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

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Rules of Politics

Three Political Dimensions

Virtues of 3 - D Politics

Change the Size of Dimensions and Change the World

Rules Ruling Rulers

Taxing

Shuffling the Essential Deck

Do the Rules Work in Democracies?

Chapter 2 - Coming to Power

Paths to Power with Few Essentials

Speed Is Essential

Pay to Play

Mortality: The Best Opportunity for Power

Inheritance and the Problem of Relatives

Papal Bull - ying for Power

Seizing Power from the Bankrupt

Silence Is Golden

Institutional Change

Coming to Power in Democracy

Democratic Inheritance

Democracy Is an Arms Race for Good Ideas

Coalition Dynamics

A Last Word on Coming to Power: The Ultimate Fate of Sergeant Doe

Chapter 3 - Staying in Power

Governance in Pursuit of Heads

The Perils of Meritocracy

Keep Essentials Off-Balance

Democrats Arent Angels

Bloc Voting

Leader Survival

Chapter 4 - Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich

Taxation

Tax Collectors

Privatized Tax Collection

Extraction

Borrowing

Debt Forgiveness

Chapter 5 - Getting and Spending

Effective Policy Need Not Be Civic Minded

Bailouts and Coalition Size

Is Democracy a Luxury?

Public Goods Not for the Publics Good

Who Doesnt Love a Cute Baby?

Clean Drinking Water

Building Infrastructure

Public Goods for the Public Good

Earthquakes and Governance

Chapter 6 - If Corruption Empowers, Then Absolute Corruption Empowers Absolutely

Power and Corruption

Private Goods in Democracies

Private Goods in Small Coalition Settings

Wall Street: Small Coalitions at Work

Dealing with Good Deed Doers

Cautionary Tales: Never Take the Coalition for Granted

Discretionary Money

Chapter 7 - Foreign Aid

The Political Logic of Aid

The Impact of Aid

An Assessment of Foreign Aid

Aid Shakedowns

Fixing Aid Policy

Nation Building

Chapter 8 - The People in Revolt

To Protest or Not To Protest

Nipping Mass Movements in the Bud

Protest in Democracy and Autocracy

Shocks Raise Revolts

Are Disasters Always Disasters for Government Survival?

Responding to Revolution or Its Threat

Power to the People

Chapter 9 - War, Peace, and World Order

War Fighting

To Try Hard or Not

Fighting for Survival

Who Survives War

The Peace Between Democracies

Defending the Peace and Nation Building

Chapter 10 - What Is To Be Done?

Rules to Fix By

Lessons from Green Bay

Fixing Democracies

Removing Misery

Free and Fair Elections: False Hope

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Copyright Page

To our dictators, who have treated us so well

Arlene and Fiona

What is important here is cash. [A] leader needs money, gold and diamonds to run his hundred castles, feed his thousand women, buy cars for the millions of boot-lickers under his heels, reinforce the loyal military forces and still have enough change left to deposit into his numbered Swiss accounts.

MOBUTU SESE SEKO OF ZAIRE, PROBABLY APOCRYPHAL

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar (I, II, 140-141)

Introduction

Rules to Rule By

What remarkable puzzles politics provides. Every days headlines shock and surprise us. Daily we hear of frauds, chicanery, and double-dealing by corporate executives, new lies, thefts, cruelties and even murders perpetrated by government leaders. We cannot help but wonder what flaws of culture, religion, upbringing, or historical circumstance explain the rise of these malevolent despots, greedy Wall Street bankers, and unctuous oil barons. Is it true, as Shakespeares Cassius said, that the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves? Or, more particularly, in those who lead us? Most of us are content to believe that. And yet the truth is far different.

Too often we accept the accounts of historians, journalists, pundits, and poets without probing beneath the surface to discover deeper truths that point neither to the stars nor to ourselves. The world of politics is dictated by rules. Short is the term of any ruler foolish enough to govern without submitting to these rules to rule by.

Journalists, authors, and academics have endeavored to explain politics through storytelling. Theyll explore why this or that leader seized power, or how the population of a far-flung country came to revolt against their government, or why a specific policy enacted last year has reversed the fortunes of millions of lives. And in the explanations of these cases, a journalist or historian can usually tell us what happened, and to whom, and maybe even why. But beneath the particulars of the many political stories and histories we read are a few questions that seem to emerge time after time, some profound, some seemingly minor, but all nagging and enduring in the back of our minds: How do tyrants hold on to power for so long? For that matter, why is the tenure of successful democratic leaders so brief? How can countries with such misguided and corrupt economic policies survive for so long? Why are countries that are prone to natural disasters so often unprepared when they happen? And how can lands rich with natural resources at the same time support populations stricken with poverty?

Equally, we may well wonder: Why are Wall Street executives so politically tone-deaf that they dole out billions in bonuses while plunging the global economy into recession? Why is the leadership of a corporation, on whose shoulders so much responsibility rests, decided by so few people? Why are failed CEOs retained and paid handsomely even as their companys shareholders lose their shirts?

In one form or another, these questions of political behavior pop up again and again. Each explanation, each story, treats the errant leader and his or her faulty decision making as a one-off, one-of-a-kind situation. But there is nothing unique about political behavior.

These stories of the horrible things politicians or business executives do are appealing in their own perverse way because they free us to believe we would behave differently if given the opportunity. They liberate us to cast blame on the flawed person who somehow, inexplicably, had the authority to make monumentaland monumentally baddecisions. We are confident that we would never act like Libyas Muammar Qaddafi who bombed his own people to keep himself in power. We look at the huge losses suffered under Kenneth Lays leadership by Enrons employees, retirees, and shareholders and think we arent like Kenneth Lay. We look at each case and conclude they are different, uncharacteristic anomalies. Yet they are held together by the logic of politics, the rules ruling rulers.

The pundits of politics and the nabobs of news have left us ignorant of these rules. They are content to blame the doers of evil without inquiring why the worlds of politics and business seem to succor miscreants or to turn good people into scoundrels. Thats why we are still asking the same old questions. Were still surprised by the prevalence of drought-induced food shortages in Africa, 3,500 years after the pharaohs worked out how to store grain. Were still shocked by the devastation of earthquakes and tsunamis in places like Haiti, Iran, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, and by the seemingly lesser intensity of such natural disasters in North America and Europe. Were still troubled by the friendly handshakes and winks exchanged between democratic leaders and the tyrants that they somehow justify empowering.