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The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics
For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they have to. This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.
321 pages, Hardcover
First published September 27, 2011
About the author
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
34 books247 followersBruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist, professor at New York University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in international relations, foreign policy, and nation building. He is also one of the authors of the selectorate theory.
He has founded a company, Mesquita & Roundell, that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using a computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory. He is also the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.
He was featured as the primary subject in the documentary on the History Channel in December 2008. The show, titled Next Nostradamus, details how the scientist is using computer algorithms to predict future world events.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He has founded a company, Mesquita & Roundell, that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using a computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory. He is also the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.
He was featured as the primary subject in the documentary on the History Channel in December 2008. The show, titled Next Nostradamus, details how the scientist is using computer algorithms to predict future world events.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,192 reviews
October 28, 2016
Politicians care only about their own power; politicians care about their electorate only to the extent that the electorate keeps them in power. The underlying thesis of this book - let’s call it ‘Political Truth’ – is a statement of such obviousness that one would think it could be said in a sentence or two rather than needing to be padded out over three hundred odd pages:
Is this a new idea? Of course not. But where this book succeeds is in giving Political Truth the support of a credible conceptual framework and then exploring the logic of Political Truth through to a set of well-argued conclusions backed by convincing evidence (or at least evidence as convincing as any you can find in the social sciences).
No doubt to spare the blushes of whoever awards research grants in political theory, Political Truth is given a properly academic sounding name: ‘Selectorate Theory’. Selectorate Theory says as follows: leaders do not lead unilaterally but as part of a coalition that wields sufficient power to impose its will on those ruled. The make-up of this ruling coalition may vary over time, but will usually include the army and other ‘organs of state security’. The leader - whether by control of natural resources, taxation, foreign aid or otherwise - must have access to sufficient financial resources to keep the coalition’s members happy.
Who decides the make-up of the ruling coalition? We need to consider three groups: the ‘nominal electorate’, the ‘real selectorate’ and the ‘winning coalition’. The nominal electorate is every person who, in theory at least, has a say in choosing their leader. The ‘real selectorate’ is the group that actually chooses the leader. The final group – ‘the winning coalition’ - is the subset of the real selectorate whose support is actually required to keep the leader in power.
To illustrate, in an advanced democracy the nominal electorate would comprise everyone of voting age. The real selectorate, however, may be smaller. In the UK this group may be as few as twenty five percent of those entitled to vote as under the UK parliamentary system a political party needs fifty percent of parliamentary seats to stay in power and each of those seats could be won with a fifty percent majority. The Tory party came to power in 2015 with thirty seven percent of those eligible to vote. In contrast, North Korea has just as broad a nominal electorate as the UK but in practice the real selectorate able to participate in chosing a leader may be only a few hundred people. The willing coalition, chosen from the real selectorate and needed by Kim Jong Un to keep him in fois gras while the ICBMs keep flying, may be even fewer in number.
An Englishman will instantly understand that a member of the ‘winning coalition’ is referred to as a ‘toff’. English toffs, meanwhile, refer to members of the nominal electorate as ‘plebs’ from the Latin for ‘plebian’, being people who couldn’t vote in Roman times and whom the toffs think shouldn’t be allowed to vote now.
Back in 2012 a toff (a Tory Minister) called a policeman, who told him to follow the rules and wheel his bike through the side entrance to ten Downing Street rather than riding it straight through, a pleb. Given that in a class conscious UK the use of the pleb-word is as offensive as the use of the n-word in the US this caused a scandal big enough to force the resignation of the Minister, provoke endless police investigations and commence a couple of High Court trials. The political fallout from this affair was of a similar scale to that of Watergate, so it was named in its honor: Plebgate.
So to understand the Political Truth you simply need to focus on the size of the winning coalition and the level of pay-off this group needs to keep it happy. If you have a small ‘winning coalition’ the chances are that you’re a dictator (one estimate put the total number of individuals in Mubarak's winning coalition to be as few as eight). A large winning coalition? Chances are you are in a democracy or at least heading in a democratic direction.
If you are lucky enough to be a resource rich dictator (like Mobuto) then things are pretty sweet. You don’t have to go to the trouble of having a working economy that pays taxes. Instead use your resource wealth to pay off the army and have them build a runway next to your home village to serve the dual purpose of providing you with a quick route out in the event of a coup while also allowing for convenient weekend shopping trips to Paris on Concorde. Don’t spend money on roads though, they just make it easier for rivals to drive up to the palace and stage a coup. Citizens are the people your motorcade runs over on the way to the airport.
If you are resource poor dictator then things can become tricky. You have to give your people a minimum level of education and personal freedom in order to encourage them enough to actually do some work worth taxing. But take care, as too much freedom or too much education and they might start demanding more of the same. They might even force you to democratize. J J Rawlings is cited as a rare example of a leader that stayed one step ahead of his people, starting off as a dictator but lasting out to the beginnings of a Ghanaian democracy
If you have a very large winning coalition then you are probably a democrat and things kind of suck. Instead of shopping trips on Concorde you have to work on keeping a large number of complaining people happy using complicated, headache inducing stuff known as “government policy”. You can’t just hand out bundles of cash in brown envelopes, although you can play obscure games with the tax code to the benefit of selected members of your winning coalition, which comes to pretty much the same thing.
Well, this is all good fun, especially given that you can apply it to a range of political situations outside of national or international politics. In fact the thesis is so convincing I've already started plotting how to join the winning coalition in my office. I'm just waiting for the HR department to carry out our CEOs next purge (assuming I survive it).
Is this a new idea? Of course not. But where this book succeeds is in giving Political Truth the support of a credible conceptual framework and then exploring the logic of Political Truth through to a set of well-argued conclusions backed by convincing evidence (or at least evidence as convincing as any you can find in the social sciences).
No doubt to spare the blushes of whoever awards research grants in political theory, Political Truth is given a properly academic sounding name: ‘Selectorate Theory’. Selectorate Theory says as follows: leaders do not lead unilaterally but as part of a coalition that wields sufficient power to impose its will on those ruled. The make-up of this ruling coalition may vary over time, but will usually include the army and other ‘organs of state security’. The leader - whether by control of natural resources, taxation, foreign aid or otherwise - must have access to sufficient financial resources to keep the coalition’s members happy.
Who decides the make-up of the ruling coalition? We need to consider three groups: the ‘nominal electorate’, the ‘real selectorate’ and the ‘winning coalition’. The nominal electorate is every person who, in theory at least, has a say in choosing their leader. The ‘real selectorate’ is the group that actually chooses the leader. The final group – ‘the winning coalition’ - is the subset of the real selectorate whose support is actually required to keep the leader in power.
To illustrate, in an advanced democracy the nominal electorate would comprise everyone of voting age. The real selectorate, however, may be smaller. In the UK this group may be as few as twenty five percent of those entitled to vote as under the UK parliamentary system a political party needs fifty percent of parliamentary seats to stay in power and each of those seats could be won with a fifty percent majority. The Tory party came to power in 2015 with thirty seven percent of those eligible to vote. In contrast, North Korea has just as broad a nominal electorate as the UK but in practice the real selectorate able to participate in chosing a leader may be only a few hundred people. The willing coalition, chosen from the real selectorate and needed by Kim Jong Un to keep him in fois gras while the ICBMs keep flying, may be even fewer in number.
An Englishman will instantly understand that a member of the ‘winning coalition’ is referred to as a ‘toff’. English toffs, meanwhile, refer to members of the nominal electorate as ‘plebs’ from the Latin for ‘plebian’, being people who couldn’t vote in Roman times and whom the toffs think shouldn’t be allowed to vote now.
Back in 2012 a toff (a Tory Minister) called a policeman, who told him to follow the rules and wheel his bike through the side entrance to ten Downing Street rather than riding it straight through, a pleb. Given that in a class conscious UK the use of the pleb-word is as offensive as the use of the n-word in the US this caused a scandal big enough to force the resignation of the Minister, provoke endless police investigations and commence a couple of High Court trials. The political fallout from this affair was of a similar scale to that of Watergate, so it was named in its honor: Plebgate.
So to understand the Political Truth you simply need to focus on the size of the winning coalition and the level of pay-off this group needs to keep it happy. If you have a small ‘winning coalition’ the chances are that you’re a dictator (one estimate put the total number of individuals in Mubarak's winning coalition to be as few as eight). A large winning coalition? Chances are you are in a democracy or at least heading in a democratic direction.
If you are lucky enough to be a resource rich dictator (like Mobuto) then things are pretty sweet. You don’t have to go to the trouble of having a working economy that pays taxes. Instead use your resource wealth to pay off the army and have them build a runway next to your home village to serve the dual purpose of providing you with a quick route out in the event of a coup while also allowing for convenient weekend shopping trips to Paris on Concorde. Don’t spend money on roads though, they just make it easier for rivals to drive up to the palace and stage a coup. Citizens are the people your motorcade runs over on the way to the airport.
If you are resource poor dictator then things can become tricky. You have to give your people a minimum level of education and personal freedom in order to encourage them enough to actually do some work worth taxing. But take care, as too much freedom or too much education and they might start demanding more of the same. They might even force you to democratize. J J Rawlings is cited as a rare example of a leader that stayed one step ahead of his people, starting off as a dictator but lasting out to the beginnings of a Ghanaian democracy
If you have a very large winning coalition then you are probably a democrat and things kind of suck. Instead of shopping trips on Concorde you have to work on keeping a large number of complaining people happy using complicated, headache inducing stuff known as “government policy”. You can’t just hand out bundles of cash in brown envelopes, although you can play obscure games with the tax code to the benefit of selected members of your winning coalition, which comes to pretty much the same thing.
Well, this is all good fun, especially given that you can apply it to a range of political situations outside of national or international politics. In fact the thesis is so convincing I've already started plotting how to join the winning coalition in my office. I'm just waiting for the HR department to carry out our CEOs next purge (assuming I survive it).
February 19, 2017
This book examines positions of power (e.g. country leadership, mayors, CEOs, deans, etc.) by assuming entirely self-interested actors who seek to gain and retain power, and argues through examples that this relatively simple model gives the first order explanation of many world events. If you really grasp the message you'll adopt a much more cynical world view, but you'll also stop torturing yourself over stupid questions like what a country "ought" to do, what is "right", or why the people in power just can't see it. At the same time, spending some time in reality will reveal ways of remedying various suboptimal situations (e.g. the inefficacy of foreign aid) with solutions that recognize the root cause and manipulate incentive structures of those in power.
The book supplements its thesis with various examples. For instance, resource-rich autocracies with small winning coalitions tend to oppress the population, which is irrelevant to the revenue needed to retain power. Conversely, there exists a curious tension in countries that cannot extract riches from the ground and instead rely on a productive population to generate wealth. This leads to the development of technologies that empower people, such as better communication networks, transportation infrastructure, education, etc., but these in turn pose a threat to those in power. There is also an element of "survival of the fittest" to systems with small winning coalitions, where even if a benevolent leader rises to power who wants to raise the standard of living for the masses, they are likely to become replaced by those who promise to redirect that wealth to the key supporters (e.g. those in charge of the police, military, treasury, etc.). A coup is significantly easier if these institutions turn a blind eye. The outlooks are somewhat better for an average person living in a democracy, because the incentives of the ruler are aligned with making the average person better off to win a re-election.
In short, to understand the dynamics of a system of power the first order features to consider are 1) the nominal electorate (people who theoretically have influence), or the "interchangeables", 2) the real selectorate (the people who actually have the influence), or the "influentials" and 3) the winning coalition (the number of people required to keep power), or the "essentials". You can then solve for the dynamics.
My main critique of the book is that it is simply too damn long, too repetitive, and badly in need of an experienced editor. You'll hear the same statements re-iterated ad nauseam, and in many cases you'll wish the author was more concrete instead of arguing in generalities, at a level where the abstraction washes out the complexity and makes the conclusions self-evident under the simple model. Therefore, I'd recommend that the reader selectively skips through the book, or watch CGPGrey's summary video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7...), or the EconTalk podcasts featuring the author (e.g. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_fea...).
The book supplements its thesis with various examples. For instance, resource-rich autocracies with small winning coalitions tend to oppress the population, which is irrelevant to the revenue needed to retain power. Conversely, there exists a curious tension in countries that cannot extract riches from the ground and instead rely on a productive population to generate wealth. This leads to the development of technologies that empower people, such as better communication networks, transportation infrastructure, education, etc., but these in turn pose a threat to those in power. There is also an element of "survival of the fittest" to systems with small winning coalitions, where even if a benevolent leader rises to power who wants to raise the standard of living for the masses, they are likely to become replaced by those who promise to redirect that wealth to the key supporters (e.g. those in charge of the police, military, treasury, etc.). A coup is significantly easier if these institutions turn a blind eye. The outlooks are somewhat better for an average person living in a democracy, because the incentives of the ruler are aligned with making the average person better off to win a re-election.
In short, to understand the dynamics of a system of power the first order features to consider are 1) the nominal electorate (people who theoretically have influence), or the "interchangeables", 2) the real selectorate (the people who actually have the influence), or the "influentials" and 3) the winning coalition (the number of people required to keep power), or the "essentials". You can then solve for the dynamics.
My main critique of the book is that it is simply too damn long, too repetitive, and badly in need of an experienced editor. You'll hear the same statements re-iterated ad nauseam, and in many cases you'll wish the author was more concrete instead of arguing in generalities, at a level where the abstraction washes out the complexity and makes the conclusions self-evident under the simple model. Therefore, I'd recommend that the reader selectively skips through the book, or watch CGPGrey's summary video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7...), or the EconTalk podcasts featuring the author (e.g. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_fea...).
May 4, 2024
This book makes a whole lot of common sense points but pushes them way past most people’s comfort zones to the point where you may find yourself squirming and looking away and muttering surely, surely people aren’t all like that?
One big common sense basic here is that if you depend on the support of a lot of people (i.e. their democratic vote) you will be trying to please all those very people, whereas if you depend on the support of a few people (army chiefs, ministry of the interior, police) you can cheerfully ignore the starving millions, because they just don’t matter. Another big not so common sense point they make is that all leaders, democratic or despotic, want to stay in power FOREVER :
So we started from this single point : the self-interested calculations and actions of rulers are the driving force of all politics.
Does this mean that every time a politician spouts about improving housing, education, health services, care for the elderly, all those nice baubles, this is always based on finely calculating how much of this soup they need to ladle down our throats in order to secure our votes? Don’t they believe even a tiny bit of it?
Well, it seems the authors think that one main difference between democracies and dictatorships is that democracies make it tougher to siphon off the nation’s cash into their own accounts, but you should bet they will all try their best anyhow, because that’s why they’re politicians.
Because it’s not that power corrupts, it’s that, as another reviewer said, corrupted people are irresistibly attracted to politics like buzzy bees to pollen bearing flowers. And what has more pollen than the State Bank?
TINY LITTLE BABIES
So the level of cynicism here is severe :
A leader who can afford to keep the people isolated, uneducated, and ignorant and chooses not to do so is a fool.
And:
It so happens that even in many autocracies with reportedly good healthcare systems, infant mortality is high. This may be because helping little children does not particularly help leaders survive in power.
What about where the dictator happens to be sloshing around in a sea of oil? His overseas bank accounts all runneth over. Won’t there be some left for the people and their little babies?
It is ironic that while oil revenues provide the resources to fix societal problems, they create political incentives to make them far worse.
This part is explained by two incidents I remember from English history – the Bad King John (a tyrant) went broke and had to ask for money from his barons, and they wouldn’t give him any until he signed the Magna Carta, that founding document of liberty. And fastforwarding to 1640, likewise the Bad King Charles (a tyrant) had to convene parliament (which he’d avoided for 11 years), again to ask for money; and one thing led to another and the parliament chopped his head off in 1649. If King John or King Charles had have discovered oil on his royal estate, none of that would have happened. Well, they wouldn’t have known what to do with the oil, but you get the idea.
So, the more you have to rely on taxation, the more you will be pushed towards democratizing your country. The less you have to rely on taxation – say, if you have free money bubbling out of the ground – the more the people can get stuffed.
POL POT WAS AN IDEALIST
The rules for dictators explained in this book seemed to me pretty straightforward, even kind of obvious, but when the authors claimed that they fit anyplace anytime I couldn’t but disagree. They perfectly fit dictators like Saddam Hussein, Emperor Bokassa I, Robert Mugabe, Francisco Macias Nguema, Samuel Doe, Ferdinand Marcos and Augusto Pinochet. These ones seem to have had no concept of improving their nation, they just wanted to settle on it like a vampire bat and make sure all the other littler vampire bats got enough blood to suck on. But other dictators had notions of entirely rewriting human society for the good, that is, for what they considered to be the good. And they tried their best to crush and squeeze society into some new lunatic utopia – Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong. I admit, these are the unusual ones.
