PDF Summary:The Dictator's Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

People often discuss political leaders in terms of their ideologies, their dedication to their people, or their backgrounds. To understand the choices leaders make, though, you only need to consider one thing: their desire for power. In The Dictator’s Handbook, authors and political scientists Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith argue that the primary goal of all leaders is to get power and hold onto it as long as possible. This is true in all political systems—the differences between them come from how their leaders gain power and who they’re accountable to.

In this guide, we’ll cover how leaders gain power, how they stay in power, and the different approaches of dictators and democrats to achieve these goals. We’ll also explore war, revolution, and why democracy benefits the public—all through the lens of power politics. In our commentary, we’ll provide historical examples behind some of the author’s ideas as well as alternate perspectives on power and leadership from other historians, political scientists, and business leaders.

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How Dictators Reward Support

Dictators provide members of their small power blocs with high-ranking political positions and large amounts of money. The authors argue that dictators generate the money necessary for this through a combination of high taxes, loans from foreign nations and institutions, wealth generated from natural resource extraction, and corrupt deals with private companies.

For example, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo rewarded his loyal supporters by giving them control of state industries, directly bribing them, or permitting them to engage in corruption. He sustained this with international loans, cuts to salaries of low-level state employees, and profits from the sale of natural resources like copper.

(Shortform note: In some instances, the entire government of a dictatorship can revolve around the personal enrichment of a leader and their power bloc. This system of absolute corruption at the highest levels of government is known as kleptocracy. In a kleptocracy, public institutions, natural resources, and major industries are all designed to enrich high-level politicians. For example, kleptocrats might own the companies that harvest natural resources, the companies that use them to manufacture weapons, and the political posts to offer themselves lucrative military contracts for those weapons. Fully equipping the military is then secondary to enriching everyone along the way.)

How Democrats Reward Support

Democrats reward members of their large power blocs through one (or both) of the following ways:

1. Buying votes: Some democrats bribe individuals for their votes, offering money, free meals, or other small rewards.
2. Beneficial policies and projects: Most democrats reward their power blocs indirectly by passing policies and pursuing projects that benefit them. For example, a democrat might cut taxes for groups in their power bloc or improve the infrastructure of a region that supported them.

Democrats are more constrained than dictators when it comes to generating money for rewards because they’re responsible to far more supporters. This means they can’t tax as many people freely without losing support. In addition, their responsibility makes it more difficult for them to borrow money irresponsibly or engage in corruption, since the public bears the burden of excessive debt or misused taxed dollars. To work around these constraints, democrats place the tax burden on people outside of their power bloc and borrow as much as they reasonably can.

(Shortform note: Some scholars disagree with the authors, arguing that democratic nations tend to tax more than dictatorships. They suggest this is because citizens of democratic nations feel like they have a say in government and are therefore willing to pay more taxes. On the other hand, citizens of dictatorships have little say in how their government raises and spends money. Therefore, they’re less willing to pay taxes, and higher tax rates are more likely to cause unrest.)

How Dictators and Democrats Use Public Goods

In addition to specifically rewarding supporters, both dictators and democrats provide public goods—things like public education, nationalized health care, municipal water systems and so on—to keep their populations productive and pacified. Public goods like health care and education increase labor productivity, boosting economic activity and therefore providing a larger pool of wealth the government can tax. The improved quality of life from public goods also means that people outside of the power bloc will be less desperate and therefore less likely to revolt against the government.

The authors argue that because of their larger power blocs, democrats tend to invest more in better public goods than dictators. Democrats are accountable to a larger portion of their populations because they have larger power blocs. Since public goods benefit the entire population, they offer democrats a better ratio (compared to dictators) of money spent on the power bloc to money spent on people outside of it. Therefore, they’re more willing to invest money into public goods.

Covid-19 and Public Health Outcomes

The Covid-19 pandemic tested the authors’ claim that democracies tend to have better public goods than dictatorships—as public health measures and infrastructure were a crucial factor in determining how countries managed the pandemic. And while research (and the disease) is ongoing, initial findings suggest democracies and dictatorships had relatively similar Covid-19 death rates during the first few months of the pandemic, while dictatorships had lower death rates later on.

Some researchers argue this difference is due to dictators underreporting deaths and cases, while others believe the low accountability of dictators allowed them to more efficiently enact measures to contain the pandemic. Regardless, even when accounting for potentially manipulated case and death rates, democracies didn’t have significantly lower numbers of cases or deaths compared to dictatorships. This contrasts with the authors’ claim that democrats generally have superior public goods.

