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Shows how the rules of politics almost always favour leaders who ignore the national interest and focus on serving their own interests.
Synopsis
Features two political scientists who show how the rules of politics almost always favour leaders who ignore the national interest and focus on serving their own supporters. In this book, the authors reveal their simple, crucial conclusion: leaders will do whatever it takes to stay in power.
Book Details
Publisher:
Perseus Books Group
Publication Date:
16-Aug-2012
ISBN:
9781610391849
Observer review
The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith review
Ed Howker the observer Sat 18 August 2012
When I watched a TED talk given by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita one half of the academic team behind The Dictator's Handbook his gait and accent reminded me of the criminal genius Vizzini, played by Wallace Shawn, in the cult 80s movie The Princess Bride. Vizzini thinks himself a master of negotiation, able to see anyone's true motives and control their behaviour, but his hubris inevitably leads to his demise. Bueno de Mesquita has similar talents, but they've led not to his downfall but to him becoming a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. The message of this book is that no political outcome is "inconceivable". Instead the behaviour of leaders is tiresomely predictable. Along with his co-writer, Alastair Smith, Bueno de Mesquita claims to have uncovered the fundamental laws that must be obeyed to attain and retain political power. The book owes plenty to James Buchanan and Gary Becker, and not a little to Machiavelli, but the result is certainly original. The Dictator's Handbook does for politicians what The Rules did for lonely hearts and it's not any worse for that.
The authors promise a tick list of simple rules that any reader can follow should they wish to win anything from the mayoralty of Hartlepool to military control of, say, Zimbabwe: "rely on as few people as possible", "make sure no supporter becomes irreplaceable", "find and control the money", "divide it with your allies", "don't take money from your supporters' pockets", and so on. These rules are illustrated with well-told political anecdotes and the book shares revealing insights about the nature of constituencies that leaders must capture in different political environments. It won't surprise anyone that the power structure of FTSE boardrooms has much in common with African dictatorships, but it's good to read the evidence.
There are two problems. First, the book is underpinned by the notion that politicians are self-interested rational actors whose choices are fixed and predictable. Economists used to think the same about consumers but behavioural science proved them wrong. Second, though students of politics, the authors assume the affectations of scientists and, in the cause of "impartiality", create a work of such galactic cynicism that it made me flinch on more than one occasion. "When addressing politics," they state, "we must accustom ourselves to think about the actions and interests of specific leaders rather than thinking and talking about fuzzy ideas like the national interest, the common good, and the general welfare."