NATURAL DISASTERS
The authors ask : Why are the effects of earthquakes so much worse in autocratic regimes? Simple – because the leaders steal all the funds that could otherwise spend on better infrastructure, building regulations, etc. They examine earthquake outcomes in Chile and Iran and the deaths from comparable earthquakes are way higher in Iran. But I was dubious – we may profoundly disagree with the ayatollahs of Iran but can we put them on the same kleptocratic footing as all the other rascals? The authors clearly do. Again, their cynicism is breathtaking.
COULD DO BETTER. SEE ME AFTER CLASS.
The authors veer from specific examples which are always welcome to tiresome abstractions which aren’t – they love sentences like this :
Our subject is how variations in the size of the group of essentials and interchangeables determines how resources are allocated between public and private rewards
I couldn’t love that. Aside from the stylistic infelicities and the level of repetition you tend to find in books of arguments like this, I do kind of recommend The Dictator’s Handbook as an act of provocation.
Is the world really like this ?
*Whereby the religious might pipe up to say yes, they are, this is what we mean by the fallen state of man – read our book, not this one!
One big common sense basic here is that if you depend on the support of a lot of people (i.e. their democratic vote) you will be trying to please all those very people, whereas if you depend on the support of a few people (army chiefs, ministry of the interior, police) you can cheerfully ignore the starving millions, because they just don’t matter. Another big not so common sense point they make is that all leaders, democratic or despotic, want to stay in power FOREVER :
So we started from this single point : the self-interested calculations and actions of rulers are the driving force of all politics.
Does this mean that every time a politician spouts about improving housing, education, health services, care for the elderly, all those nice baubles, this is always based on finely calculating how much of this soup they need to ladle down our throats in order to secure our votes? Don’t they believe even a tiny bit of it?
Well, it seems the authors think that one main difference between democracies and dictatorships is that democracies make it tougher to siphon off the nation’s cash into their own accounts, but you should bet they will all try their best anyhow, because that’s why they’re politicians.
Because it’s not that power corrupts, it’s that, as another reviewer said, corrupted people are irresistibly attracted to politics like buzzy bees to pollen bearing flowers. And what has more pollen than the State Bank?
TINY LITTLE BABIES
So the level of cynicism here is severe :
A leader who can afford to keep the people isolated, uneducated, and ignorant and chooses not to do so is a fool.
And:
It so happens that even in many autocracies with reportedly good healthcare systems, infant mortality is high. This may be because helping little children does not particularly help leaders survive in power.
What about where the dictator happens to be sloshing around in a sea of oil? His overseas bank accounts all runneth over. Won’t there be some left for the people and their little babies?
It is ironic that while oil revenues provide the resources to fix societal problems, they create political incentives to make them far worse.
This part is explained by two incidents I remember from English history – the Bad King John (a tyrant) went broke and had to ask for money from his barons, and they wouldn’t give him any until he signed the Magna Carta, that founding document of liberty. And fastforwarding to 1640, likewise the Bad King Charles (a tyrant) had to convene parliament (which he’d avoided for 11 years), again to ask for money; and one thing led to another and the parliament chopped his head off in 1649. If King John or King Charles had have discovered oil on his royal estate, none of that would have happened. Well, they wouldn’t have known what to do with the oil, but you get the idea.
So, the more you have to rely on taxation, the more you will be pushed towards democratizing your country. The less you have to rely on taxation – say, if you have free money bubbling out of the ground – the more the people can get stuffed.
POL POT WAS AN IDEALIST
The rules for dictators explained in this book seemed to me pretty straightforward, even kind of obvious, but when the authors claimed that they fit anyplace anytime I couldn’t but disagree. They perfectly fit dictators like Saddam Hussein, Emperor Bokassa I, Robert Mugabe, Francisco Macias Nguema, Samuel Doe, Ferdinand Marcos and Augusto Pinochet. These ones seem to have had no concept of improving their nation, they just wanted to settle on it like a vampire bat and make sure all the other littler vampire bats got enough blood to suck on. But other dictators had notions of entirely rewriting human society for the good, that is, for what they considered to be the good. And they tried their best to crush and squeeze society into some new lunatic utopia – Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong. I admit, these are the unusual ones.
NATURAL DISASTERS
The authors ask : Why are the effects of earthquakes so much worse in autocratic regimes? Simple – because the leaders steal all the funds that could otherwise spend on better infrastructure, building regulations, etc. They examine earthquake outcomes in Chile and Iran and the deaths from comparable earthquakes are way higher in Iran. But I was dubious – we may profoundly disagree with the ayatollahs of Iran but can we put them on the same kleptocratic footing as all the other rascals? The authors clearly do. Again, their cynicism is breathtaking.
COULD DO BETTER. SEE ME AFTER CLASS.
The authors veer from specific examples which are always welcome to tiresome abstractions which aren’t – they love sentences like this :
Our subject is how variations in the size of the group of essentials and interchangeables determines how resources are allocated between public and private rewards
I couldn’t love that. Aside from the stylistic infelicities and the level of repetition you tend to find in books of arguments like this, I do kind of recommend The Dictator’s Handbook as an act of provocation.
Is the world really like this ?
*Whereby the religious might pipe up to say yes, they are, this is what we mean by the fallen state of man – read our book, not this one!
January 28, 2016
This was a very enjoyable book, full of what essentially amount to worked examples in the logic of political survival - going into detail about what behaviors occur under what political conditions, often furnishing multiple examples for each concept.
I will say that you can easily understand Bueno De Mesquita's basic thesis just by listening to the EconTalk podcasts on which he was a guest, particularly his 2006 and 2007 appearances, and in fact you may want to consider listening to these before reading the book, as it will give you a very strong intro to the concepts discussed therein. Both the podcasts and the book are highly recommended.
I will say that you can easily understand Bueno De Mesquita's basic thesis just by listening to the EconTalk podcasts on which he was a guest, particularly his 2006 and 2007 appearances, and in fact you may want to consider listening to these before reading the book, as it will give you a very strong intro to the concepts discussed therein. Both the podcasts and the book are highly recommended.
May 31, 2020
When I was younger I'd believed that politics was a dirty game in which money and power were the sole motivators for anyone who played it. Then I grew up a bit, and I started thinking that perhaps it was truly about ideology: conservatism vs. liberalism, communism vs. capitalism, social justice vs. hierarchy.
Well, the naive opinion of my younger self turns out to be right on the money! (That was sheer luck, no doubt)
However, more remains to be said, for things are seldom as simple as they may seem.
The Dictator's Handbook dispenses with all facades and propaganda. A leader can come to and then remain in power only if he or she can pay off the essentials whose support is crucial to achieve that goal. The only difference is the method of payment. In small coalition regimes (autocracies, monarchies, etc...) the payment consists of private rewards, i.e. making the rich richer and the poor poorer. In large coalition regimes (democracies) it consists of desirable policies, public goods, and infrastructure, since there are too many essentials to be bought off privately.
My introduction to this book comes from CGP Gray's 'The Rules for Rulers' video (currently with 10 million views). I'd feared, after the first couple of chapters, that this was going to be an expanded version of the twenty-minute video, with much repetition and reiteration of the same ideas. Fortunately, my fears were soon proved to be mistaken.
Armed with countless real life examples, the authors embark on a difficult project with the aim of illustrating one curious fact:
It is not a lovely, comforting picture they portray.
There are five rules that any ruler worth his salt would live by:
Rule 1: Keep your winning coalition as small as possible.
Rule 2: Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible.
Rule 3: Control the flow of revenue.
Rule 4: Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal.
Rule 5: Don’t take money out of your supporter’s pockets to make the people’s lives better.
Each of these rules is expanded upon and explained in full detail, from the moment the leader comes into power, then through the process of consolidating her regime and how she divides the revenue and what factors affect her decisions, to how she may be deposed if she fails to follow through with one or more of the aforementioned iron-clad laws.
I'd always believed that I would never behave like those greedy, cruel, and horrible people who, when powerful and wealthy, abandon their ideals and focus on enriching themselves and their cronies, but even I, in my optimism, cannot see a way in which one decent person can do much good without the help of those around her. The truth of the matter is thus, "the choice between enhancing social welfare or enriching a privileged few is not a question of how benevolent a leader is. Honorable motives might seem important, but they are overwhelmed by the need to keep supporters happy, and the means of keeping them happy depends on how many need rewarding."
The Dictator's Handbook explores the numerous factors that affect governance (none related to ideology or morality), such as coalition size, natural disasters, natural resources, illness, financial crises, foreign aid, revolts, and wars. In addition, we view some of the tools and methods used by both autocrats and democrats -albeit in different ways. These incluse elections, taxation, borrowing, extraction, private rewards, and public goods (education, healthcare, drinking water, infrastructure, and freedom). Finally, the authors offer what they view to be a potential antidote: increase coalition size; make leaders dependent on too many people so as to spur expenditure on public goods that benefit all citizens. Don't forgive debts, as relieving finanical strain in dictatorships only encourages further looting and oppression. This seems to be self-evident when one understands that a despot who cannot pay his or her cronies cannot stay in power.
Well, the naive opinion of my younger self turns out to be right on the money! (That was sheer luck, no doubt)
However, more remains to be said, for things are seldom as simple as they may seem.
The Dictator's Handbook dispenses with all facades and propaganda. A leader can come to and then remain in power only if he or she can pay off the essentials whose support is crucial to achieve that goal. The only difference is the method of payment. In small coalition regimes (autocracies, monarchies, etc...) the payment consists of private rewards, i.e. making the rich richer and the poor poorer. In large coalition regimes (democracies) it consists of desirable policies, public goods, and infrastructure, since there are too many essentials to be bought off privately.
My introduction to this book comes from CGP Gray's 'The Rules for Rulers' video (currently with 10 million views). I'd feared, after the first couple of chapters, that this was going to be an expanded version of the twenty-minute video, with much repetition and reiteration of the same ideas. Fortunately, my fears were soon proved to be mistaken.
Armed with countless real life examples, the authors embark on a difficult project with the aim of illustrating one curious fact:
"what, for a leader, is the “best” way to govern? The answer to how best to govern: however is necessary first to come to power, then to stay in power, and to control as much national (or corporate) revenue as possible all along the way."
It is not a lovely, comforting picture they portray.
There are five rules that any ruler worth his salt would live by:
Rule 1: Keep your winning coalition as small as possible.
Rule 2: Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible.
Rule 3: Control the flow of revenue.
Rule 4: Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal.
Rule 5: Don’t take money out of your supporter’s pockets to make the people’s lives better.
Each of these rules is expanded upon and explained in full detail, from the moment the leader comes into power, then through the process of consolidating her regime and how she divides the revenue and what factors affect her decisions, to how she may be deposed if she fails to follow through with one or more of the aforementioned iron-clad laws.
I'd always believed that I would never behave like those greedy, cruel, and horrible people who, when powerful and wealthy, abandon their ideals and focus on enriching themselves and their cronies, but even I, in my optimism, cannot see a way in which one decent person can do much good without the help of those around her. The truth of the matter is thus, "the choice between enhancing social welfare or enriching a privileged few is not a question of how benevolent a leader is. Honorable motives might seem important, but they are overwhelmed by the need to keep supporters happy, and the means of keeping them happy depends on how many need rewarding."
The Dictator's Handbook explores the numerous factors that affect governance (none related to ideology or morality), such as coalition size, natural disasters, natural resources, illness, financial crises, foreign aid, revolts, and wars. In addition, we view some of the tools and methods used by both autocrats and democrats -albeit in different ways. These incluse elections, taxation, borrowing, extraction, private rewards, and public goods (education, healthcare, drinking water, infrastructure, and freedom). Finally, the authors offer what they view to be a potential antidote: increase coalition size; make leaders dependent on too many people so as to spur expenditure on public goods that benefit all citizens. Don't forgive debts, as relieving finanical strain in dictatorships only encourages further looting and oppression. This seems to be self-evident when one understands that a despot who cannot pay his or her cronies cannot stay in power.
"Because the acceptable uses of taxation in a regime that depends on a large coalition are few—just those expenditures thought to buy more welfare than people can buy on their own—taxes tend to be low when coalitions are large. But when the coalition of essential backers is small and private goods are an efficient way to stay in power, then the well-being of the broader population falls by the waysides... In this setting leaders want to tax heavily, redistributing wealth by taking as much as they can from the poor interchangeables and the disenfranchised, giving that wealth in turn to the members of the winning coalition, making them fat, rich, and loyal."
Cases from the Middle East, China, America, Mexico, Ghana, Kenya, Russia, Britain, and many others (even private companies like HP!) serve to elucidate and clarify these seemingly abstract notions. I found the analysis regarding my country, Egypt, to be particularly illuminating.
The most critical factor behind Mubarak’s defeat in February 2011 was the decision by Egypt’s top generals to allow demonstrators to take to the streets without fear of military suppression. And why was that the case? As explained in a talk given on May 5, 2010, based on the logic set out here, cuts in US foreign aid to Egypt combined with serious economic constraints that produced high unemployment, meant that Mubarak’s coalition was likely to be underpaid and the people were likely to believe the risks and costs of rebellion were smaller than normal.
Chapter Seven on foreign aid was another gem, unexpectedly thought-provoking and informative. It explains several previously confusing and seemingly senseless attitudes, such as the US giving Pakistan (whose citizens are not huge fans of America) billions of dollars in aid to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban, with Pakistan spectacularly failing all the same. Later on, after dramatic increases in aid:
the Pakistani government accepted the aid money and greatly stepped up its pursuit of militants operating within its borders. By February 2010 they had captured the number two Taliban leader, but, as we should expect, they have also been careful not to wipe out the Taliban threat. Doing so would just lead to a termination of US funds.
Curiously, contrary to what many democracies declare, it is not in their interests for other countries to democratize, since a dictator with a small coalition is easier to buy off compared to a democratic leader beholden to the people. Trading aid for policy changes is an easy way to appease the voters but it allows tyranny to continue and the suffering of the poor and oppressed to never end.
"Our individual concerns about protecting ourselves from unfriendly democracies elsewhere typically trump our longer term belief in the benefits of democracy. Democratic leaders listen to their voters because that is how they and their political party get to keep their jobs...When a foreign people are aligned against our best interest, our best chance of getting what we want is to keep them under the yoke of an oppressor who is willing to do what we, the people, want."
I know this review is partially all over the place; however, there is absolutely no way I'd be able to summarize each eye-opening idea mentioned in this book. It seems depressing and it is so indeed, but there is light at the end of the road. The final chpater offers hints and suggestions that, if implemented, would greatly improve the livelihoods of the wretched and downtrodden. These include targeting states that depend on tourism for democratization, as they are more likely to allow their people more freedoms; exploiting the opportunities that arise when the leader is new, sick, or bankrupt, as the coalition members are uncertain whether they will be retained or disposed of; the widespread use of cell phone technology and access to the internet to allow people to communicate and organize themselves; tying foreign aid with actual improvements in governance, and not merely accepting empty promises; and offering a way out for despots "to preserve and improve the lives of the many who suffer at the hands of desperate leaders, who might be prepared to step aside in exchange for immunity."
These and more will be found in this great work of non-fiction, which will serve as a reference and a fresh perspective with which to view the realm of politics. In its essence, it is a long argument for democracy without allusion to its moralistic and egalitarian justifications. Regardless of ideology, democracy is the only course we can take to ensure prosperity and freedom for all people.
The great thing about these rules is that once understood, those of us who wish to see the world a better place can also play the game, and perhaps -hopefully- end up winning it too.
"Blind fools don’t often get to rule countries or companies."
February 10, 2017
Basically, this author tells us over and over that powerful people abuse their power if no one checks them. This is not news. Also, there's a certain incoherence to the thesis even in the examples he uses: Bell, California was inevitably corrupt, but he can tell the story because everyone involved went to jail; foreign aid never works but the Marshall Plan was very successful, etc. Something is missing from the model. He needs to explain how the checks on corruption change in strength over time and location within a country when the factors he is talking about are held constant. This would be much more useful information.
For better books apologizing for cynicism and sociopathy, read Robert Greene.
For better books apologizing for cynicism and sociopathy, read Robert Greene.
January 28, 2012
This is one of those books whose main thesis could be explained and extrapolated upon in about 10 pages, which means the rest of the book is pretty repetitive. Includes an interesting examination of political systems (autocracy vs democracy) and why politicians ultimately all work on the same incentives. Read the first few chapters and skim the rest.
