Bruce Bueno de Mesquita - The Dictators Handbook: Why Bad Behaviour is Almost Always Good Politics (New & Updated Edition)

A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority. In a style reminiscent of Freakonomics , Messrs. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith present dozens of clever examples. The most fascinating chapter in The Dictators Handbook concerns the rewards that governments provide other governments. The authors make the obvious, but nevertheless controversial, argument that almost all aid money is dispersed not to alleviate poverty but to purchase loyalty and influence. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are polymathic, drawing on economics, history, and political science to make their points. In other words, the reader will be hard-pressed to find a single government that doesnt largely operate according to Messrs. Bueno de Mesquita and Smiths model. So the next time a hand-wringing politician, Democrat or Republican, claims to be taking a position for the good of his country, remember to replace the word country with career.

Wall Street Journal

Machiavellis The Prince has a new rival. Its The Dictators Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. This is a fantastically thought-provoking read. I found myself not wanting to agree but actually, for the most part, being convinced that the cynical analysis is the true one.

Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics

In this fascinating book Bueno de Mesquita and Smith spin out their view of governance: that all successful leaders, dictators and democrats, can best be understood as almost entirely driven by their own political survivala view they characterize as cynical, but we fear accurate. Yet as we follow the authors through their brilliant historical assessments of leaders choicesfrom Caesar to Tammany Hall and the Green Bay Packerswe gradually realize that their brand of cynicism yields extremely realistic guidance about spreading the rule of law, decent government, and democracy. James Madison would have loved this book.

R. James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence, 19931995, and chairman, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith teach us to see dictatorship as just another form of politics, and from this perspective they deepen our understanding of all political systems.

Roger Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago

Copyright 2011, 2022 by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.

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Originally published in 2011 in the United States by PublicAffairs. Paperback first published in 2012 by PublicAffairs

Second Trade Paperback Edition: April 2022

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 1946

The dictators handbook : why bad behavior is almost always good politics / Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-044-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-61039-045-3 (e-book) 1. Political leadershipPhilosophy.

2. Power (Social sciences) 3. Political corruption. I. Smith, Alastair, 1967II. Title.

JC330.3.B84 2011

303.34dc23

2011024164

ISBNs: 9781610390446 (hardcover), 9781610390453 (ebook), 9781610391849 (first trade paperback), 9781541701366 (trade paperback reissue)

E3-20220309-JV-NF-ORI

To our dictators, who have treated us so wellArlene and Fiona and Susan

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 , act I, scene II, lines 140141