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

Colleagues, students, and friends always improve any endeavor, especially when they are critics as well as supporters; and this book is no exception. We are truly fortunate to be connected to such a wonderful network of scholars and friends from whom we learn everyday. Conversations with Neal Beck, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, George Downs, William Easterly, Sandy Gordon, Mik Laver, Jim Morrow, Lisa Howie, Jeff Jensen, Yanni Kotsonis, Alex Quiroz-Flores, Shinasi Rama, Peter Rosendorff, Harry Roundell, Shanker Satyanath, John Scaife, Randy Siverson, Alan Stam, Federico Varesse, James Vreeland, Leonard Wantchekon, and many others helped shape this book.

Much of our previous work has been aimed at an academic audience. Writing a “readable” book is a very different enterprise. Fortunately Eric Lupfer, our agent, took us under his wing. He worked tirelessly with us on structure, style, and presentation, and he fixed us up with a phenomenal press. PublicAffairs has been superbly supportive throughout the process. Their entire team has helped us and supported us every step of the way. We thank Brandon Proia who made the book more readable, clearer, and more tightly argued than it would otherwise have been; and, in alphabetical order, Lindsay Jones, Lisa Kaufman, Jamie Leifer, Clive Priddle, Melissa Raymond, Anais Scott, Susan Weinberg, and Michelle Welsh-Horst, each of whom contributed mightily to improving our book. Alas, we cannot hold them responsible for its continued failing, for which Alastair and Bruce acknowledge that the other is responsible.

Of all the organizations we study, the ones we care most about are family. These are the people that brighten our world: Ethan and Rebecca and Abraham and Hannah; Erin and Jason and Nathan and Clara; Gwen and Adam and Isadore; Angus, Duncan and Molly. And most of all, we thank Arlene and Fiona, to whom we dedicate this book and ourselves.

Our fondest hope is for the well-being and success of those who imperil their lives to keep dictators in check.

Notes

Mobutu Sese Seko quote, p. vi: “Mwalimu Nyerere: ‘How I Weep for Arusha Declaration!’” Arusha Times, October 8, 2005, 390.

Introduction

1 For information on Bell, California, houses and residents, see http://www.city-data.com/housing/houses-Bell-California.html.

3 The coach of Army’s football team makes substantially more than the president despite Army’s up and down record on the football field in recent years!

4 See http://www.coacheshotseat.com/JeffTedford.htm.

5 See http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/bell-paid-huge-salariesresidents-paid-huge-tax-bills-records-show.html for the details.

6 They, in turn, could target benefits to their essential voters. We can only wonder whether the people receiving housing grants, for example, made up the bulk of the city council’s supporting voters. With a secret ballot there is no way to know, although if Bell’s votes were reported by neighborhood we probably could come close to seeing the pairing of electoral support and the prospects of receiving special rewards, like housing grants.

7 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan , ed. Richard Tuck (New York: Cambridge University Press,1996 [1651]), 131.

8 Nicoló Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, ed. Max Learner (New York: The Modern Library, 1950 [1532]), 256.

9 James Madison, “Federalist 10,” in The Federalist , ed. Jacob Cooke (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 62.

10 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, The Spirit of Laws, ed. Edward Wallace Carrithers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977 [1748]), 176.

11 Robert Woodward, Obama’s War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010); Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969).

12 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

Chapter 1: The Rules of Politics

1 Those interested in seeing rigorous proofs for the logic behind the claims made here should see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), and subsequent works cited throughout this volume.

2 John Cloud, “The Pioneer Harvey Milk,” Time , July 14, 1999, available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,991276,00.html.

3 The sources for the fate of Castro’s close allies are Volker Skierka, Fidel Castro: A Biography (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2004), 68–91; Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince (Kansas City: Little Brown and Co., 1991), 191–315; Frank Fernandez, Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement, translated by Charles Bufe (Tucson, AZ: Sharp Press, 2001), 75–93; George Dominguez, “Cuba Since 1959,” in Cuba: A Short History , ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 95–149; and PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/filmmore/fr.html.

4 Emma Larkin, Everything is Broken: A Tale of Catastrophe in Burma (New York: Penguin Press, 2010).

5 Alexandros Tegos, “To Leave or Not to Leave? On the Assumption of Political Survival,” Working Paper, Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy, New York University Department of Politics, April 15, 2008.

Chapter 2: Coming to Power

1 We draw heavily on the following accounts: Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun (New York: Vintage books, 2001); Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), chapter 29; and http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924057-2,00.html.

2 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, talk given to a large investment group’s portfolio committee, May 5, 2010, New York, New York.

3 Lawrence K. Altman, “The Shah’s Health: A Political Gamble,” New York Times Magazine, May 17, 1981, pp. 5–17.

4 Meredith, The Fate of Africa , 150.

5 S. E. Finer, The History of Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

6 Sources for the analysis of Pope Damasus I include Michael Walsh, Butler’s Lives of the Saints (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), 413; Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 866, n84; “Pope St. Damasus I,” Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913), Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus, vol. 2, 376; Henry Chadwick, The Pelican History of the Church—1: The Early Church (London: Penguin Press, 1978); Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: General Books, 2010); Diarmaid McCulloch, History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (London: Viking, 2009).

7 Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History: The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 103.

8 Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Soccer War (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 113–114.

9 The discussion of Gorbachev’s fall and Yeltsin’s rise is based on the analysis in Kiron Skinner, Serhiy Kudelia, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Condoleezza Rice, The Strategy of Campaigning (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007).

10 See Ernesto Dal Bó, Pedro Dal Bó, and Jason Snyder, “Political Dynasties,” Review of Economic Studies 76, no. 1 (January 2009): 115–142.

11 The champion for winning the presidency with little popular support was John Quincy Adams, who received less than 31 percent of the popular vote. He won in a multiparty race by clever maneuvering in America’s odd system, in which popular votes, especially in the country’s early days, did not translate directly into support in the electoral college or, when no one wins there, in the House of Representatives.