April 19, 2020
তৃতীয় বিশ্বের কাগজে কলমে উন্নয়নশীল দেশে জন্মায়া করাপশন, লুটতরাজ আর অশাসন দেখে বড় হইছি। ত্রাণের কম্বল, খাবার মেরে দেয়া নিজ চোখে দেখছি। সুতরাং উন্নত দেশের পলিটিকাল সায়েন্টিস্টরা যখন চাপা উত্তেজনা নিয়ে বলেন সরকারের কাজ জনগণের টাকা-পয়সা মেরে খাওয়া, আর যত ভালো উদ্দেশ্যেই হোক, স্বভাবতই ত্রাণের পয়স��� মেরে দেওয়া হবে—খুব একটা অবাক হই না। ভুক্তভোগী অঞ্চলে এসব কমন সেন্স, এসবই নর্ম। বরং নিজের চরকি ঘোরানো বন্ধ করে দেশ-জাতি নিয়ে ভাবতে চাওয়া কারো প্রশ্ন জাগা উচিৎ— কেন এমন সরকার ক্ষমতায় আসে, ক্ষমতায় থাকে, চলে গেলে সদৃশ অন্য কেউ আসে এবং জনগণের ভাগ্যের শিকে ছেঁড়ে না। দ্য ডিকটেটরস হ্যান্ডবুক স্বৈরাচার হোক বা গণতান্ত্রিক, উভয় ধরণের সরকারের ক্ষমতায়ন, রাজনৈতিক দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি, টিকে থাকার কৌশল এবং বহিঃপ্রভাব ইত্যাদি নিয়ে আলোচনা করে। তুলনামূলক উন্নত দেশের পাঠকের অবাক হবার সুযোগ আছে। নিষ্পেষিত অঞ্চলের মানুষ বরং চোখ মেলে দেখতে পারে সত্যিকার অর্থে কতখানি ক্ষমতাহীন আর অসহায় তাঁরা।
লেখকদ্বয়, ব্রুস বুয়েনো দে মেস্কিতা আর অ্যালেস্টেয়ার স্মিথ উভয় পলিটিকাল স���য়েন্টিস্ট, প্রথমজন নিউ ইয়র্ক ইউনিভার্সিটির প্রফেসর। এ বইয়ে যে রাজনৈতিক কাঠামো দেখাইছেন, তাঁদের মতে সেটা সরকার ব্যবস্থাসহকারে যে কোন ধরণের অর্গানাইজেশনের জন্যেই সত্যি, সেইটা কর্পোরেট জায়ান্ট হোক বা ফুটবল ক্লাব। লিডারশিপ আর অর্থলগ্নি থাকলেই হইছে।
মোটাদাগে শাসনব্যবস্থায় যারা জড়িত, তাঁদের তিনগ্রুপে ভাগ করছেন। ইন্টারচেঞ্জেবল (যাদের ইচ্ছেমত বদলায়া ফেলা যায়, জনতা), ইনফ্লুয়��নশিয়াল (যাদের সীমিত ক্ষমতা আছে সরকার প্রধাণ নির্ধারণ করায়, দালাল) এবং এসেনশিয়াল (যাদের ছাড়া কোন দল অচল, চাটাগোষ্ঠী)। যে কোন ধরণের অর্গানাইজেশনে এই তিন পলিটিকাল গ্রুপ দেখা যায় এবং কোন গ্রুপের সাইজ কত বড় তার উপর ভিত্তি করে লিডার বা সরকার প্রধাণের ক্ষমতা ও দায়বদ্ধতার হিসেবনিকেশ আর জীবনযাত্রার মানের হালহকীকত।
এইভাবে দেখলে গণতান্ত্রিক সরকার ও স্বৈরাচারী সরকারের পার্থক্য সরলীকরণ করা যায়— গণতান্ত্রিক সিস্টেমে ইন্টারচেঞ্জেবল, ইনফ্লুয়েনশিয়াল ও এসেনশিয়ালের সংখ্যা অনেক বেশী; আর স্বৈরাচারে ইন্টারচেঞ্জেবলের সংখ্যা বিপুল পরিমাণে হইলেও ইনফ্লুয়েনশিয়াল আর এসেনশিয়ালের সংখ্যা খুবই ছোট। লেখকদ্বয় এই কাজটাই করছেন এবং ডেমোক্রেসি/অটোক্রেসির আলাপ আলাদাভাবে না পেড়ে উভয়কে সমন্বয় করে একই পাল্লায় মাপছেন। তাঁরা দেখাইছেন সরকার গণতান্ত্রিক হোক বা স্বৈরাচারী, উভয় একই যুক্তি-নিয়মে চলে। এইটা নিঃসন্দেহে বড় দাবী, স্বৈরাচারের বদলে গণতান্ত্রিক সরকারের উপযোগিতা চোখে আংগুল দিয়ে দেখানো লাগে না। সুতরাং বই জুড়ে ইতিহাস, পরিসংখ্যান, চার্ট আর লেখচিত্রের মুহুর্মুহু সাইটেশন অনাকাঙ্ক্ষিত না।
লেখকেরা দেখাইছেন, কেউই একা শাসন করে না, সবচেয়ে মারদাঙ্গা ডিকটেটরও না। সবক্ষেত্রেই লিডারের নিচে তাঁরে সরাসরি সাপোর্ট দিয়ে টিকিয়ে রাখা চাটাগোষ্ঠী (এসেনশিয়াল) থাকবেই। ক্ষমতায় আসার পর প্রায়শই লিডাররা নিজের সমর্থনের এসেনশিয়াল দিয়ে দল ভারী করে। যারা ভবিষ্যতে ক্ষমতার জন্যে হুমকি হইতে পারে, তাঁদের সরায় ফেলে, এমনকি তাঁরা লিডারকে ক্ষমতায় আসতে সরাসরি ভূমিকা রাখলেও। একজন সফল রাজনীতিবিদ তাঁর নিজ সমর্থনের এসেনশিয়ালদের নিজের চেয়েও বেশী গুরুত্ব দেন। তাঁদের ভাগেরটা নিশ্চিত করে অন্য কথা। এসেনশিয়ালদের পকেট খুশি রেখে স্বৈরাচারী শাসক তাঁর গদি ধরে রাখে। যদি এসেনশিয়ালদের না পালতে পারে, তবে তাঁর পতন নিশ্চিত। এসেনশিয়াল কোয়ালিশনকে খুশি রাখা বড় রাজনৈতিকের লক্ষণ, জনগণের সেবা করা বা দেশের উন্নতি করা না। ট্যাক্স, রেভেনিউ, ফরেইন এইডসহ অন্যান্য সব ইনকাম সোর্স থেকে টাকা নিয়ে এসেনশিয়ালদের লালন করাই সুরাজনীতি। যে নেতা এসেনশিয়ালদের ভাগেরটা দিয়ে জনসেবা করতে গেছেন, তাঁকেই মুখ থুবড়ে পড়তে হইছে, ক্ষমতা হারাইতে হইছে, খুন হইতে হইছে। স্বৈরতন্ত্রে এসেনশিয়ালদের সংখ���যা কম বলে মোট টাকা ঢালার পরিমাণ কম এবং একেকজনের পাতেও পরিমাণে বেশী পড়ে। গণতন্ত্রে সংখ্যাটা অনেক বেশী বলে তুলনায় পয়সা লাগে অনেক বেশী আর পাতে পড়েও কম। যে কারণে গণতন্ত্রে জোর জবরদস্তি করা অনেক বেশী কঠিন।
তবে না, লেখকেরা গণতন্ত্র আর স্বৈরতন্ত্রকে একই আলোয় দেখাইতেছেন না। তাঁদের আলাপে স্বৈরতন্ত্রের উপর গণতন্ত্রের শ্রেষ্ঠত্ব মালুম পাওয়া যাবে। কিন্তু রাজনৈতিক প্রজ্ঞার সাথে মোরালিটির প্রশ্ন গোলাচ্ছেন না— ভেতরের কার্যকারণ দেখাইতে, নির্মোহ আলোচনার নিমিত্ত্বেই সরলীকরণ। এতে স্বৈরতন্ত্রের আমলনামা তো বটেই, গণতন্ত্রের সীমাবদ্ধতাও উঠে আসছে।
ডিক্টেটরশিপগুলো নাগরিকদের ততটুকু পড়াশোনার পেছনে ব্যয় করে, যতটুক করলে তাঁরা কাজ করে দেশ চালায়া রাখতে পারবে। এর চেয়ে বেশী শিক্ষার পেছনে আগ্রহী না। বেশী শিক্ষিতরা সরকারী কার্যকালাপে প্রশ্ন করতে আরম্ভ করে।
ডিক্টেটরশিপে ঘন ঘন নির্বাচন দেয়া হয়। ফলাফল নিশ্চিত জেনেও নির্বাচন সম্পন্ন করে। এমন আচরণের কারণ নিয়ে আমি নিজেও ভেবেছি অনেক এবং হেসেছি। লেখকদ্বয়ের মতে, বিজয়ী হওয়ার এইসব নির্বাচনের মূল লক্ষ্য নয়। বরং স্বৈরশাসক নির্বাচন দিয়ে নিজের কোয়ালিশনকে ঝাকিয়ে লাইনে রাখে। জানান দেয় যদি লিডারের মতের বাইরে যাওয়া হয়, তবে ফলাফল ভালো হবে না।
গণতান্ত্রিক দেশগুলো যেমন সবখানে গণতন্ত্র প্রতিষ্ঠা হোক, এই খায়েশের বয়ান দিলেও আদতে চায় না স্বৈরতন্ত্র গণতান্ত্রিক হোক। কারণ ডিক্টেটরশিপের কাছ থেকে পলিসি কেনা যত সহজ, গণতান্ত্রিক দেশ থেকে তত সহজ না। বই থেকে কিছু উদাহরণ দিই।
গণতান্ত্রিক রাষ্ট্র পলিসি কেনে ফরেইন এইডের মোড়কে। ৭৯’র ইসরায়েল-মিশর শান্তি চুক্তিতে মিশরের প্রেসিডেন্ট আনোয়ার সাদাতকে বিপুল পরিমাণ টাকা দেয় অ্যামেরিকা। চুক্তি অনুযায়ী ইসরায়েল সিনাই পেনিনসুলার দখল ছেড়ে দেয়, মিশর প্রথম মুসলিম দেশ হিসেবে ইসরায়েলকে স্বীকৃতি দেয় এবং উভয় সুয়েজ ক্যানালে ফ্রি প্যাসেজের উপর রাজী হয় আর অ্যামেরিকা তেল ক্রাইসিসের সম্ভাবনা এড়ায়। ইসরায়েলকে স্বীকৃতি দেয়ার ব্যাপারটা মিশরে একদমই অজনপ্রিয় পলিসি ছিলো। সেই সুবাদে আনোয়ার সাদাত আমেরিকার থেকে মোটা অংকের টাকা খসাতে পেরেছে।
স্নায়ুযুদ্ধের সময় লাইব্রেরিয়ার প্রেসিডেন্টকে প্রতি বছর ৫০ মিলিয়ন ডলার ফরেইন এইড হিসেবে দিতো রাশিয়াবিরোধী ভূমিকার জন্যে। স্নায়ুযুদ্ধ শেষ, অ্যামেরিকার টাকা ঢালাও শেষ। ফান্ড ছাড়া লাইব্রেইয়ার প্রেসিডেন্ট নিজের বিদ্রোহ দমন করতে নিজের সাপোর্টারদের যথেষ্ট মালপানি দিতে পারে নাই। ফলে সে নিহত হয়।
২০০৩ সালে ইরাক আক্রমণে তুর্কির মাটিতে আমেরিকান সেনা স্থাপন করতে তুর্কীকে ৬ বিলিয়ন ডলার গ্রান্ট আর ২০ বিলিয়ন অব্দি লোন গ্যারান্টি সাধে। এরপর মেলা গাই-গুই করার পর মোটামুটি গণতান্ত্রিক দেশ তুর্কি রাজী হয় না। লেখকদ্বয়ের মতে, অ্যামেরিকা এর চেয়ে বেশী টাকা ঢালতে রাজী ছিলো না বলে চুক্তি হয়নাই।
ফরেইন এইড নিয়ে তাই বড়সড় চ্যাপ্টার আছে। কেন অটোক্রেটিক দেশে ফরেইন এইড আর গ্রান্ট আসে, ওরা জীবনেও টাকা ফেরত দেবে না জেনে, এই প্রশ্নের উত্তর এইখানে পরিস্কার। ফরেইন এইডের উদ্দেশ্য দুর্গতির স্বীকার মানুষের উন্নতি, জীবনযাত্রার মানোন্নয়ন নয়—বরং অটোক্রেটিক জান্তার নিকট থেকে নিজের সুবিধামত পলিসি কেনা।
লেখকদ্বয় এনজিওর গতিবিধি নিয়ে সমালোচনা করেন—আপাত দৃষ্টিতে অল্প কিছু মানুষ সুবিধা পাচ্ছে বটে, কিন্তু এতে অটোক্রেটিক সরকারের চুরিচামারি করার সুযোগ বৃদ্ধি পায়।
স্বৈরতন্ত্রে বাস করা কঠিন। মানুষ কেন তবে সচরাচর বিদ্রোহ করে না?
