easier for them to be re-elected. A potential solution to this problem is to find a neutral party or use data analytics to draw effective boundaries

The key to improving governments around the world is to put policies in place that will continue to increase the size of the coalition required for the leader to be successful.

This book has given me a new perspective on how leaders govern and why leaders do what they do!

This book provides a useful introduction to the authors' theory of governance rooted in cynicism and realpolitik. Its efforts at broad appeal - a snappy but somewhat misleading title, seeking attention by praising murderous dictators for doing a good job at what they are trying to accomplish, being pretty entertaining - detract from its core quality: an effort to distill the academic work of two professors of political science into a universal theory of politics and power.

That theory is simple but - as demonstrated by hundreds of examples throughout the book - seems to enjoy a really strong explanatory power. The core idea is that political leaders care about power above all else, and do what they must to get and keep that power. Political systems are described in terms of three groups - the "nominal selectorate" (voters), the "real selectorate" (influential people with some actual say in political outcomes), and the "winning coalition" (people without whose support a leader is ejected). All leaders get and keep power by buying off the minimum number of people necessary to do so. Period. It follows that the difference between liberal democracies and murderous autocratic regimes is the relative numbers of individuals in these groups. A murderous dictator pays as few people as possible as much as needed to induce them to preserve his power. An elected representative is limited to seeking out policies that reward and please a winning coalition of voters. The difference is in the presence of political, structural, and legal mechanisms that force the democratic leader to act in the pubic interest.

Thus, five rules to rule by: (1) keep your winning coalition as small as possible, (2) keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible, (3) control the revenue stream, (4) pay your supporters just enough to keep them loyal, and (5) don't take money away from your key people to improve the lives of everybody else. While these rules clearly explain dictatorial government, and the book contains many examinations of modern dictatorships, they also are argued to shed light on the politics of democracies - from gerrymandering, to immigration, to - especially - tax policy and government spending. In fact one disappointing thing about the book is that it introduces these concepts in terms of both types of governments but spends much more time analyzing autocratic regimes, when an application of these ideas to the working of democracies is just as interesting.

There is a lot more to get from the book as it tracks power politics from the accession to control, through doing what it takes to keep it, and the many ways to lose it. But where the book really shines is in its discussion of the ramifications of this theory on foreign aid - providing reasonable explanations for the failure and, indeed, often terribly negative impact of many international aid efforts, and discussing what might be done to reform such efforts. It is worth reading for the aid chapter alone.

In sum, the book reads like a Freakonomics for political science. It is not perfect by any means, and it probably is most useful as an accessible introduction to a field requiring a lot more reading, but it is worth checking out.

The authors are agnostic about the form of government. Instead, using many examples, they point out the universality of the drive for power and quest for spoils. Very eye-opening and thought-provoking. One thing that I didn't get an answer to is this: do rulers seek to crate the economy in order to accrue more power (not letting any crisis "go to waste") or do they seek to grow the economy in order to maximize the skim? I'd like to understand that better.

Not sure why the previous reviews were so resoundingly positive. The authors express with surprise that politicians want to keep power for themselves and sacrifice the "public good" (which doesn't exist anyway). A biography of Mayor Daley or reading Mein Kampf should already have proven that point. This is the trouble with much political science research - telling us the obvious and already knowable but casting it as some secret.

It is well written and offers some short case studies that could be used in an undergraduate class for background.

This idea: A successful leader always puts the wants of his essental supporters before the needs of highest good for all concerned--explains many current "paradoxes":

- Why the illusory Romney campaign got as far as it did in 2012 (it--cynically--addressed ONLY the needs of essential supporters)
- Why the Democrats act like Republicans towards Wall Street (why and how the Democrats abandoned FDR and became Reagan Republicans in the 1980s)
- Why the Green party fails repeatedly to get off the ground in the U.S. (too few perceived benefits for essential supporters)
- Why the Occupy Movement, as of Jan 2013, is going nowhere fast (no interest in either identifying its own leadership talent nor in marketing benefits to essential supporters)

The above is a lot of freight for a book to carry. Illustrative examples are well-chosen and cogently explained.

Complaints about minor historical innaccuracies I think can be ignored by those potential readers whos pressing needs are for clarity of thought and clarity of direction in political group process.

I enjoy books that stimulate thought...books that activate a paradigm shift in how one perceives the world, and, importantly, books that help you become a better thinker and problem solver.

The Dicatator's Handbook is all of the above.

In this tour-de-force, Messrs Bueno de Mesquita and Smith have convincingly solved the riddle that has for so long plagued some of the less-fortunate civilizations that inhabit planet Earth.

Do despots thrive in certain areas because those societies have a unique propensity to attract such people? Or could it be that perhaps some societies (including democratic ones) just haven't figured out the game that despots like to play, regardless of where they might happen to live; and thus set in place checks and balances to curtail the mischieveous acts of would-be-despots?

Though not an argument directly tackled by the aforementioned duo, their book nonetheless explains that despotic behavior is a consequence of certain "rules" and is not the consequence of having a succession of evil natured people leading a country and out to make life miserable for the unfortunate majority.

Memo to the denizens of Zimbabwe: As one Robert Mugabe leaves, another "baby" Mugabe might follow his footsteps if these "rules" are not heeded and corrective action put in place.

Beyond third-world politicians, developing world "democracy," and the nature of politics in small-town-USA, The Dictator's Handbook is just as appropriate to those who want to truly grasp boardroom politics.

If one is a board member already, or a civic leader of any sort, this book is an indispensable must have.

If you're a professional investor trying to understand how a company's CEO judges his effectiveness, you have to read this book.

I don't think that this analysis, with copious examples, is cynical so much as grown-up realistic. If you can put the emotionalism aside and see what these guys in power actually do in order to gain and keep power, you will get much more out of this extended study.

The evidence of people gaining power, then purging those who put them there, is fascinating. For years I had heard that Fidel Castro had 'set up' Che Guevara soon after Fidel took power - and here is the evidence.

The "Selectorate" - those individuals that the guys in power have to keep happy [take care of] in order to retain power, varies in size but it is never universal. It goes from a handful in North Korea to perhaps several thousand in the USA. It explains why so little foreign aid does much good at all.

Fascinating and extremely well-written and readable. This is a must-read for anyone interested in power and its political manifestations.