Алистер Смит - The Dictator's Handbook - Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

Debt reduction might work in democracies. Since such nations want to reduce excessive debt anyway, debt reduction clearly helps speed the process. But as can be seen in Figure 4.3, Mozambique was already tackling its debt problem prior to large scale forgiveness in 2001 and in 2006. Therefore, we advocate a conservative approach of little or no debt relief as a way to improve the quality of governance and the quality of life of people currently living under wretched, oppressive regimes. We know that debt relief allows autocrats to entrench themselves in office. Debt forgiveness with the promise of subsequent democratization never works. An autocrat might be sincere in his willingness to have meaningful elections in return for funds. Yet once the financial crisis is over and the leader can borrow to pay off the coalition, any promised election will be a sham. For democrats, debt relief, while helpful, is unnecessary. By eliminating debt relief for autocrats we can help precipitate the sorts of rebellions seen in the Middle East in 2011, rebellions that, as discussed later, may very well open the door to better governments in the future.

Taxation, resource extraction, and borrowing are the foremost ways of acquiring funds for enriching a coalition. Discussions that portray taxation differently are either window dressing to make the process seem more palatable or are making arguments based on how people would like the world to work. Leaders tax because they need to spend on their coalition. Successful leaders raise as much revenue as they can. The limits of taxation are: (1) the willingness of people to work as they are taxed; (2) what the coalition is willing to bear; and (3) the cost of collecting taxes.

Having filled government coffers, leaders spend resources in three ways. First they provide public goods. That is, policies that benefit all. Second, they deliver private rewards to their coalition members. This mix of private and public benefits differs across political systems, and it’s worth noting that any resources left over after paying off the coalition are discretionary. Leaders therefore have a third choice to make about spending money. They could spend discretionary money promoting their pet projects. Alternatively, and all too commonly, as we shall see, they can hide them in a rainy-day fund.

5

Getting and Spending

AT LAST, A NEW RULER HAS SHAKEN UP THE COALITION that first brought him to power and he has the right supporters in place. Money is coming in thanks to the taxes being levied. Now comes the real task of governing: allocating money to keep the coalition happy—but not too happy—and providing just enough to keep the interchangeables from rising up in revolt. As we have seen in North Africa and the Middle East in the past few years, and as we saw in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, this can be an awkward tightrope to traverse for any leader. The last few decades encourage us by showing that in time many autocrats fall off that tightrope. It is really hard to strike just the right balance between benefits for one’s coalition and for the mass of interchangeables.

Any new incumbent who wants to be around for a long time needs to fine-tune the art of spending money. Of course, he can err on the side of generosity to the coalition or to the people—but only with any money that is left for his own discretionary use after taking care of the coalition’s needs. He had better not err on the side of shortchanging anyone who could mount a coup or a revolution. Shortchange the wrong people and any leader’s fate will confirm our abuse of William Wordsworth’s famous line: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

Thus we turn to the essential question of all democracies: how to allocate resources aimed at providing policies of benefit to everyone in a society. These public goods come in a variety of different forms depending on the tastes of those in a position to demand such policies. Those in such a position, of course, are the incumbent’s essential backers. Different groups of essentials will have different baskets of public goods–oriented policies in mind. Some will want to spend more on a social welfare safety net; others on education; still others on benefits for the elderly or for the young; benefits to the arts and so forth. Although all of these are of interest and will be touched upon, however briefly, we are especially interested in core public benefits like education, health care, and such freedoms as a free press, free speech, and freedom of assembly.

Although security against foreign invasion certainly is a central public good, we leave consideration of foreign threats to a later chapter and focus here on domestic policy choices. For now, let’s have a look at how public goods can help society as a whole and how they help entrenched leaders.

Effective Policy Need Not Be Civic Minded

To balance between spending policies that benefit the masses and those that favor the essentials, leaders would do well to reflect on those parts of Thomas Hobbes’s philosophy of government, which we touched on briefly in the introduction. He had a lot right, but Hobbes’s ideas about government weren’t infallible. While he realized that anyone who enriched society would avoid a revolution such as the one he lived through in England, he failed to distinguish between what it takes to keep the people at bay and what it takes to keep essential backers from betraying their leader—whether that leader is Hobbes’s Leviathan, Plato’s Philosopher King, Rousseau’s General Will, or Madison’s factionridden representatives of the people. Hobbes was sure his Leviathan had to be a benign ruler. That, so Hobbes seems to have thought, was the way to prevent a revolution such as he experienced. Without a ruler who enriched his people, Hobbes feared that for many, life would be, in his well-coined phrase, solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short.

Hobbes was only half right. It is true, as Hobbes’s believed, that happy, well-cared-for people are unlikely to revolt. China’s prolonged economic growth seems to have verified that belief (at least for now). Keep them fat and happy and the masses are unlikely to rise up against you. It seems equally true, however, that sick, starving, ignorant people are also unlikely to revolt. All seems quiet among North Korea’s masses, who deify their Dear Leader as the sole source of whatever meager, life-sustaining resources they have. Who makes revolution? It is the great in-between; those who are neither immiserated nor coddled. The former are too weak and cowered to revolt. The latter are content and have no reason to revolt. Truly it is the great in-between who are a threat to the stability of a regime and its leaders. Therefore, a prudent leader balances resources between keeping the coalition content and the people just fit enough to produce the wealth needed to enrich the essentials and the incumbent. We should not be surprised that those countries whose governments rely on few essential backers—that is, those that are least democratic—are the very places where Hobbes’s state of nature is most likely to be an apt description of life for the masses. They are also, as we saw earlier, the places where leaders have the best prospect of staying in control for years and years.

Leaders who depend on a large coalition have to work hard to make sure that their citizens’ lives are not solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short. That doesn’t mean democratic rulers have to be civic minded, nor would they need to harbor warm and cuddly feelings for their citizens. All they need is to ensure that there are ample public benefits to provide a high quality of life. They just need to follow the rules by which successful leaders rule, adapting them to the difficult circumstances that any democrat faces: being stuck with dependence on an unruly crowd of essentials to keep them in power.