অটোক্রেটিক রেজিমে জনগণকে দেখায় দেয়া হয় বিদ্রোহ বা উচ্চবাচ্য করলে কী ফলাফল হইতে পারে। স্বৈরতন্ত্রের যাতাকলে বাস করা কঠিন বটে, কিন্তু বিপ্লব বিফলে গেলে তার পরিণতি হইতে পারে ভয়াবহ। সুতরাং জান্তাকে সরায়ে সফল বিপ্লবের সম্ভাবনা দেখা দেয়ার আগ অব্দি মানুষ সরাসরি বিপ্লবে সামিল হয় না।
লেখকদ্বয়ের মত সুখী এবং চরম অসুখী জনতার মাঝে বিপ্লবের উত্থান হয় না, হয় তাঁদের মধ্যে যারা এ দুটোর মাঝামাঝি কোথাও আছে।
বইয়ে আরো মেলা বিশদ ও বহুমুখী আলাপ আছে। গতমাসে পড়েছি, সব টপিক মনে নেই আর লেখাও সম্ভব না। উপরন্তু বর্তমানে যেটা পড়ছি, The narrow corridor-এর সাথে ওভারল্যাপ হবার সম্ভাবনা ফেলে দিচ্ছি না। ন্যারো করিডর বইটা লিবার্টি নিয়ে। ন্যারেটিভে মিল আছে।
যাই হোক, এই লেখায় যদি মনে হয় লেখকদ্বয় অনেক বেশী জেনারালাইজেশন করছেন, তবে অবাক হবো না। আমারও পড়ার সময় মনে হচ্ছিলো।
যেমন, অটোক্রেটিক রাষ্ট্রে পুলিশ ফোর্সের বেতন কম রাখা কমন ব্যাপার এবং উদ্দেশ্যমূলক বলেছেন, যেন পুলিশ বাধ্য হয়ে দূর্নীতির দিকে ধাবিত হয়। এইক্ষেত্রে দুইটা জিনিস হবে, এক, পুলিশ দূর্নীতির নিমিত্তে বিশাল ধন-সম্পদ ভোগ করতে পারবে এবং দুই, সুযোগ করে দেয়ায় অটোক্রেট জান্তার অনুগত হবে আরো বেশী করে। বেতন কম দিয়ে পুলিশের করাপশন ঘটানোর এই যুক্তি আমার মানতে আপত্তি কেন সেইটা বিস্তারিত বলার প্রয়োজন বোধ করছি না।
তবে প্রতিটা ক্ষেত্রেই সোর্স ধরে বিস্তারিত ঘাটাঘাটি করার সুযোগ তাঁরা রাখছেন। এছাড়া অস্বীকার যাইতেছেন না, কোন স্বৈরতন্ত্র বা গণতন্ত্রই একরকম নয়। একটা থেকে আরেকটার পার্থক্য থাকবেই। এই বইয়ের উদ্দেশ্য পলিটিকাল দুনিয়াটারে সাধারণ আলাপে নিয়ে আসা।
লেখকদ্বয়, ব্রুস বুয়েনো দে মেস্কিতা আর অ্যালেস্টেয়ার স্মিথ উভয় পলিটিকাল স���য়েন্টিস্ট, প্রথমজন নিউ ইয়র্ক ইউনিভার্সিটির প্রফেসর। এ বইয়ে যে রাজনৈতিক কাঠামো দেখাইছেন, তাঁদের মতে সেটা সরকার ব্যবস্থাসহকারে যে কোন ধরণের অর্গানাইজেশনের জন্যেই সত্যি, সেইটা কর্পোরেট জায়ান্ট হোক বা ফুটবল ক্লাব। লিডারশিপ আর অর্থলগ্নি থাকলেই হইছে।
মোটাদাগে শাসনব্যবস্থায় যারা জড়িত, তাঁদের তিনগ্রুপে ভাগ করছেন। ইন্টারচেঞ্জেবল (যাদের ইচ্ছেমত বদলায়া ফেলা যায়, জনতা), ইনফ্লুয়��নশিয়াল (যাদের সীমিত ক্ষমতা আছে সরকার প্রধাণ নির্ধারণ করায়, দালাল) এবং এসেনশিয়াল (যাদের ছাড়া কোন দল অচল, চাটাগোষ্ঠী)। যে কোন ধরণের অর্গানাইজেশনে এই তিন পলিটিকাল গ্রুপ দেখা যায় এবং কোন গ্রুপের সাইজ কত বড় তার উপর ভিত্তি করে লিডার বা সরকার প্রধাণের ক্ষমতা ও দায়বদ্ধতার হিসেবনিকেশ আর জীবনযাত্রার মানের হালহকীকত।
এইভাবে দেখলে গণতান্ত্রিক সরকার ও স্বৈরাচারী সরকারের পার্থক্য সরলীকরণ করা যায়— গণতান্ত্রিক সিস্টেমে ইন্টারচেঞ্জেবল, ইনফ্লুয়েনশিয়াল ও এসেনশিয়ালের সংখ্যা অনেক বেশী; আর স্বৈরাচারে ইন্টারচেঞ্জেবলের সংখ্যা বিপুল পরিমাণে হইলেও ইনফ্লুয়েনশিয়াল আর এসেনশিয়ালের সংখ্যা খুবই ছোট। লেখকদ্বয় এই কাজটাই করছেন এবং ডেমোক্রেসি/অটোক্রেসির আলাপ আলাদাভাবে না পেড়ে উভয়কে সমন্বয় করে একই পাল্লায় মাপছেন। তাঁরা দেখাইছেন সরকার গণতান্ত্রিক হোক বা স্বৈরাচারী, উভয় একই যুক্তি-নিয়মে চলে। এইটা নিঃসন্দেহে বড় দাবী, স্বৈরাচারের বদলে গণতান্ত্রিক সরকারের উপযোগিতা চোখে আংগুল দিয়ে দেখানো লাগে না। সুতরাং বই জুড়ে ইতিহাস, পরিসংখ্যান, চার্ট আর লেখচিত্রের মুহুর্মুহু সাইটেশন অনাকাঙ্ক্ষিত না।
লেখকেরা দেখাইছেন, কেউই একা শাসন করে না, সবচেয়ে মারদাঙ্গা ডিকটেটরও না। সবক্ষেত্রেই লিডারের নিচে তাঁরে সরাসরি সাপোর্ট দিয়ে টিকিয়ে রাখা চাটাগোষ্ঠী (এসেনশিয়াল) থাকবেই। ক্ষমতায় আসার পর প্রায়শই লিডাররা নিজের সমর্থনের এসেনশিয়াল দিয়ে দল ভারী করে। যারা ভবিষ্যতে ক্ষমতার জন্যে হুমকি হইতে পারে, তাঁদের সরায় ফেলে, এমনকি তাঁরা লিডারকে ক্ষমতায় আসতে সরাসরি ভূমিকা রাখলেও। একজন সফল রাজনীতিবিদ তাঁর নিজ সমর্থনের এসেনশিয়ালদের নিজের চেয়েও বেশী গুরুত্ব দেন। তাঁদের ভাগেরটা নিশ্চিত করে অন্য কথা। এসেনশিয়ালদের পকেট খুশি রেখে স্বৈরাচারী শাসক তাঁর গদি ধরে রাখে। যদি এসেনশিয়ালদের না পালতে পারে, তবে তাঁর পতন নিশ্চিত। এসেনশিয়াল কোয়ালিশনকে খুশি রাখা বড় রাজনৈতিকের লক্ষণ, জনগণের সেবা করা বা দেশের উন্নতি করা না। ট্যাক্স, রেভেনিউ, ফরেইন এইডসহ অন্যান্য সব ইনকাম সোর্স থেকে টাকা নিয়ে এসেনশিয়ালদের লালন করাই সুরাজনীতি। যে নেতা এসেনশিয়ালদের ভাগেরটা দিয়ে জনসেবা করতে গেছেন, তাঁকেই মুখ থুবড়ে পড়তে হইছে, ক্ষমতা হারাইতে হইছে, খুন হইতে হইছে। স্বৈরতন্ত্রে এসেনশিয়ালদের সংখ���যা কম বলে মোট টাকা ঢালার পরিমাণ কম এবং একেকজনের পাতেও পরিমাণে বেশী পড়ে। গণতন্ত্রে সংখ্যাটা অনেক বেশী বলে তুলনায় পয়সা লাগে অনেক বেশী আর পাতে পড়েও কম। যে কারণে গণতন্ত্রে জোর জবরদস্তি করা অনেক বেশী কঠিন।
তবে না, লেখকেরা গণতন্ত্র আর স্বৈরতন্ত্রকে একই আলোয় দেখাইতেছেন না। তাঁদের আলাপে স্বৈরতন্ত্রের উপর গণতন্ত্রের শ্রেষ্ঠত্ব মালুম পাওয়া যাবে। কিন্তু রাজনৈতিক প্রজ্ঞার সাথে মোরালিটির প্রশ্ন গোলাচ্ছেন না— ভেতরের কার্যকারণ দেখাইতে, নির্মোহ আলোচনার নিমিত্ত্বেই সরলীকরণ। এতে স্বৈরতন্ত্রের আমলনামা তো বটেই, গণতন্ত্রের সীমাবদ্ধতাও উঠে আসছে।
ডিক্টেটরশিপগুলো নাগরিকদের ততটুকু পড়াশোনার পেছনে ব্যয় করে, যতটুক করলে তাঁরা কাজ করে দেশ চালায়া রাখতে পারবে। এর চেয়ে বেশী শিক্ষার পেছনে আগ্রহী না। বেশী শিক্ষিতরা সরকারী কার্যকালাপে প্রশ্ন করতে আরম্ভ করে।
ডিক্টেটরশিপে ঘন ঘন নির্বাচন দেয়া হয়। ফলাফল নিশ্চিত জেনেও নির্বাচন সম্পন্ন করে। এমন আচরণের কারণ নিয়ে আমি নিজেও ভেবেছি অনেক এবং হেসেছি। লেখকদ্বয়ের মতে, বিজয়ী হওয়ার এইসব নির্বাচনের মূল লক্ষ্য নয়। বরং স্বৈরশাসক নির্বাচন দিয়ে নিজের কোয়ালিশনকে ঝাকিয়ে লাইনে রাখে। জানান দেয় যদি লিডারের মতের বাইরে যাওয়া হয়, তবে ফলাফল ভালো হবে না।
গণতান্ত্রিক দেশগুলো যেমন সবখানে গণতন্ত্র প্রতিষ্ঠা হোক, এই খায়েশের বয়ান দিলেও আদতে চায় না স্বৈরতন্ত্র গণতান্ত্রিক হোক। কারণ ডিক্টেটরশিপের কাছ থেকে পলিসি কেনা যত সহজ, গণতান্ত্রিক দেশ থেকে তত সহজ না। বই থেকে কিছু উদাহরণ দিই।
গণতান্ত্রিক রাষ্ট্র পলিসি কেনে ফরেইন এইডের মোড়কে। ৭৯’র ইসরায়েল-মিশর শান্তি চুক্তিতে মিশরের প্রেসিডেন্ট আনোয়ার সাদাতকে বিপুল পরিমাণ টাকা দেয় অ্যামেরিকা। চুক্তি অনুযায়ী ইসরায়েল সিনাই পেনিনসুলার দখল ছেড়ে দেয়, মিশর প্রথম মুসলিম দেশ হিসেবে ইসরায়েলকে স্বীকৃতি দেয় এবং উভয় সুয়েজ ক্যানালে ফ্রি প্যাসেজের উপর রাজী হয় আর অ্যামেরিকা তেল ক্রাইসিসের সম্ভাবনা এড়ায়। ইসরায়েলকে স্বীকৃতি দেয়ার ব্যাপারটা মিশরে একদমই অজনপ্রিয় পলিসি ছিলো। সেই সুবাদে আনোয়ার সাদাত আমেরিকার থেকে মোটা অংকের টাকা খসাতে পেরেছে।
স্নায়ুযুদ্ধের সময় লাইব্রেরিয়ার প্রেসিডেন্টকে প্রতি বছর ৫০ মিলিয়ন ডলার ফরেইন এইড হিসেবে দিতো রাশিয়াবিরোধী ভূমিকার জন্যে। স্নায়ুযুদ্ধ শেষ, অ্যামেরিকার টাকা ঢালাও শেষ। ফান্ড ছাড়া লাইব্রেইয়ার প্রেসিডেন্ট নিজের বিদ্রোহ দমন করতে নিজের সাপোর্টারদের যথেষ্ট মালপানি দিতে পারে নাই। ফলে সে নিহত হয়।
২০০৩ সালে ইরাক আক্রমণে তুর্কির মাটিতে আমেরিকান সেনা স্থাপন করতে তুর্কীকে ৬ বিলিয়ন ডলার গ্রান্ট আর ২০ বিলিয়ন অব্দি লোন গ্যারান্টি সাধে। এরপর মেলা গাই-গুই করার পর মোটামুটি গণতান্ত্রিক দেশ তুর্কি রাজী হয় না। লেখকদ্বয়ের মতে, অ্যামেরিকা এর চেয়ে বেশী টাকা ঢালতে রাজী ছিলো না বলে চুক্তি হয়নাই।
ফরেইন এইড নিয়ে তাই বড়সড় চ্যাপ্টার আছে। কেন অটোক্রেটিক দেশে ফরেইন এইড আর গ্রান্ট আসে, ওরা জীবনেও টাকা ফেরত দেবে না জেনে, এই প্রশ্নের উত্তর এইখানে পরিস্কার। ফরেইন এইডের উদ্দেশ্য দুর্গতির স্বীকার মানুষের উন্নতি, জীবনযাত্রার মানোন্নয়ন নয়—বরং অটোক্রেটিক জান্তার নিকট থেকে নিজের সুবিধামত পলিসি কেনা।
লেখকদ্বয় এনজিওর গতিবিধি নিয়ে সমালোচনা করেন—আপাত দৃষ্টিতে অল্প কিছু মানুষ সুবিধা পাচ্ছে বটে, কিন্তু এতে অটোক্রেটিক সরকারের চুরিচামারি করার সুযোগ বৃদ্ধি পায়।
স্বৈরতন্ত্রে বাস করা কঠিন। মানুষ কেন তবে সচরাচর বিদ্রোহ করে না?
অটোক্রেটিক রেজিমে জনগণকে দেখায় দেয়া হয় বিদ্রোহ বা উচ্চবাচ্য করলে কী ফলাফল হইতে পারে। স্বৈরতন্ত্রের যাতাকলে বাস করা কঠিন বটে, কিন্তু বিপ্লব বিফলে গেলে তার পরিণতি হইতে পারে ভয়াবহ। সুতরাং জান্তাকে সরায়ে সফল বিপ্লবের সম্ভাবনা দেখা দেয়ার আগ অব্দি মানুষ সরাসরি বিপ্লবে সামিল হয় না।
লেখকদ্বয়ের মত সুখী এবং চরম অসুখী জনতার মাঝে বিপ্লবের উত্থান হয় না, হয় তাঁদের মধ্যে যারা এ দুটোর মাঝামাঝি কোথাও আছে।
বইয়ে আরো মেলা বিশদ ও বহুমুখী আলাপ আছে। গতমাসে পড়েছি, সব টপিক মনে নেই আর লেখাও সম্ভব না। উপরন্তু বর্তমানে যেটা পড়ছি, The narrow corridor-এর সাথে ওভারল্যাপ হবার সম্ভাবনা ফেলে দিচ্ছি না। ন্যারো করিডর বইটা লিবার্টি নিয়ে। ন্যারেটিভে মিল আছে।
যাই হোক, এই লেখায় যদি মনে হয় লেখকদ্বয় অনেক বেশী জেনারালাইজেশন করছেন, তবে অবাক হবো না। আমারও পড়ার সময় মনে হচ্ছিলো।
যেমন, অটোক্রেটিক রাষ্ট্রে পুলিশ ফোর্সের বেতন কম রাখা কমন ব্যাপার এবং উদ্দেশ্যমূলক বলেছেন, যেন পুলিশ বাধ্য হয়ে দূর্নীতির দিকে ধাবিত হয়। এইক্ষেত্রে দুইটা জিনিস হবে, এক, পুলিশ দূর্নীতির নিমিত্তে বিশাল ধন-সম্পদ ভোগ করতে পারবে এবং দুই, সুযোগ করে দেয়ায় অটোক্রেট জান্তার অনুগত হবে আরো বেশী করে। বেতন কম দিয়ে পুলিশের করাপশন ঘটানোর এই যুক্তি আমার মানতে আপত্তি কেন সেইটা বিস্তারিত বলার প্রয়োজন বোধ করছি না।
তবে প্রতিটা ক্ষেত্রেই সোর্স ধরে বিস্তারিত ঘাটাঘাটি করার সুযোগ তাঁরা রাখছেন। এছাড়া অস্বীকার যাইতেছেন না, কোন স্বৈরতন্ত্র বা গণতন্ত্রই একরকম নয়। একটা থেকে আরেকটার পার্থক্য থাকবেই। এই বইয়ের উদ্দেশ্য পলিটিকাল দুনিয়াটারে সাধারণ আলাপে নিয়ে আসা।
February 2, 2019
This was a really interesting read. On the one hand, it's incredibly fascinating, but on the other, it's kind of so obvious that I feel like we should all be out here like "DUH. Dude, everyone knows that." But, clearly, no, not everyone does. Including myself. It's obvious to me after finishing this book, just how painstaking the research into this topic was - they had to go through so much history and political policy, for so many countries and political factions, and then analyze so much data... it's mind-boggling to think about logistically. And yet, EVEN THOUGH I realize how comprehensive the research was, coming out the other side, it feels like one of those things that, in hindsight, we should all have been able to see all along. So, I'm now feeling all kinds of idealistically naive. So that's fun.
But that's the thing that makes politics so interesting (and by interesting, I mean maddening), is that perception and spin and misdirection and interpretation are the vertebrae in its backbone. We all see the same actions and policies and speeches... we just perceive them and interpret them differently based on a million different factors individual to ourselves. And one of the most prominent of those factors is how well we're doing within the system, how much (or how little) we're benefiting from the powers that be. It's very rare for people to be truly objective or nonpartisan about politics. People may ignore politics, sure, but I think that signifies, to some degree, that they are doing well enough within their system to not have to sweat their everyday existence. Others obviously do not have the same privilege.
So, they start this book with a set of rules and a general description of autocracy* vs democracy, which essentially comes down to size. Because in this case, size does matter.
There are three groups of people who matter in determining how you'll come to power as a politician, regardless of your level of autocratic inclination:
Nominal selectorate - interchangeables
Real selectorate - influentials
Winning coalition - essentials
The smaller the winning coalition is, the more likely it is you're looking at a dictatorship. There's not really any such thing as a true autocracy, in terms of one person having absolute power, because everyone - presidents, dictators, and kings alike - has to have a base of supporters to protect and enforce their rule, otherwise anyone could simply kill or overthrow them and take their place.
The rules are thus:
1. Keep your winning coalition as small as possible - A small winning coalition allows a leader to rely on very few people to stay in power.
2. Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible - Maintain a large selectorate of interchangeables and you can easily replace any troublemakers in your coalition.
3. Control the flow of revenue - The most effective cash flow for leaders is one that makes lots of people poor and redistributes money to keep select people (their supporters) wealthy.
4. Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal - Your supporters would rather BE you than depend on you. Give your coalition just enough money so that they don't work to replace you, and nothing more.
5. Don't take money out of your supporters' pockets to make the people's lives better. - If you're good to the masses at the expense of your coalition of supporters, it won't be long until your 'friends' will be gunning for you.
Annnnnnd then a whole massive chunk of the remaining book supports their reasoning for these rules, with lots and lots and lots of examples and breakdowns and suchlike. And lest you be under the delusion that democracy (large coalition) = good and dictatorship (small coalition) = bad, well... they give reasons why they are BOTH bad... just, in varying degrees and for somewhat different reasons. Your disillusionment will thank them later. Possibly. Mine says "their thank you card is in the mail." :/
One thing that I found really disturbingly interesting was the discussion of aid. I had not long ago (maybe a year or so) seen a documentary about the problems that aid causes to poor countries - reliance, loss of local employment opportunity, stagnant or failing economies, etc - and this book touches on that a bit as well, but looks mainly at how governments use aid, particularly disaster relief aid. And it's eye-opening. If you thought that disaster relief aid was used for disaster relief (as I did)... my disillusionment has a condolences card for your disillusionment. Instead of governments using aid to help people who have suffered catastrophe, this book shows that more often it's hoarded and used to line the pockets of the already astronomically rich, to the immense and horrific suffering of those with nothing. And further, that countries like the US still give it, because 1) US constituents believe that it's helpful and the right thing to do, and 2) we benefit from paying to keep potentially unfriendly leaders in resource rich areas friendlier - regardless of how atrociously terrible they are to their own people.