Method #2: Punish Dissent

The authors explain that in addition to rewarding supporters, leaders can maintain loyalty by punishing dissenters and political rivals. When supporters know that harsh punishment is the consequence of disloyalty, they’ll be less likely to step out of line. For dictators, punishments for individual dissenters can include death, imprisonment, firing, or demotion. Democrats, on the other hand, can use the legal system to try and disqualify opposing votes, intimidate or attack voters in areas that support their rivals, or limit and cut government services to those areas.

(Shortform note: Political parties are often more responsible for punishing dissent than individual leaders. This is part of a process of maintaining party discipline, or ensuring individual politicians follow the official party agenda. Party officials maintain party discipline by threatening to withdraw financial and political support to dissenting members. Even leaders themselves can be subject to party discipline if they rely on the support of their party to stay in power.)

Keep Supporters Replaceable

For punishments to be truly effective, leaders must make sure everyone in their power bloc is replaceable. If the leader relies too heavily on one supporter or one group of supporters, then those supporters will have much more leverage over them. The supporters can use this leverage to express dissent more freely, demand more rewards, or even to secure their own support and take over the country. But if everyone in a power bloc is replaceable, the threat of punishment will be far more effective—the leader can easily arrest or fire individuals because there are plenty of loyal people willing to replace them.

(Shortform note: Critics of this theory argue that in many regimes, leaders are more replaceable than members of their power blocs. They note that key supporters of dictators often have sources of power independent from their leader—private wealth, experience and connections, and so on. This independent power makes them difficult to replace. On the other hand, these key supporters often maintain an important position in government even if their leader is replaced, offering their power to whomever comes next. This means that leaders might want to focus less on making their supporters replaceable and more on making themselves irreplaceable.)

Method #3: Pacify Revolutions

When leaders fail to use rewards and punishments correctly, or when circumstances outside of their control—a global economic crash, for example—cause unrest, the population at large can revolt against them. The authors assert that revolutions are dangerous times for leaders and require careful political management.

What Counts as a Revolution?

To better understand how revolutions arise and how leaders try to deal with them, it helps to clarify what a revolution is and is not. To this end, let’s look at scholarly definitions of “revolution” and a few other common terms for anti-government violence:

A revolution is a popular movement to replace part or all of a country’s government. Revolutions tend to have a specific ideology behind them. For example, the 1960 April Revolution in South Korea was a massive wave of prodemocracy and anti-police brutality protests that forced then President Rhee Syngman to resign.

A coup d'état or coup is when a small group of political or military elites use violence to replace or seize control of the government. Coups do not involve a large portion of a country’s population. For example, in 1980 the senior command of Turkey’s military arrested key members of the country’s civilian government and replaced its constitution.

A rebellion or insurrection is any kind of popular violent resistance to the government regardless of goal, ideology, or lack thereof. Rebellions don’t always attempt to replace the government. For example, during the West Virginia Coal Wars, miners battled with state and local police for better working conditions and the right to strike.

Why Revolutions Happen

To understand how leaders manage revolutions, it helps to first understand why they occur. The authors argue revolutions happen most often in countries with medium-sized power blocs—dictators who allow some popular political participation, or democrats who partially limit or bypass it. Such leaders need both some popular support and some support from higher level military or bureaucratic figures to stay in power.

In these regimes, supporters are incentivized to shrink or expand the power bloc: If they shrink it, remaining supporters will get a larger share of rewards. If they expand it, they’ll benefit from increased public goods (and the revenue, productivity, and quality of life associated with those public goods, as discussed previously). Medium-sized power blocs also make it harder for leaders to get away with harsh repressive tactics, since they have some degree of accountability to their population. This means their power bloc is more likely to respond to repression by pulling support or replacing their leader.

(Shortform note: In addition to domestic politics—in this case, the size and stability of a leader’s power bloc—international politics can also contribute to revolutions. Popular movements are often indirectly or directly supported by foreign governments with a vested interest in changing that country’s regime. For example, the Soviet Union and Communist China supported various factions of revolutionaries during the Rhodesian Bush War in modern-day Zimbabwe, hoping to install a friendly regime and increase their influence in the region.)

How Leaders Manage Revolutions

The authors explain that because medium-sized power blocs are more susceptible to revolts, their leaders respond to popular revolutions by either shrinking or growing their power blocs in whatever way keeps them in power. If they have the necessary manpower to control the population, they can shrink their power bloc by brutally repressing the revolt. If they don’t have the manpower, they can appease the revolutionaries through liberalizing political reforms—increasing the size of their power blocs.

For example, the Soviet Union responded to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by shrinking its power bloc. The leadership killed and arrested thousands of protesters, replaced the Hungarian government with one far more loyal to Soviet interests, and permanently kept troops in the country. On the other hand, Beninese dictator Mathieu Kérékou responded to growing unrest by transitioning Benin into a larger power bloc multiparty democracy in the late 80s, and—after briefly being ousted from power—was elected president in 1996.

