The Dictator's Handbook
Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
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4.4 • 33 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority.” —Wall Street Journal
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s canonical book on political science turns conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single proposition: leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they must. As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially 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. And it is also the key to returning power to the people.
Customer Reviews
Good content, but technical difficulties
Very insightful book, but tremendous issues with highlighting certain sections randomly throughout the book.
It seems that somehow certain parts are linked to the page at the beginning of the chapter. Highlights do not show up, or link to the page they were made on. They are created, yet do not appear on the page. In the notes they show up, but with the wrong page number. Additionally, clicking them brings you to to beginning of the chapter. This has made enormous difficulties with selecting sentences to look back at for later, which with a book like this is sorely needed. Hopefully this can be fixed in the future.
This explains everything
Everything, about power, and how it works, is right here. Obviously, there are some finer details that this book can not cover, such as the particular tactics that democratic leaders use to gain supporters.
But it explains why we even have democracies.
It explains why we still have dictators.
It’s principals could be used to explain everything from the operations of world powers, to why Robespierre lost his head.
Everything you wanted to know about the most powerful people in the world, starts here.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it
Sad but true
I remember as kid hearing and reading about Marcos in the Philippines. I didn't understand why the US supported such a corrupt dictator. How was a dictator any better than Communism? I also wondered why the Iranians hated us so much as to risk war taking our hostages. This book answers those questions and give you the reasons why so many in the world are oppressed!