"BUT WAIT!" I hear you saying... "We deposed Saddam Hussein, remember?! He was a horrible dictator!" Indeed. We did. Eventually. But it wasn't because he was a brutal dictator or killed a quarter of a million people or anything, though that was convenient to get Americans on board. But look at the current world... Far from taking down dictators, or even criticizing them, the current administration has praised them.
But I'm trying very hard to not get into... that. My point is, for all of our bleating about wanting to bring democracy to other nations, and decrying human rights violations and murders and brutal regimes... we don't really get involved unless there's something in it for us. And the same is true for aid. You can bet your brass buttons that we're getting something in return for the money we invest in "helping" other nations.
Anyway... this book has made me quite cynical tonight. More than normal. It's made me rethink the benefit of the doubt that I usually have for a great many situations and wonder if perhaps I'm too willing to ascribe mistakes or poor planning to bad luck or a confluence of events rather than just straight up greed and contempt. I mean, I know that there are shitty people in the world. I know that there are greedy, immoral, assholes would wouldn't piss on a poor person if they were on fire. But damn, the fact that you MUST have at least some of that mentality to gain political power... that's put some cracks in my idealism, for sure.
But still, this is an interesting and informative book, for all that it was kind of a downer for me. I think people should have a better understanding of how dictators come to power, and stay that way, and how foreign relations work to solidify their position. There's a reason that authoritarian leaders like to keep their people downtrodden and isolated and uninformed, or misinformed through propaganda or state-run news. There's power in knowledge and information, and the more access people have to that information, the more risk there is to the dictator's regime. They aren't gods. Just greedy assholes who clawed their way to the top and are ruthless enough to kick people who are already down to stay there.
Fuck them. Tear the motherfucker down! :D
But that's the thing that makes politics so interesting (and by interesting, I mean maddening), is that perception and spin and misdirection and interpretation are the vertebrae in its backbone. We all see the same actions and policies and speeches... we just perceive them and interpret them differently based on a million different factors individual to ourselves. And one of the most prominent of those factors is how well we're doing within the system, how much (or how little) we're benefiting from the powers that be. It's very rare for people to be truly objective or nonpartisan about politics. People may ignore politics, sure, but I think that signifies, to some degree, that they are doing well enough within their system to not have to sweat their everyday existence. Others obviously do not have the same privilege.
So, they start this book with a set of rules and a general description of autocracy* vs democracy, which essentially comes down to size. Because in this case, size does matter.
There are three groups of people who matter in determining how you'll come to power as a politician, regardless of your level of autocratic inclination:
Nominal selectorate - interchangeables
Real selectorate - influentials
Winning coalition - essentials
The smaller the winning coalition is, the more likely it is you're looking at a dictatorship. There's not really any such thing as a true autocracy, in terms of one person having absolute power, because everyone - presidents, dictators, and kings alike - has to have a base of supporters to protect and enforce their rule, otherwise anyone could simply kill or overthrow them and take their place.
The rules are thus:
1. Keep your winning coalition as small as possible - A small winning coalition allows a leader to rely on very few people to stay in power.
2. Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible - Maintain a large selectorate of interchangeables and you can easily replace any troublemakers in your coalition.
3. Control the flow of revenue - The most effective cash flow for leaders is one that makes lots of people poor and redistributes money to keep select people (their supporters) wealthy.
4. Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal - Your supporters would rather BE you than depend on you. Give your coalition just enough money so that they don't work to replace you, and nothing more.
5. Don't take money out of your supporters' pockets to make the people's lives better. - If you're good to the masses at the expense of your coalition of supporters, it won't be long until your 'friends' will be gunning for you.
Annnnnnd then a whole massive chunk of the remaining book supports their reasoning for these rules, with lots and lots and lots of examples and breakdowns and suchlike. And lest you be under the delusion that democracy (large coalition) = good and dictatorship (small coalition) = bad, well... they give reasons why they are BOTH bad... just, in varying degrees and for somewhat different reasons. Your disillusionment will thank them later. Possibly. Mine says "their thank you card is in the mail." :/
One thing that I found really disturbingly interesting was the discussion of aid. I had not long ago (maybe a year or so) seen a documentary about the problems that aid causes to poor countries - reliance, loss of local employment opportunity, stagnant or failing economies, etc - and this book touches on that a bit as well, but looks mainly at how governments use aid, particularly disaster relief aid. And it's eye-opening. If you thought that disaster relief aid was used for disaster relief (as I did)... my disillusionment has a condolences card for your disillusionment. Instead of governments using aid to help people who have suffered catastrophe, this book shows that more often it's hoarded and used to line the pockets of the already astronomically rich, to the immense and horrific suffering of those with nothing. And further, that countries like the US still give it, because 1) US constituents believe that it's helpful and the right thing to do, and 2) we benefit from paying to keep potentially unfriendly leaders in resource rich areas friendlier - regardless of how atrociously terrible they are to their own people.
"BUT WAIT!" I hear you saying... "We deposed Saddam Hussein, remember?! He was a horrible dictator!" Indeed. We did. Eventually. But it wasn't because he was a brutal dictator or killed a quarter of a million people or anything, though that was convenient to get Americans on board. But look at the current world... Far from taking down dictators, or even criticizing them, the current administration has praised them.
But I'm trying very hard to not get into... that. My point is, for all of our bleating about wanting to bring democracy to other nations, and decrying human rights violations and murders and brutal regimes... we don't really get involved unless there's something in it for us. And the same is true for aid. You can bet your brass buttons that we're getting something in return for the money we invest in "helping" other nations.
Anyway... this book has made me quite cynical tonight. More than normal. It's made me rethink the benefit of the doubt that I usually have for a great many situations and wonder if perhaps I'm too willing to ascribe mistakes or poor planning to bad luck or a confluence of events rather than just straight up greed and contempt. I mean, I know that there are shitty people in the world. I know that there are greedy, immoral, assholes would wouldn't piss on a poor person if they were on fire. But damn, the fact that you MUST have at least some of that mentality to gain political power... that's put some cracks in my idealism, for sure.
But still, this is an interesting and informative book, for all that it was kind of a downer for me. I think people should have a better understanding of how dictators come to power, and stay that way, and how foreign relations work to solidify their position. There's a reason that authoritarian leaders like to keep their people downtrodden and isolated and uninformed, or misinformed through propaganda or state-run news. There's power in knowledge and information, and the more access people have to that information, the more risk there is to the dictator's regime. They aren't gods. Just greedy assholes who clawed their way to the top and are ruthless enough to kick people who are already down to stay there.
Fuck them. Tear the motherfucker down! :D
January 12, 2022
Part of me wants to say 4 stars due to a few oversimplifications this book makes. I dispute the charge that, during the First World War, Germany was more authoritarian than France, for instance. I also wish it had spent more time going over how leaders, especially autocrats, keep those outside their coalitions placated with things such as propaganda.
But it hits such great points in other parts that I can't go below 5.
But it hits such great points in other parts that I can't go below 5.
February 6, 2017
Um dos melhores livros que já li, em termos das novas ideias que traz e como me fez mudar a forma como vejo o mundo (político). Bruce Bueno De Mesquita trabalha com teoria dos jogos (ainda preciso ler o livro dele de 2010) e o Alastair Smith (que não está marcado no sistema do Goodreads) trabalha com política. Os dois se juntaram para explicar a política do mundo sob o ponto de vista dos políticos fazendo de tudo para se manterem no poder. E o resultado ficou fantástico.
O livro mudou completamente a forma como vejo partidos, políticos e qualquer medida política. São basicamente pessoas tentando tirar o maior proveito possível dentro da situação em que se encontram. Estamos vendo um pouco do outro lado no país, com escândalos e investigações rolando, e o livro explica muito bem o que está por trás. O que mais gostei é que, junto dos princípios, sempre apresentam situações que demonstram o que estão explicando. Achei a melhor explicação da política até o momento (para este leigo).
Cheguei no livro por conta do CGP Grey e o vídeo explica muito bem o que tem de interessante no livro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7...
p.s. o Bruce de Mesquita põe o dinheiro no que fala, ele tem uma empresa que vive de fazer previsões políticas.
O livro mudou completamente a forma como vejo partidos, políticos e qualquer medida política. São basicamente pessoas tentando tirar o maior proveito possível dentro da situação em que se encontram. Estamos vendo um pouco do outro lado no país, com escândalos e investigações rolando, e o livro explica muito bem o que está por trás. O que mais gostei é que, junto dos princípios, sempre apresentam situações que demonstram o que estão explicando. Achei a melhor explicação da política até o momento (para este leigo).
Cheguei no livro por conta do CGP Grey e o vídeo explica muito bem o que tem de interessante no livro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7...
p.s. o Bruce de Mesquita põe o dinheiro no que fala, ele tem uma empresa que vive de fazer previsões políticas.
February 3, 2012
While this book is easy to read and never gets boring, its authors oversimplify a number of issues and don't seem to realize when they have contradicted themselves. More often than not, I could come up with a counterexample to whatever idea they were pushing. Save your time and pick a better book.
May 8, 2017
Everybody understands that leaders reward the coalition that brought them to power, but I didn't understand all the implications of this.
Here's a bald summary, but you should read the book. I can't do it justice in a few sentences:
Whether leaders act in enlightened or brutal ways depends entirely on the size of their winning coalition. In all cases, the members of the winning coalition must be paid for continued support. Failure to do so ends the leader's career and, in small-coalition environments, often his life. With a small coalition, it's easier to buy off individuals (e.g. by giving them an opportunity to extort money from the people, so corruption is a good thing for an autocrat. He can use it to let his supporters enrich themselves, but if a supporter becomes disloyal, then anti-corruption laws can be invoked to bring the disloyal supporter down). If the winning coalition is large relative to the size of the population, then the leader can't buy them off with direct payments. Instead the rewards have to come through public goods. Moreover, if a country's wealth comes from domestic labor instead of natural resources, then the leader needs an educated, relatively free work force that can efficiently produce wealth. If there are natural resources, then it's easier to keep the people poor and uneducated and accept money from foreign companies in exchange for letting them exploit the resources. CEOs are typically small coalition leaders (board members and executives are their cronies).
Foreign aid, as currently given, often serves to keep autocrats in power. The democracies giving the aid actually end up preferring this because it's less expensive to get policy concessions from an autocrat than a democrat. While democratic leaders give lip service to spreading democracy, the way we actually act often ends up propping up autocrats. But don't be too hard on the democratic leaders since they're just doing the will of the people who elected them (i.e. we want cheap oil and everything else follows from that).
I listened to the audiobook. It's a little chewy for audio format, but it ends up working ok. There's a pdf with charts that comes with the audiobook.
Here's a bald summary, but you should read the book. I can't do it justice in a few sentences:
Whether leaders act in enlightened or brutal ways depends entirely on the size of their winning coalition. In all cases, the members of the winning coalition must be paid for continued support. Failure to do so ends the leader's career and, in small-coalition environments, often his life. With a small coalition, it's easier to buy off individuals (e.g. by giving them an opportunity to extort money from the people, so corruption is a good thing for an autocrat. He can use it to let his supporters enrich themselves, but if a supporter becomes disloyal, then anti-corruption laws can be invoked to bring the disloyal supporter down). If the winning coalition is large relative to the size of the population, then the leader can't buy them off with direct payments. Instead the rewards have to come through public goods. Moreover, if a country's wealth comes from domestic labor instead of natural resources, then the leader needs an educated, relatively free work force that can efficiently produce wealth. If there are natural resources, then it's easier to keep the people poor and uneducated and accept money from foreign companies in exchange for letting them exploit the resources. CEOs are typically small coalition leaders (board members and executives are their cronies).
Foreign aid, as currently given, often serves to keep autocrats in power. The democracies giving the aid actually end up preferring this because it's less expensive to get policy concessions from an autocrat than a democrat. While democratic leaders give lip service to spreading democracy, the way we actually act often ends up propping up autocrats. But don't be too hard on the democratic leaders since they're just doing the will of the people who elected them (i.e. we want cheap oil and everything else follows from that).
I listened to the audiobook. It's a little chewy for audio format, but it ends up working ok. There's a pdf with charts that comes with the audiobook.
April 20, 2021
Why bad behavior is almost always good politics?
Because for a leader to stay in power, regardless of leadership style, it will inevitably necessitate self-serving actions of varying evils to the neglect or harm of the people.
I wanted to discover what whispers despots hear so I delved into this. (I wasn't surprised that #DutertePalpak fits many of the descriptions.) Naturally, for majority of us belonging to the public, and not party to the 'essentials' or the leader's winning coalition, we are in the dark of every leader's most pressing agenda: political survival.
I expected this to be a painstaking read for evident reasons. But I'm taking away plenty of insights and 'oh that's why' from its generous analyses of historical accounts of leader downfalls and triumphs across lands. It's worth noting that the book treads with a cynical tone, and fitting its title, speaks of the makings of an effective dictator. An observation I had which the book itself later admits is its repetitive rhetoric on the distinctions between autocracy versus democracy. It just couldn't stress the idea enough. As it draws to a close it re-centers on what political approach is better for the vast majority of people.
My biggest disillusionment are that of what foreign aid primarily provides, and that democrats are no angels compared to autocrats, survival-wise.
Because for a leader to stay in power, regardless of leadership style, it will inevitably necessitate self-serving actions of varying evils to the neglect or harm of the people.
I wanted to discover what whispers despots hear so I delved into this. (I wasn't surprised that #DutertePalpak fits many of the descriptions.) Naturally, for majority of us belonging to the public, and not party to the 'essentials' or the leader's winning coalition, we are in the dark of every leader's most pressing agenda: political survival.
I expected this to be a painstaking read for evident reasons. But I'm taking away plenty of insights and 'oh that's why' from its generous analyses of historical accounts of leader downfalls and triumphs across lands. It's worth noting that the book treads with a cynical tone, and fitting its title, speaks of the makings of an effective dictator. An observation I had which the book itself later admits is its repetitive rhetoric on the distinctions between autocracy versus democracy. It just couldn't stress the idea enough. As it draws to a close it re-centers on what political approach is better for the vast majority of people.
My biggest disillusionment are that of what foreign aid primarily provides, and that democrats are no angels compared to autocrats, survival-wise.
"Autocratic politics is a battle for private rewards. Democratic politics is a battle for good policy ideas."
"[E]ven if politics is nothing more than a game that leaders play, if only we learn the rules, it becomes a game we can win."
June 8, 2017
Mesmerizing and essential. A simple (yet well researched and presented) far reaching work that clearly explains why despots continue to thrive, how and why democracies flourish and why foreign aid and debt forgiveness can be a bad thing.
Highly recommended.
February 16, 2018
You know that guy at a party, slightly tipsy but very self confident and affable, who's made a good turn as an entrepreneur, and has ideas about how the world works, how politics works? Who's cynical but is also kinda like, well this how the game is played, so yolo?
I think the 'voice' of this book is that guy's voice. It is all very cynical and VERY partial reading of history, often inaccurate, often missing important details about how movements, and people and events took place, took shape. It takes those partial narratives and make an interesting but extremely flawed extended opinion piece out of it. It is important to such books that they masquerade as science. However they are not, scientific. There are a few interesting ideas about patronage politics and the building of coalitions, but nothing too offensive, incisive, or something one could do without.
I think the 'voice' of this book is that guy's voice. It is all very cynical and VERY partial reading of history, often inaccurate, often missing important details about how movements, and people and events took place, took shape. It takes those partial narratives and make an interesting but extremely flawed extended opinion piece out of it. It is important to such books that they masquerade as science. However they are not, scientific. There are a few interesting ideas about patronage politics and the building of coalitions, but nothing too offensive, incisive, or something one could do without.
January 27, 2019
This is a super interesting book about the political economy of power. It's sort of like the smarter version of Robert Green's books. It dissects the incentives of those in power who want to keep control of their coalition. The most striking and interesting aspect of the book is that they apply these concepts to democracy as well. Because of course democracy is about power--it's just a larger coalition of voters. There are some good insights at the end as well about how to spread power out though I have to admit that it did make me a bit hopeless about the future
July 12, 2018
I really wish I could give this book a five-star rating, but I just can't force myself to do it.
First, I should note that the theory outlined in the starting chapters of the book is exceptional. Put shortly, it defines political regimes in terms of number of their beneficiaries and the number of people the ruler is beholden to. Despite being incredibly simple, this approach explains A LOT of features and actions of authocratic regimes that otherwise seem completely illogical and/or groundless. Pinpointing political survival as the main objective of any leader is also a great and incredibly revelatory aspect of Smith's and Mesquita's theory.
