The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics

165 Pages·2012·0.94 MB·English

by  de Mesquita Bruce Bueno

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 Aren’t 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 Public’s Good
Who Doesn’t 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)
4
Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich
WHETHER YOU’RE TAKING CHARGE OF THE OTTOMAN Empire, a
corporation, or Liberia, controlling the flow of funds is essential to buying
support. However once you’ve emptied the state’s or the corporate coffers by
buying off both your essential supporters and their replacements, if necessary,
you must reckon with the entirely new challenge of refilling the treasury. If a
leader cannot find a reliable source of income, then it is only a matter of time
until someone else will offer his supporters greater rewards than he can.
Money is essential for anyone who wants to run any organization. Without
their share of the state’s rewards, hardly anyone will stick with an incumbent for
long. Liberia’s Prince Johnson knew this when he tortured Samuel Doe,
demanding the number of the bank accounts where the state’s treasure had been
hidden. Without getting his question answered, Johnson would not be able to
secure power for himself. In fact, neither he nor rival insurgent Charles Taylor
could secure state revenue enough to buy control of Liberia’s government
immediately after Doe was overthrown. The upshot: Samuel Doe died under
Prince Johnson’s torture without answering the question, and Liberia
degenerated into civil war. Each faction was able to extract enough resources to
buy support in a small region, but no one could control the state as a whole.
The succession process in the Ottoman Empire is another illustration of the
same point. Upon the death of their father, the Ottoman princes rushed from
their provinces to secure the treasury, buy the loyalty of the army and have all
their potential rivals (also known as brothers) strangled. Whoever first secured
control over the money was likely to win. If no one son triumphed, cleanly
wresting the treasury out of his siblings’ control, then no one could summon up
the necessary revenues to pay his backers. The common result, as in Liberia, was
civil war.
“Knowing where the money is” is particularly important in autocracies—and
particularly difficult. Such systems are shrouded in secrecy. Supporters must be
paid but there are no accurate accounts detailing stocks and flows of wealth. Of