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ISBN:	161039044X (ISBN13: 9781610390446)
Edition Language:	English

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

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Hardcover | Pages: 352 pages

Rating: 4.29 | 6506 Users | 814 Reviews

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Title	:	The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
Author	:	Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 352 pages
Published	:	September 27th 2011 by PublicAffairs
Categories	:	Politics. Nonfiction. History. Philosophy. Political Science

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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.

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Ratings: 4.29 From 6506 Users | 814 Reviews

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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 - lets 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

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.

Different take on coalition politics and how power is truly maintained. Excellent examples in world history of how coalitions are the main driving forces behind any political decision. However, the author ended up advocating for open borders and mass immigration in the final chapter thus spoiling what was prior to that, a decent read.

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

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

I heard about this book long time ago. Nevertheless, out of indolence or lack of time, I postponed reading it until now.This book is really something that should be read by everyone, no exceptions. Allow me to explain:There is a difference between ideology and politics. Politics is the art of ruling and describes what people actually do to rule. Ideology is a set of ideas that describe what should be done. My biggest issue is that people discuss politics in ideological terms. Justifying

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.