Yet the evidence provided by the authors in their case-studies is, to say the least, subpar.
Of course, I can not fact check it in it's entirety - I am by no means an expert in Liberian or Ghanian affairs, for instance. But as far as the aspects I'm fairly familiar with - such as Russian or Asian history and geography - are concerned, the authors' ignorance becomes obvious, and that, of course, casts a shadow of doubt on other pieces of evidence as well. A couple of examples: the authors claim that Egypt is "resource poor", despite its being well ahead of many OPEC countries in terms of oil and gas reserves (not to mention much-valued fresh water). They also claim that Vladimir Putin is "the former head of the Soviet secret police - the KGB" (while he chaired the FSB) and that Nicholas II got ousted in February 1917 as a result of an indignant crowd storming the Winter Palace, even though he was out of the capital at the time, and the storm itself occured during the October revolution, when the czar had already been long resigned. Soon after, it is claimed that during his Taiwan reign Chiang Kai-shek "woke up to a democracy one day", which is painfully nonsensical if you know a thing or two about China (just for the record, Taiwan at his time was a full-blown dictatorship with purges, secret police and hereditary rule; democracy came only after his death).
And the list of inconsistencies in the book goes on and on.
Quality of arguments is also sometimes lacking. Consider the following: chapter nine says that "of these nations [participating in WWI] only Britain in France were democratic", yet on the very next page we read about "more democratic government of Bismarck's Prussia". In the same chapter the authors venture to compare Sun Tzu's military advice with some modern American strategies, coming to some far-reaching conclusions regarding the nature of political regimes, being completely oblivious to enormous historical and cultural differences and basically comparing apples to oranges. Unfortunately, the book (especially its second half) is ridden with such fallacies and far-fetched conclusions. Any facts that don't fit the authors' agenda are mangled until they more or less comply with the theory. Cherry-picking is also not an uncommon sight in this book.
tl;dr: Nice theory stained by far-fetched arguments, fact manipulation and general ignorance of historical facts. Reading the first half of the book is strongly recommended, though.
First, I should note that the theory outlined in the starting chapters of the book is exceptional. Put shortly, it defines political regimes in terms of number of their beneficiaries and the number of people the ruler is beholden to. Despite being incredibly simple, this approach explains A LOT of features and actions of authocratic regimes that otherwise seem completely illogical and/or groundless. Pinpointing political survival as the main objective of any leader is also a great and incredibly revelatory aspect of Smith's and Mesquita's theory.
Yet the evidence provided by the authors in their case-studies is, to say the least, subpar.
Of course, I can not fact check it in it's entirety - I am by no means an expert in Liberian or Ghanian affairs, for instance. But as far as the aspects I'm fairly familiar with - such as Russian or Asian history and geography - are concerned, the authors' ignorance becomes obvious, and that, of course, casts a shadow of doubt on other pieces of evidence as well. A couple of examples: the authors claim that Egypt is "resource poor", despite its being well ahead of many OPEC countries in terms of oil and gas reserves (not to mention much-valued fresh water). They also claim that Vladimir Putin is "the former head of the Soviet secret police - the KGB" (while he chaired the FSB) and that Nicholas II got ousted in February 1917 as a result of an indignant crowd storming the Winter Palace, even though he was out of the capital at the time, and the storm itself occured during the October revolution, when the czar had already been long resigned. Soon after, it is claimed that during his Taiwan reign Chiang Kai-shek "woke up to a democracy one day", which is painfully nonsensical if you know a thing or two about China (just for the record, Taiwan at his time was a full-blown dictatorship with purges, secret police and hereditary rule; democracy came only after his death).
And the list of inconsistencies in the book goes on and on.
Quality of arguments is also sometimes lacking. Consider the following: chapter nine says that "of these nations [participating in WWI] only Britain in France were democratic", yet on the very next page we read about "more democratic government of Bismarck's Prussia". In the same chapter the authors venture to compare Sun Tzu's military advice with some modern American strategies, coming to some far-reaching conclusions regarding the nature of political regimes, being completely oblivious to enormous historical and cultural differences and basically comparing apples to oranges. Unfortunately, the book (especially its second half) is ridden with such fallacies and far-fetched conclusions. Any facts that don't fit the authors' agenda are mangled until they more or less comply with the theory. Cherry-picking is also not an uncommon sight in this book.
tl;dr: Nice theory stained by far-fetched arguments, fact manipulation and general ignorance of historical facts. Reading the first half of the book is strongly recommended, though.
August 15, 2019
Even in print form, so much to take in. A denser text than I expected - talking narrow margins and small font - and so my politics nerd half hopes to buy a copy for myself and better absorb the material. Lots of insightful commentary and things that just make sense in here.
June 2, 2017
No matter whether the governing body is an autocracy, consisting of a domineering ruler who will strip every penny he can from his citizens or the most benevolent leader of a democracy, who seems from all outward appearances to care for his or her citizens, all rulers without exception follow the same basic rules of governing other human beings. Prior to reading this book, I would not have identified the patterns of a ruler's behavior and been able to boil them down to simple and predictable behaviors, which are tweaked based almost entirely on who has the power to keep the ruler in power. Any ruler who is able to stay in power does so because they do their level best to take from the people who do not support them and reallocate those funds to the people who do.
In an autocracy, there is a very small coalition of people who hold real power. Elections are bought. People's votes are for show. The leader has already been chosen prior to the outcome of the election. Thus, the people do not receive any aid from their leader. However, the leader must always show support for those whose votes count. Even in North Korea's Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un must keep their very small coalition of supporters happy. For even they rely on others to gain and maintain power. A president in the United States will also reallocate funds away from non-supporter and toward supporters. In the U.S., most people understand that their votes largely count (even if we do have an electoral college that gives the presidency to the candidate who did not receive the popular vote). The coalitions are larger for rulers in a true democracy. Thus, liberals will likely reallocate funds to their supporters (even select rich) and toward programs for their poor voters, whereas conservatives likely reallocate those funds back to their rich supporters at the expense of the poor. Each does so because it must provide funds to its coalition and to the masses whose votes count enough to win them elections.
These authors include a captivating and comprehensive survey of how money, power, and status is distributed across the globe. They provide possibly the clearest, most succinct, and compelling argument for a simple pattern of leadership behavior in politics, applied across the board, that I have ever come across. Usually the use of many individual examples puts books at risk of providing nothing more than anecdotal meanderings. However, this comprehensive discussion of political behavior from the various rulers who live all over our globe (at different points in history) ended up producing an argument that I think would difficult to refute. The books description calls it "clever," and indeed it is.
A central theme for these authors, that permeated every chapter and every discussion about leader behavior was the distribution of aid. At first I felt slightly defensive. They basically informed their reader that if they gave with their hearts (and sometimes even a well educated mind, having vetted where your money actually goes), that you probably wasted your money and helped a hellish dictator treat their citizens even worse than before they received aid. Their discussion started out sounding fairly conservative and made me wonder if they had a political agenda. Their argument sounded, to me, to go something like this: Do not give aid, no matter how desperately a country needs it because they need to prove they can do (insert what they promised to do) in order to get the aid.
That argument, at first, did not sit well with me because I, naively, believed that in order to the thing they promised to do, they would need the money to do it. However, these authors really helped me understand that even when it seems aid will help, it often ends up doing more harm. They call for strict and clear guideline for providing foreign aid. I still feel as if someone could come up with better guidelines, but after I read their points about aid distribution, I am convinced we need a change. One rather compelling example of the misuse of aid involve babies and Saddam Hussein. Babies were starving. They needed formula. Americans and other countries bought formula and sent it to the starving babies. Pretty good use of aid money, right? Wrong. Saddam had his guys stop the trucks, steal the formula, and sell it to make more money for Saddam to pay his coalition. The aid was never going to make it to the babies because we don't yet have good way to ensure the aid we give actually makes it the people. Instead, the way we provide aid often, far too often, ends up enriching the dictator at the expense of his people. The way we give aid does the opposite of what we want it to do.
Having studied corruption around the world, thanks to lectures from fraud investigators at the World Bank, I knew a fair amount about corruption and how dictators and many citizens around the world excel in scamming and stealing power and wealth from those less powerful, but this book really helped me understand it on a much deeper and much, much broader level. I actually felt as if I were reading a book on animal behavior, but with the rare species of Country Leader.
As an aside, but related to animal behavior, these authors went so far as to define the correct coalition size for various types of leadership, just as birds have specific sizes of clutches for optimal survival rates for the current and future breeding season.
There were so many interesting and informative aspects of this book, many that made me think of our leader here in America. There was one especially great discussion that caught my attention and made the what-if part of my brain become active. The authors, with tongue in cheek, advised dictators to choose loyalty over experience. Often throughout history, dictators have chosen family members who lack political experience, given them a high powered government positions, and allowed them to help rule. The examples of the *extreme* corruption that arose from choosing family members who are loyal but lack experience were astounding. It made my imagination go wild with what could have happened when Trump allowed Kushner to be his right hand man.
Even though this was published in 2011, it is still extremely relevant and I highly recommend it.
In an autocracy, there is a very small coalition of people who hold real power. Elections are bought. People's votes are for show. The leader has already been chosen prior to the outcome of the election. Thus, the people do not receive any aid from their leader. However, the leader must always show support for those whose votes count. Even in North Korea's Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un must keep their very small coalition of supporters happy. For even they rely on others to gain and maintain power. A president in the United States will also reallocate funds away from non-supporter and toward supporters. In the U.S., most people understand that their votes largely count (even if we do have an electoral college that gives the presidency to the candidate who did not receive the popular vote). The coalitions are larger for rulers in a true democracy. Thus, liberals will likely reallocate funds to their supporters (even select rich) and toward programs for their poor voters, whereas conservatives likely reallocate those funds back to their rich supporters at the expense of the poor. Each does so because it must provide funds to its coalition and to the masses whose votes count enough to win them elections.
These authors include a captivating and comprehensive survey of how money, power, and status is distributed across the globe. They provide possibly the clearest, most succinct, and compelling argument for a simple pattern of leadership behavior in politics, applied across the board, that I have ever come across. Usually the use of many individual examples puts books at risk of providing nothing more than anecdotal meanderings. However, this comprehensive discussion of political behavior from the various rulers who live all over our globe (at different points in history) ended up producing an argument that I think would difficult to refute. The books description calls it "clever," and indeed it is.
A central theme for these authors, that permeated every chapter and every discussion about leader behavior was the distribution of aid. At first I felt slightly defensive. They basically informed their reader that if they gave with their hearts (and sometimes even a well educated mind, having vetted where your money actually goes), that you probably wasted your money and helped a hellish dictator treat their citizens even worse than before they received aid. Their discussion started out sounding fairly conservative and made me wonder if they had a political agenda. Their argument sounded, to me, to go something like this: Do not give aid, no matter how desperately a country needs it because they need to prove they can do (insert what they promised to do) in order to get the aid.
That argument, at first, did not sit well with me because I, naively, believed that in order to the thing they promised to do, they would need the money to do it. However, these authors really helped me understand that even when it seems aid will help, it often ends up doing more harm. They call for strict and clear guideline for providing foreign aid. I still feel as if someone could come up with better guidelines, but after I read their points about aid distribution, I am convinced we need a change. One rather compelling example of the misuse of aid involve babies and Saddam Hussein. Babies were starving. They needed formula. Americans and other countries bought formula and sent it to the starving babies. Pretty good use of aid money, right? Wrong. Saddam had his guys stop the trucks, steal the formula, and sell it to make more money for Saddam to pay his coalition. The aid was never going to make it to the babies because we don't yet have good way to ensure the aid we give actually makes it the people. Instead, the way we provide aid often, far too often, ends up enriching the dictator at the expense of his people. The way we give aid does the opposite of what we want it to do.
Having studied corruption around the world, thanks to lectures from fraud investigators at the World Bank, I knew a fair amount about corruption and how dictators and many citizens around the world excel in scamming and stealing power and wealth from those less powerful, but this book really helped me understand it on a much deeper and much, much broader level. I actually felt as if I were reading a book on animal behavior, but with the rare species of Country Leader.
As an aside, but related to animal behavior, these authors went so far as to define the correct coalition size for various types of leadership, just as birds have specific sizes of clutches for optimal survival rates for the current and future breeding season.
There were so many interesting and informative aspects of this book, many that made me think of our leader here in America. There was one especially great discussion that caught my attention and made the what-if part of my brain become active. The authors, with tongue in cheek, advised dictators to choose loyalty over experience. Often throughout history, dictators have chosen family members who lack political experience, given them a high powered government positions, and allowed them to help rule. The examples of the *extreme* corruption that arose from choosing family members who are loyal but lack experience were astounding. It made my imagination go wild with what could have happened when Trump allowed Kushner to be his right hand man.
Even though this was published in 2011, it is still extremely relevant and I highly recommend it.
February 21, 2017
Read the first few chapters through and then skimmed the rest. The basic premise is that, regardless of whether a leader is democratically elected or assumes power through violent overthrow of the previous regime, the leader's raison d'être is to stay in power -- whatever it takes. The author proceeds through many chapters to give excellent examples of historical and more recent dictators and other world leaders and how they accomplished their main goals. Interesting but skimmable.
April 15, 2016
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
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
May 31, 2015
By all means, this book just made me more cynical and hopeless about politics. Great read and all their arguments are pretty solid. Autocracies vs Democracies. Small coalitions vs big coalitions. How each handle their people, do they stay educated and healthy but unthreatening to power or the opposite.
The only thing that bothered me is the lenght of the book, I found it too long and very repetitive since the author had made most of his points in the first 100 pages, there was no need to keep going for more.
The only thing that bothered me is the lenght of the book, I found it too long and very repetitive since the author had made most of his points in the first 100 pages, there was no need to keep going for more.
September 10, 2023
This book has some genuinely awful takes that undermine any semblance of rigor or accuracy in their threadbare and underdeveloped “theory” of politics:
- Claims that when “authoritarian” countries like the USSR, DPRK, and Cuba improve literacy rates (Cubas’ 3rd/4th graders outperform all others in Latin America, while DPRK has a 100% literacy rate) this is actually an example of them promoting literacy to improve their abilities to brainwash their people. As the authors state: ”Educational opportunity should not be so extensive as to equip ordinary folks, the interchangeables, to question government authority. A naïve person might look at any number of awful regimes and yet come to the conclusion that, because they provide such public benefits as nationalized health care or sound primary education, they’re actually better to their people than many democratic states are to theirs. This is nonsense, of course—in the vast majority of cases autocrats are simply keeping the peasants healthy enough to work and educated enough to do their jobs” (p. 178). This is so fucking stupid. Why would you need to increase the literacy rates of peasants when their lifestyles don’t require them to need to be literate to do their jobs. How would it be easier to lie to literate people? Just look at the Catholic church as an example of how easy it is to lie to illiterate peasants for centuries.
- The authors’ hatred of communist Cuba is honestly just insane. Their views range from presenting the questionable as outright fact (ex: Fidel sent Che to Bolivia so that Che would die) to being genuinely unhinged. For example, they describe Baptista as: “an effective social reformer who also helped promote successful economic policies” (p. 183). It was him, not Castro, who actually built Cuba’s robust healthcare system, which still compares extremely favorably to any other nation with similar economic development levels (not to mention to the much wealthier United States who, while embargoing Cuba and running a campaign of terror and assassinations against the Cuban population, actually developed a lower life expectancy than Cuba). Here is how actual scholars describe Castro’s healthcare reforms as opposed to these clowns: ”, the doctor-to patient ratio improved threefold, and the number of consultarios (local doctors’ offices) rose from 6,000 in 1989 to nearly 16,000 by 1998. The infant mortality rate fell during the special period, dropping from 17 per 1,000 live births in 1985 to 7.2 in 2000, and overall life expectancy lengthened.” (Pineo, Ronn. "Cuban public healthcare: a model of success for developing nations."; p. 16). The authors admit that Cuban healthcare has improved, but argue “since Batista’s overthrow… Cuba’s relative quality of infant care has not kept pace with the rest of the world.” (p. 185); this completely ignores the historical context of Cuba surviving a hybrid war against the most powerful nation in history for almost 60 years while also losing its largest trading partner and greatest ally decades ago.
- Here’s another funny one: the authors’ argue that if a country is not ‘democratic’ then “there (is) no impetus for the government to strengthen its policies for protecting the public from disaster… Earthquakes and tsunamis are hard to foresee. But their aftermath is not. When there are lots of essential supporters, rescue is swift and repair is quick and effective.” (p. 198-199). Funny how these authors’ obsession with Cuba does not seem to extend to this section of the book, otherwise they might have to admit that Cuba is one of the most effective/successful nations in the world at battling natural disasters despite being in an extremely volatile area for hurricanes. As the National Library of Medicine states: “Despite the fact that Cuba experienced the hurricanes at their greatest intensity, there were only seven deaths throughout Cuba. In contrast, there were over 100 deaths in Haiti and over 30 in the USA. Over the last 50 years, Cuba has managed to reduce significantly the number of deaths following hurricanes” (Miranda, Deybis Sánchez, and Imti Choonara. "Hurricanes and child health: lessons from Cuba."). Since this completely contradicts their claims of Cuba being an anti-democratic dictatorship only worried about improving the lives of its leaders, it is pretty obvious why this lie of omission was made.
