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The Dictator's Handbook

Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

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The Dictator's Handbook

By: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith
Narrated by: Dan Woren
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About this listen

 “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. Political Science Politics & Government United States World Socialism

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Critic reviews

Simply the best book on politics written.... Every citizen should read this book.—CGP Grey
A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority...Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are polymathic, drawing on economics, history, and political science to make their points...The reader will be hard-pressed to find a single government that doesn't largely operate according to Messrs. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith's model. So the next time a hand-wringing politician, Democrat or Republican, claims to be taking a position for the 'good of his country,'remember to replace the word 'country' with 'career.'—Wall Street Journal
Machiavelli's The Prince has a new rival. It's The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.... This is a fantastically thought-provoking read. I found myself not wanting to agree but actually, for the most part, being convinced that the cynical analysis is the true one.—Enlightenment Economics
In this fascinating book Bueno de Mesquita and Smith spin out their view of governance: that all successful leaders, dictators and democrats, can best be understood as almost entirely driven by their own political survival-a view they characterize as 'cynical, but we fear accurate.' Yet as we follow the authors through their brilliant historical assessments of leaders' choices-from Caesar to Tammany Hall and the Green Bay Packers-we gradually realize that their brand of cynicism yields extremely realistic guidance about spreading the rule of law, decent government, and democracy. James Madison would have loved this book.—R. James Woolsey Director of Central Intelligence, 1993-1995, and Chairman, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith teach us to see dictatorship as just another form of politics, and from this perspective they deepen our understanding of all political systems.—Roger Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago
All stars
Most relevant
Very interesting to see how many countries use the same approach to hood wink there people

Interesting connection

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I liked the book a lot for its analytical non partisan approach to topics that are normally only tackled from a particular ideological point of view. The chapter on Foreign Aid was particularly interesting with its counter intuitive empirical analysis. It seemed particularly oriented to the USA towards the end (more of a feature than a criticism).

Very worthwhile insights

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Good book great insight and amazing work. Only criticism is writer was taken away a little too much with words. It could’ve been quarter less and still deliver same message. good work though

Good read but felt a little extra

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This book offers a stone cold insight into the motivations of the leaders of the world, "good" ones and "bad" ones. It offers a simple to understand framework for why what happens, happens.

It's lessons apply outside of politics as well. The lessons here are fundamental where people meet with anything of value that can be controlled.

Its... a little depressing tho, but the truth often is I guess.

The narrator is good enough, a standard American male, who sounds engaged,

If you only ever read one book on Politics.

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while the context and the narrative of the book is good, the argumentation is superficial and the historical arguments are outright wrong. don't get me wrong, the arguments posed in this book are in general correct and they do have some historical basis, the way thou they are written shows the lack of such knowledge from the authors, and the cherry picking of history to prove a point, EVEN if the point they argue is fundamentally correct (and machiavellian, so be weary).

mediocre insides, bad history

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