- ”Of the twenty-five most corrupt regimes, according to Transparency International’s 2010 corruption index, not even one is a mature democracy.” (p. 209). Wow I can’t believe a thoroughly bourgeois institution funded by the likes of the European Commission (EC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs Trade and Development (DFATD) Canada, and Siemens AG would publish something like this while entirely ignoring the legalized corruption (oh sorry, I mean lobbying) of the western world.
- ”A few of history’s revolutionaries stand out for their success not only in overthrowing a nasty regime, but in creating a people-friendly government in its place. America’s George Washington, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino are a few cases in point.” (p. 315). Yeah just ask the slaves of one of the largest slave owners in America or the millions of genocided indigenous peoples about how people friendly George Washington’s America was.
- “Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, aimed at restructuring the Soviet political and economic system, can be understood as his effort to increase the government’s revenue” (p. 317). This would sound good if you were historically illiterate and did not know that one of the first policies old Gorby put in place was an alcohol ban which caused alcohol sales (one of the largest components of the domestic Soviet economy) to fall by 50% from 1984-88.
-”under Boris Yeltsin’s post-Gorbachev government Russia maintained free and competitive elections” (p. 317). I won't even critique this quote because anybody that believes it should stick to reading coloring books anyways
- ”On some occasions the successor regime can actually be worse than its predecessor… (for example) Mao’s success against Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang government in China” (p. 293) lmao the liberal fantasy view of the KMT is incredible.
- ”Democrats provide the policies people want because otherwise the people will protest, and when people can freely assemble there is little a leader can do to stop them except give them what they want” (p. 296) You know, besides assassinating them like every major civil rights leader, undermining their organizations from within through institutional measures like COINTELPRO or Operation Chaos, (see my review of the Church Committee's report on COINTELPRO) directing the entire mass media apparatus against them, using their political power to foster a sense of mass hysteria (a la The Red Scare), and slowly siphoning off support through half-measures and piecemeal agreements.
- this book literally claims the internet and cell phones were banned in Cuba until Fidel died: ”as Raul Castro took over from his brother Fidel. Raul needed to consolidate his hold on power, reassure his backers that he could provide for them, and to do that he had to get Cuba’s economy to grow. Solution: introduce some economic competition and a few political acts of liberalization. Today Cubans can take greater advantage of private businesses than was true at any time since the revolution. They can have cell phones and some access to the Internet” (p. 326)
- I tapped out on page 329 when the authors claim ”We think that a big part of why war is such a scourge is that too many leaders get the wrong advice about how to solve international problems”. Anybody that spends decades as “political scientists” and somehow believes this is truly a dullard with no understanding of history whatsoever.
This is truly a dogshit book. The only positive takeaways I have for it are that it accurately understands that no leader rules unilaterally; they must rely on essential backers to maintain their rule. I think their argument that any leader of an organization wants to maintain their power above all else is interesting and probably true to some degree. To maintain their power the ruler must give benefits to members of their coalition whose survival they cannot live without; when it comes to state rulers this is most often the military. Essential members of a ruler’s coalition will remain loyal as long as the ruler adequately rewards them, which means they are willing to betray him if they realistically think another leader can give them a better deal, or if they think the current leader is dying/going to be deposed without a successor who can guarantee the essential supports will continue getting rewards. To overthrow a ruler the successor must remove the incumbent, seize the governing apparatus, and form their own coalition of supporters needed to sustain their rule. Sometimes a ruler is overthrown from a rebellion from below; these are people who do not receive enough rewards from the ruler to be properly satiated, but aren’t deprived enough that they are literally too weak from starvation and deprivation to revolt. These rebellions occur when people are convinced things are sufficiently bad enough that a revolt is necessary to make their lives better, and worth the risks of punishment that the failure of such a rebellion would bring down upon them. Revolution from below is most often successful when the ruler no longer has the funds necessary to reward the military. If the military does not have the proper incentives to brutally murder and suppress the masses, they will step aside and let the revolt take place rather than engaging in a brutal bloodletting for meager rewards.
- Claims that when “authoritarian” countries like the USSR, DPRK, and Cuba improve literacy rates (Cubas’ 3rd/4th graders outperform all others in Latin America, while DPRK has a 100% literacy rate) this is actually an example of them promoting literacy to improve their abilities to brainwash their people. As the authors state: ”Educational opportunity should not be so extensive as to equip ordinary folks, the interchangeables, to question government authority. A naïve person might look at any number of awful regimes and yet come to the conclusion that, because they provide such public benefits as nationalized health care or sound primary education, they’re actually better to their people than many democratic states are to theirs. This is nonsense, of course—in the vast majority of cases autocrats are simply keeping the peasants healthy enough to work and educated enough to do their jobs” (p. 178). This is so fucking stupid. Why would you need to increase the literacy rates of peasants when their lifestyles don’t require them to need to be literate to do their jobs. How would it be easier to lie to literate people? Just look at the Catholic church as an example of how easy it is to lie to illiterate peasants for centuries.
- The authors’ hatred of communist Cuba is honestly just insane. Their views range from presenting the questionable as outright fact (ex: Fidel sent Che to Bolivia so that Che would die) to being genuinely unhinged. For example, they describe Baptista as: “an effective social reformer who also helped promote successful economic policies” (p. 183). It was him, not Castro, who actually built Cuba’s robust healthcare system, which still compares extremely favorably to any other nation with similar economic development levels (not to mention to the much wealthier United States who, while embargoing Cuba and running a campaign of terror and assassinations against the Cuban population, actually developed a lower life expectancy than Cuba). Here is how actual scholars describe Castro’s healthcare reforms as opposed to these clowns: ”, the doctor-to patient ratio improved threefold, and the number of consultarios (local doctors’ offices) rose from 6,000 in 1989 to nearly 16,000 by 1998. The infant mortality rate fell during the special period, dropping from 17 per 1,000 live births in 1985 to 7.2 in 2000, and overall life expectancy lengthened.” (Pineo, Ronn. "Cuban public healthcare: a model of success for developing nations."; p. 16). The authors admit that Cuban healthcare has improved, but argue “since Batista’s overthrow… Cuba’s relative quality of infant care has not kept pace with the rest of the world.” (p. 185); this completely ignores the historical context of Cuba surviving a hybrid war against the most powerful nation in history for almost 60 years while also losing its largest trading partner and greatest ally decades ago.
- Here’s another funny one: the authors’ argue that if a country is not ‘democratic’ then “there (is) no impetus for the government to strengthen its policies for protecting the public from disaster… Earthquakes and tsunamis are hard to foresee. But their aftermath is not. When there are lots of essential supporters, rescue is swift and repair is quick and effective.” (p. 198-199). Funny how these authors’ obsession with Cuba does not seem to extend to this section of the book, otherwise they might have to admit that Cuba is one of the most effective/successful nations in the world at battling natural disasters despite being in an extremely volatile area for hurricanes. As the National Library of Medicine states: “Despite the fact that Cuba experienced the hurricanes at their greatest intensity, there were only seven deaths throughout Cuba. In contrast, there were over 100 deaths in Haiti and over 30 in the USA. Over the last 50 years, Cuba has managed to reduce significantly the number of deaths following hurricanes” (Miranda, Deybis Sánchez, and Imti Choonara. "Hurricanes and child health: lessons from Cuba."). Since this completely contradicts their claims of Cuba being an anti-democratic dictatorship only worried about improving the lives of its leaders, it is pretty obvious why this lie of omission was made.
- ”Of the twenty-five most corrupt regimes, according to Transparency International’s 2010 corruption index, not even one is a mature democracy.” (p. 209). Wow I can’t believe a thoroughly bourgeois institution funded by the likes of the European Commission (EC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs Trade and Development (DFATD) Canada, and Siemens AG would publish something like this while entirely ignoring the legalized corruption (oh sorry, I mean lobbying) of the western world.
- ”A few of history’s revolutionaries stand out for their success not only in overthrowing a nasty regime, but in creating a people-friendly government in its place. America’s George Washington, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino are a few cases in point.” (p. 315). Yeah just ask the slaves of one of the largest slave owners in America or the millions of genocided indigenous peoples about how people friendly George Washington’s America was.
- “Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, aimed at restructuring the Soviet political and economic system, can be understood as his effort to increase the government’s revenue” (p. 317). This would sound good if you were historically illiterate and did not know that one of the first policies old Gorby put in place was an alcohol ban which caused alcohol sales (one of the largest components of the domestic Soviet economy) to fall by 50% from 1984-88.
-”under Boris Yeltsin’s post-Gorbachev government Russia maintained free and competitive elections” (p. 317). I won't even critique this quote because anybody that believes it should stick to reading coloring books anyways
- ”On some occasions the successor regime can actually be worse than its predecessor… (for example) Mao’s success against Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang government in China” (p. 293) lmao the liberal fantasy view of the KMT is incredible.
- ”Democrats provide the policies people want because otherwise the people will protest, and when people can freely assemble there is little a leader can do to stop them except give them what they want” (p. 296) You know, besides assassinating them like every major civil rights leader, undermining their organizations from within through institutional measures like COINTELPRO or Operation Chaos, (see my review of the Church Committee's report on COINTELPRO) directing the entire mass media apparatus against them, using their political power to foster a sense of mass hysteria (a la The Red Scare), and slowly siphoning off support through half-measures and piecemeal agreements.
- this book literally claims the internet and cell phones were banned in Cuba until Fidel died: ”as Raul Castro took over from his brother Fidel. Raul needed to consolidate his hold on power, reassure his backers that he could provide for them, and to do that he had to get Cuba’s economy to grow. Solution: introduce some economic competition and a few political acts of liberalization. Today Cubans can take greater advantage of private businesses than was true at any time since the revolution. They can have cell phones and some access to the Internet” (p. 326)
- I tapped out on page 329 when the authors claim ”We think that a big part of why war is such a scourge is that too many leaders get the wrong advice about how to solve international problems”. Anybody that spends decades as “political scientists” and somehow believes this is truly a dullard with no understanding of history whatsoever.
This is truly a dogshit book. The only positive takeaways I have for it are that it accurately understands that no leader rules unilaterally; they must rely on essential backers to maintain their rule. I think their argument that any leader of an organization wants to maintain their power above all else is interesting and probably true to some degree. To maintain their power the ruler must give benefits to members of their coalition whose survival they cannot live without; when it comes to state rulers this is most often the military. Essential members of a ruler’s coalition will remain loyal as long as the ruler adequately rewards them, which means they are willing to betray him if they realistically think another leader can give them a better deal, or if they think the current leader is dying/going to be deposed without a successor who can guarantee the essential supports will continue getting rewards. To overthrow a ruler the successor must remove the incumbent, seize the governing apparatus, and form their own coalition of supporters needed to sustain their rule. Sometimes a ruler is overthrown from a rebellion from below; these are people who do not receive enough rewards from the ruler to be properly satiated, but aren’t deprived enough that they are literally too weak from starvation and deprivation to revolt. These rebellions occur when people are convinced things are sufficiently bad enough that a revolt is necessary to make their lives better, and worth the risks of punishment that the failure of such a rebellion would bring down upon them. Revolution from below is most often successful when the ruler no longer has the funds necessary to reward the military. If the military does not have the proper incentives to brutally murder and suppress the masses, they will step aside and let the revolt take place rather than engaging in a brutal bloodletting for meager rewards.
February 7, 2017
If at times a bit too reductionist, this is a generally coherent breakdown of political behavior into its most basic components. The authors posit that all politicians, whether authoritarian or democratic, are motivated by the desire to stay in power. While successful politicians will behave very differently in different contexts, this desire holds true no matter the time or place. Seems pretty straightforward, no? To stay on top, politicians must juggle the needs of three groups of people: the interchangeables, the influentials, and the essentials. The essentials are the must-have backers of the person in power. The influentials are vying for a spot in the essential crowd and they have some degree of influence over the selection of the leader. The interchangeables may or may not have any nominal say in the selection of the leader, but realistically have very little say over who leads their polity -- most of the time.
The authors go on to argue that the size of the winning coalition -- that is, the number of essentials -- has a decisive impact on the kinds of behavior leaders need to follow in order to stay in power. A good rule of thumb is that large winning coalition tend toward democratic forms of governance, whereas smaller winning coalitions tend toward oppressive forms of governance. Why? Because with fewer people who need to be rewarded for their support, you can choose to follow unpopular policies. In fact, you can choose to act against the interest of millions if that feeds your pocketbook.
There's more to it than that, but the book is brain candy and since I highly recommend it, I'll leave it to you to suss out the specifics. Here are some fun tidbits to tide you over:
* The resource curse. If politicians have access to natural resource wealth, look out. They're not beholden to the masses, and they'll act like it. Oil, minerals, gems... it doesn't lead to a happy ending.
* Debt forgiveness. The motivation for debt forgiveness may be good, but the results are usually bad. Why? Autocrats need funds to pay off their essential supporters. Nothing else matters. If they can't pay off their supporters, they generally need to liberalize their state in order to stimulate growth. Or they hold on for dear life and the state collapses. In either event, that lack of cash works out better for the masses than a dictator with access to international debt relief. Counterintuitive perhaps, but the world can be ugly.
* Democracies work by forcing politicians to answer to larger groups of key supporters. The larger the group of key supporters, the less well that direct payments work, and the more the politicians are forced to reward their supporters with public goods, like infrastructure, free speech, education, etc.
* Infrastructure. Autocracies don't like road, rail, air, and telecommunications networks because they allow the masses to move about and talk with one another. A good rule of thumb is that dictators build the smallest, least efficient transportation and communication networks necessary to move their goods to market. This isn't because they're dumb or incapable; it's actually a clever survival strategy.
* Corruption. In many corrupt countries, this isn't a bug, it's a feature. For example, a corrupt police force. Why are many police officials in oppressive countries corrupt? They're not paid well. That saves the government money, money that's spent rewarding essential backers. The police, left to shift for themselves, turn to the masses to make their salary. They're often given signals, some subtle and some overt, that they're permitted to take the remainder of their pay in the form of bribes. It's a terrible system from the point of view of the average citizen, but since the leader isn't beholden to the average citizen, it doesn't matter.
* Krushchev accidentally triggered a culling of Soviet cattle herds by committing to best the West in meat and milk production. Not understanding what he'd asked of his agricultural sector, he inadvertently put tremendous pressure on them to meet quotas. As a result, myriad animals were slaughtered before their time to meet expectations, and some meat was even purchased from stores, repackaged, and presented as fresh from the farm. Supplies eventually collapsed and prices went up. This led in no small part to his eventual ouster in the form of a soft coup. What does this have to do with the thesis of the book? I can't remember, but I thought it was funny.
Highly recommended. Knocked off a point for repetitiveness, but don't let that put you off.
The authors go on to argue that the size of the winning coalition -- that is, the number of essentials -- has a decisive impact on the kinds of behavior leaders need to follow in order to stay in power. A good rule of thumb is that large winning coalition tend toward democratic forms of governance, whereas smaller winning coalitions tend toward oppressive forms of governance. Why? Because with fewer people who need to be rewarded for their support, you can choose to follow unpopular policies. In fact, you can choose to act against the interest of millions if that feeds your pocketbook.
There's more to it than that, but the book is brain candy and since I highly recommend it, I'll leave it to you to suss out the specifics. Here are some fun tidbits to tide you over:
* The resource curse. If politicians have access to natural resource wealth, look out. They're not beholden to the masses, and they'll act like it. Oil, minerals, gems... it doesn't lead to a happy ending.
* Debt forgiveness. The motivation for debt forgiveness may be good, but the results are usually bad. Why? Autocrats need funds to pay off their essential supporters. Nothing else matters. If they can't pay off their supporters, they generally need to liberalize their state in order to stimulate growth. Or they hold on for dear life and the state collapses. In either event, that lack of cash works out better for the masses than a dictator with access to international debt relief. Counterintuitive perhaps, but the world can be ugly.
* Democracies work by forcing politicians to answer to larger groups of key supporters. The larger the group of key supporters, the less well that direct payments work, and the more the politicians are forced to reward their supporters with public goods, like infrastructure, free speech, education, etc.
* Infrastructure. Autocracies don't like road, rail, air, and telecommunications networks because they allow the masses to move about and talk with one another. A good rule of thumb is that dictators build the smallest, least efficient transportation and communication networks necessary to move their goods to market. This isn't because they're dumb or incapable; it's actually a clever survival strategy.
* Corruption. In many corrupt countries, this isn't a bug, it's a feature. For example, a corrupt police force. Why are many police officials in oppressive countries corrupt? They're not paid well. That saves the government money, money that's spent rewarding essential backers. The police, left to shift for themselves, turn to the masses to make their salary. They're often given signals, some subtle and some overt, that they're permitted to take the remainder of their pay in the form of bribes. It's a terrible system from the point of view of the average citizen, but since the leader isn't beholden to the average citizen, it doesn't matter.
* Krushchev accidentally triggered a culling of Soviet cattle herds by committing to best the West in meat and milk production. Not understanding what he'd asked of his agricultural sector, he inadvertently put tremendous pressure on them to meet quotas. As a result, myriad animals were slaughtered before their time to meet expectations, and some meat was even purchased from stores, repackaged, and presented as fresh from the farm. Supplies eventually collapsed and prices went up. This led in no small part to his eventual ouster in the form of a soft coup. What does this have to do with the thesis of the book? I can't remember, but I thought it was funny.
Highly recommended. Knocked off a point for repetitiveness, but don't let that put you off.
January 28, 2020
I'd be lying if I said this was not a bit of a textbook my world domination goals.
This breakdown of dictatorships from start to finish was so interesting. You think you know the story. You don't. The patterns seen in all regimes are also interesting at how they end up in the same place taking different routes.
The discussion the 1967 war was from a point of view that was new to me. A new way to look at winners and losers or war and really dig deeper. A lot of good information for business owners in a highly competitive industries as well.
A great read and one I know I will read again in 10 years.
This breakdown of dictatorships from start to finish was so interesting. You think you know the story. You don't. The patterns seen in all regimes are also interesting at how they end up in the same place taking different routes.
The discussion the 1967 war was from a point of view that was new to me. A new way to look at winners and losers or war and really dig deeper. A lot of good information for business owners in a highly competitive industries as well.
A great read and one I know I will read again in 10 years.
April 27, 2014
الكتاب مهم جدا و الترجمة سيئة جدا جدا
December 14, 2017
"العيب في النظام يا بهايم"
برغم جاذبيته لكني اعتقد أن العنوان الأصح لل��تاب هو"كيف تعمل الأنظمة"،فنظرية الكتاب تساعد في فهم كلا من الأنظمة الديكتاتورية والديموقراطية وأسباب وجودها..
وما هي النظرية؟
لنبدأ بتلك المصادرة:"مفيش حد صالح،كله بتاع مصالح"..فالدافع شبه الأوحد وراء تصرفات أي حاكم أو مسئول هو المصلحة الذاتية،لكن طبيعة توزيع القوة السياسية وتركزاتها هي ما تحدد خيارات الحاكم...ومن هنا نبدأ.
العنصر الأول:
أذا كان الترك��ب السياسي والأقتصادي والأجتماعي(وقد نضيف"النفسي" كذلك) يؤدي إلى تركز القوة والتأثير في يد مجموعة صغيرة من الأفراد،فأن الطريقة المثلى للسيطرة على الحكم ستكون رشوة تلك المجموعة بشكل مباشر أو غير مباشر،في حين لن تحتاج لخدمة الجماهير بشكل كبير....وإليكم بعض الأمثلة:
أذا كان المجتمع قبلي النزعة،فأن من السهل رشوة زعماء القبائل لكسب تحالفهم واستخدام نفوذهم على أفراد القبيلة.
أذا كانت مقدرات المجتمع الأقتصادية متركزة في يد مجموعة صغيرة فمن السهل رشوتهم بالتسهيلات لرفع مكاسبهم.
أذا كانت القوات المسلحة هي المسيطرة على مفاصل الحكم والأقتصاد فمن الحكمة رشوتهم الأمتيازات المادية والأجتماعية.(قارن هنا بين حالي الجيشين التركي والمصري:الجيش التركي لا يمتلك القدر الكافي من الأكتفاء الأقتصادي كما أن تركيا ليست غنية في المواد الطبيعية التي يسهل السيطرة عليها وادارتها وهو السبب في أنه في كل مرة ينقلب فيها الجيش التركي كان يجري انتخابات حرة بعدها،أما الجيش المصري فقد حكم منذ أنقلاب 52 وحتى اليوم)..
عكس الوضع:أذا كانت السلطة غير متركزة في أيدي أفراد قلائل فأن الحاكم سيضطر لخدمة شريحة أوسع من الشعب "كرشوة"لضمان تأييدهم...هذا ما يسمونه الديموقراطية!
......
في أثناء مقارنة حالة مصر وتركيا لمسنا العنصر الثاني في النظرية:التمويل..من أين تحصل على الأموال لرشوة"المحاسيب"؟
أذا كنت محظوظا فأن أرض بلادك ستكون غنية بالموارد الطبيعية،حينها ستضع يدك عليها مباشرة وتديرها لحسابك،أما باقي الشعب فقد تلقي له الكثير أو القليل بقدر ما تحب(كما دول الخليج)أو لا شئ على الأطلاق(كنيجريا والكونغو)
أذا لم تكن محظوظا فستلجأ لحلب الشعب وأعتصار ما في جيوبه من "فكة"،أو أن تلجا للمعونات الأقتصادية الخارجية،وقد خصص الكتاب فصل كامل للمعونات وسرقتها في الدول الفقيرة،وكيفية تعاون الدول المانحة مع تلك الأنظمة وتغاضيها عن السرقة...وستجد هنا الكثير من القصص الماساوية.
......
ماذا عن الشعب؟أليس من الواجب السعي لكسب رضاه لتجنب ثورته؟
ليس بالضبط...فقط أخدم الشعب بالقدر اللذي يستطيع معه العمل ليمدك بالمال،وتجنب أي أصلاحات من شأنها ان تساعد على تجمع الناس وتبادلهم الأراء حتى لو كانت مخيمات الأيواء بعد الكوارث الطبيعية،وجوع جهاز الشرطة بينما تطلق يدهم في الظلم والفساد فتكسب ولائهم من ناحية وتجعلهم مكروهين من الشعب فتضعف فرصتهم في التقارب بينهم ضدك(من المثير أن رواتب الشرطة في اليكتاتوريات أعلى منه في الديموقراطيات!)....
أرجو أن تلاحظ أن لكل جملة في السطور السابقة فصل منفصل لشرحها مع قدر وافر من الأمثلة التطبيقية من التاريخ الحديث والمعاصر.
.........................
يمكنك الأستعاضة عن قراءة الكتاب بتلك السلسلة من الفيديوهات التي بنيت على محتواه وقدمت بلغة رجل الشارع
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
برغم جاذبيته لكني اعتقد أن العنوان الأصح لل��تاب هو"كيف تعمل الأنظمة"،فنظرية الكتاب تساعد في فهم كلا من الأنظمة الديكتاتورية والديموقراطية وأسباب وجودها..
وما هي النظرية؟
لنبدأ بتلك المصادرة:"مفيش حد صالح،كله بتاع مصالح"..فالدافع شبه الأوحد وراء تصرفات أي حاكم أو مسئول هو المصلحة الذاتية،لكن طبيعة توزيع القوة السياسية وتركزاتها هي ما تحدد خيارات الحاكم...ومن هنا نبدأ.
العنصر الأول:
أذا كان الترك��ب السياسي والأقتصادي والأجتماعي(وقد نضيف"النفسي" كذلك) يؤدي إلى تركز القوة والتأثير في يد مجموعة صغيرة من الأفراد،فأن الطريقة المثلى للسيطرة على الحكم ستكون رشوة تلك المجموعة بشكل مباشر أو غير مباشر،في حين لن تحتاج لخدمة الجماهير بشكل كبير....وإليكم بعض الأمثلة:
أذا كان المجتمع قبلي النزعة،فأن من السهل رشوة زعماء القبائل لكسب تحالفهم واستخدام نفوذهم على أفراد القبيلة.
أذا كانت مقدرات المجتمع الأقتصادية متركزة في يد مجموعة صغيرة فمن السهل رشوتهم بالتسهيلات لرفع مكاسبهم.
أذا كانت القوات المسلحة هي المسيطرة على مفاصل الحكم والأقتصاد فمن الحكمة رشوتهم الأمتيازات المادية والأجتماعية.(قارن هنا بين حالي الجيشين التركي والمصري:الجيش التركي لا يمتلك القدر الكافي من الأكتفاء الأقتصادي كما أن تركيا ليست غنية في المواد الطبيعية التي يسهل السيطرة عليها وادارتها وهو السبب في أنه في كل مرة ينقلب فيها الجيش التركي كان يجري انتخابات حرة بعدها،أما الجيش المصري فقد حكم منذ أنقلاب 52 وحتى اليوم)..
عكس الوضع:أذا كانت السلطة غير متركزة في أيدي أفراد قلائل فأن الحاكم سيضطر لخدمة شريحة أوسع من الشعب "كرشوة"لضمان تأييدهم...هذا ما يسمونه الديموقراطية!
......
في أثناء مقارنة حالة مصر وتركيا لمسنا العنصر الثاني في النظرية:التمويل..من أين تحصل على الأموال لرشوة"المحاسيب"؟
أذا كنت محظوظا فأن أرض بلادك ستكون غنية بالموارد الطبيعية،حينها ستضع يدك عليها مباشرة وتديرها لحسابك،أما باقي الشعب فقد تلقي له الكثير أو القليل بقدر ما تحب(كما دول الخليج)أو لا شئ على الأطلاق(كنيجريا والكونغو)
أذا لم تكن محظوظا فستلجأ لحلب الشعب وأعتصار ما في جيوبه من "فكة"،أو أن تلجا للمعونات الأقتصادية الخارجية،وقد خصص الكتاب فصل كامل للمعونات وسرقتها في الدول الفقيرة،وكيفية تعاون الدول المانحة مع تلك الأنظمة وتغاضيها عن السرقة...وستجد هنا الكثير من القصص الماساوية.
......
ماذا عن الشعب؟أليس من الواجب السعي لكسب رضاه لتجنب ثورته؟
ليس بالضبط...فقط أخدم الشعب بالقدر اللذي يستطيع معه العمل ليمدك بالمال،وتجنب أي أصلاحات من شأنها ان تساعد على تجمع الناس وتبادلهم الأراء حتى لو كانت مخيمات الأيواء بعد الكوارث الطبيعية،وجوع جهاز الشرطة بينما تطلق يدهم في الظلم والفساد فتكسب ولائهم من ناحية وتجعلهم مكروهين من الشعب فتضعف فرصتهم في التقارب بينهم ضدك(من المثير أن رواتب الشرطة في اليكتاتوريات أعلى منه في الديموقراطيات!)....
أرجو أن تلاحظ أن لكل جملة في السطور السابقة فصل منفصل لشرحها مع قدر وافر من الأمثلة التطبيقية من التاريخ الحديث والمعاصر.
.........................
يمكنك الأستعاضة عن قراءة الكتاب بتلك السلسلة من الفيديوهات التي بنيت على محتواه وقدمت بلغة رجل الشارع
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
March 21, 2017
This was definitely an eye-opening book for me. I've never been a big fan of discussing politics, mostly due to the complexity of the topic and the fact that most people have strong opinions on it without having enough actual knowledge. While I still doubt I know enough about politics to make any convincing arguments, this book has made it quite clear on what the primary motivations for politicians are and how they tend to go about ruling based on those motivations. As cliched as it may sound, most people, especially politicians, tend to want money and power. Once you quite safely assume that premise, you can more easily make sense of the dodgy stuff politicians get up to.
The writing was good, but having listened to it, I think it's the kind of book that's better to read, rather than listen. It often felt like a fact-dump, which for someone who didn't have much prior knowledge on a lot of the examples and ideas, made it feel a bit overwhelming at times. If I had been able to reread some parts in my own time, I think it would have probably made it more enjoyable for me.
There were a lot of examples used to explain the concepts and ideas, which I usually appreciate, but a lot of the concepts were very similar which made thing start to feel quite repetitive after a while. There also seemed to be quite a disproportionate amount of time dedicated to autocracies at the expense of democratic governments. This made the title very apt, but also made it harder to relate to since a lot of the information was very specific and unlikely that I'd ever be able to apply it outside of the context of hearing about some dictator in another country.
One of the main things I enjoyed about the book were the candidness of the authors about how the political world works and how unsavoury some of the solutions might be. I couldn't find any flaws in their logic and pretty much agreed with everything they said. That might be due to my lack of knowledge in the field, but a lot of the arguments either made logical sense or applied very well to examples that I knew of. While one can definitely apply some of the knowledge gained from this book to the business world, in general, the only thing you'll be able to do with this information is better understand the political world. If that's something you find interesting, then I'd definitely recommend this. I personally think more people would benefit from learning the lessons that are in this book, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to most from a purely reading-pleasure perspective.
The writing was good, but having listened to it, I think it's the kind of book that's better to read, rather than listen. It often felt like a fact-dump, which for someone who didn't have much prior knowledge on a lot of the examples and ideas, made it feel a bit overwhelming at times. If I had been able to reread some parts in my own time, I think it would have probably made it more enjoyable for me.
There were a lot of examples used to explain the concepts and ideas, which I usually appreciate, but a lot of the concepts were very similar which made thing start to feel quite repetitive after a while. There also seemed to be quite a disproportionate amount of time dedicated to autocracies at the expense of democratic governments. This made the title very apt, but also made it harder to relate to since a lot of the information was very specific and unlikely that I'd ever be able to apply it outside of the context of hearing about some dictator in another country.
One of the main things I enjoyed about the book were the candidness of the authors about how the political world works and how unsavoury some of the solutions might be. I couldn't find any flaws in their logic and pretty much agreed with everything they said. That might be due to my lack of knowledge in the field, but a lot of the arguments either made logical sense or applied very well to examples that I knew of. While one can definitely apply some of the knowledge gained from this book to the business world, in general, the only thing you'll be able to do with this information is better understand the political world. If that's something you find interesting, then I'd definitely recommend this. I personally think more people would benefit from learning the lessons that are in this book, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to most from a purely reading-pleasure perspective.
August 8, 2018
Full review and highlights at https://books.max-nova.com/dictators-handbook
I expected "The Dictator's Handbook" to belong to the genre of "bathroom readers" along with the likes of "The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook" and "The Dangerous Book for Boys." I was expecting colorful portraits of dastardly dictators and their evil escapades (like Robert Greene's "48 Laws of Power"). Instead, I found a very serious scholarly work written by fellows of Stanford's Hoover Institution. The authors are the founders of a branch of political science called "selectorate theory" which contends that dictators stay in power by keeping their winning coalition small and by paying them off with private goods at the expense of the general public. They remind us that "States don’t have interests. People do," and keep us focused on the political power calculus of the ruling elites. Sardonically, they categorize dictators into the "Hall of Fame," "Hall of Shame," and the "Haul of Fame."
Through the lens of selectorate theory, the authors explore corruption in resource-rich African states (hitting many of the same points as "The Looting Machine"), International Olympic Committee and Fifa scandals (also see "The Fall of the House of Fifa"), and how foreign aid often perpetuates problems rather than solving them. They even venture a bit outside of politics to apply selectorate theory to Carly Fiorina's HP/Compaq merger.
Jaunty and highly readable, "The Dictator's Handbook" gives us a new way of seeing the world. Written in a sort of "Freakonomics" style, the book manages to cover a lot of ground without getting too bogged down in technical details. An excellent addition to my 2018 reading theme on "Crime and Punishment."
I expected "The Dictator's Handbook" to belong to the genre of "bathroom readers" along with the likes of "The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook" and "The Dangerous Book for Boys." I was expecting colorful portraits of dastardly dictators and their evil escapades (like Robert Greene's "48 Laws of Power"). Instead, I found a very serious scholarly work written by fellows of Stanford's Hoover Institution. The authors are the founders of a branch of political science called "selectorate theory" which contends that dictators stay in power by keeping their winning coalition small and by paying them off with private goods at the expense of the general public. They remind us that "States don’t have interests. People do," and keep us focused on the political power calculus of the ruling elites. Sardonically, they categorize dictators into the "Hall of Fame," "Hall of Shame," and the "Haul of Fame."
Through the lens of selectorate theory, the authors explore corruption in resource-rich African states (hitting many of the same points as "The Looting Machine"), International Olympic Committee and Fifa scandals (also see "The Fall of the House of Fifa"), and how foreign aid often perpetuates problems rather than solving them. They even venture a bit outside of politics to apply selectorate theory to Carly Fiorina's HP/Compaq merger.
Jaunty and highly readable, "The Dictator's Handbook" gives us a new way of seeing the world. Written in a sort of "Freakonomics" style, the book manages to cover a lot of ground without getting too bogged down in technical details. An excellent addition to my 2018 reading theme on "Crime and Punishment."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,192 reviews