(Shortform note: Some scholars suggest that leaders often don’t have time to respond to revolutions—instead, they tend to occur suddenly and without warning. These scholars explain that the many social divisions leading to revolution are often only visible in hindsight, and that leaders often fail to anticipate when protest movements or acts of rebellion will lead to all-out revolution. This means many regimes never get the opportunity to shrink or grow their power blocs before they’re replaced.)

Part 3: How Leaders Interact

While the size and composition of power blocs determine a leader’s domestic politics, the authors argue that power blocs influence international politics as well. Leaders are both constrained by the needs of their power blocs and encouraged to pursue their interests abroad.

(Shortform note: The authors are most closely aligned with the realist school of international relations. According to realists, each nation is concerned first and foremost with securing its own national interests and security. Since leaders and their power blocs are concerned first and foremost with remaining in power, it follows that this is how they would approach international affairs.)

In Part 3 of our guide, we’ll discuss how leaders secure alliances and wage wars to best serve their power blocs, again comparing the approaches of dictators and democrats.

Securing Allies

The authors argue that leaders choose allies that help secure their economic and political interests. This often means allying with whoever pays best or asks for the least. Dictators are generally easier to “buy” an alliance with than democrats, as they don’t have to worry about whether an alliance is broadly popular in their country. This is why democrats will cooperate with dictators and in some cases even oppose democratization abroad: Dictators are cheaper and don’t need broad public support to pursue a desired goal.

For example, the democratic US and Belgian regimes covertly overthrew the Democratic Republic of Congo’s democratically elected leader Patrice Lumumba because they were concerned he would limit their access to the country’s resource wealth and ally with the Soviet Union. They replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko, who—at least for a time—was willing to cooperate with US and Belgian interests.

(Shortform note: In the past few decades, some scholars of international relations have started acknowledging factors beyond political and economic interests in discussing alliances. Specifically, they’ve noted that shared religious and ethnic backgrounds also contribute to alliances between nations. Scholars still debate the extent to which these factors impact international relations. Some suggest that religious and ethnic similarities usually correlate with shared economic interests, making the distinction between these factors unimportant. Others believe that religious and ethnic similarities can sometimes take priority over economic interests in international relations.)

Foreign Aid

According to the authors, the main purpose of foreign aid is to buy loyalty from other nations. While aid programs are often pitched to the public as ways of helping struggling peoples, they’re more often bribes to other leaders—especially in dictatorships, where leaders are free to misuse aid for their own purposes. This arrangement benefits both giver and recipient: The giver appears charitable to their people and the world public, while the recipient receives wealth they can appropriate or redistribute to their power bloc.

(Shortform note: According to Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine), foreign aid isn’t the only kind of international payment used to buy political change. She explains that loans and bailouts provided by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund often serve as “bribes” for nations to change their economic systems or governments. Klein argues that particularly during the decades after World War II, these institutions were controlled by the United States and therefore served US interests—requiring nations to adopt free-market reforms that would benefit American companies and trade.)

Waging War

While dictators and democrats choose allies in the same ways, the authors argue that they approach war differently. They compare when and how the two types of leaders wage war:

How Dictators Wage War

The authors argue dictators use wars as opportunities to quickly seize additional wealth or power. They’re willing and even likely to start a war—even against a difficult opponent—if they see such an opportunity. This is because the additional wealth will help them maintain the loyalty of their power bloc, while the popularity of a war or the safety of their soldiers is far less relevant to their continued hold on power.

However, dictators are unlikely to commit heavily to war if they encounter serious opposition. There are two main reasons for this: First, they need a constant domestic military presence to repress dissent, and fighting a difficult war would require them to divert some of these forces. Second, small power blocs are much more sensitive to any money diverted from rewards to war—a 10% reduction in rewards means a far larger loss to each member of a 50-person power bloc than it does to each member of a 500,000-person power bloc. Therefore, dictators can’t overcommit to wars militarily or financially without jeopardizing the loyalty of their power blocs.

(Shortform note: One example of an exception to the authors’ theory is when dictatorships are fighting for their survival or control of their country instead of for power and wealth. In these cases, small bloc regimes and the people living within them sometimes fully dedicate themselves to the conflict despite heavy opposition. An example of this phenomenon is the Vietnam War, where the North Vietnamese continued fighting for control of the nation despite suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties.)

How Democrats Wage War

On the other hand, democrats use wars as last resort methods of achieving foreign policy goals, explain the authors. For democrats, going to war is a careful calculation: Sending soldiers to their deaths unnecessarily or losing a war will cause them to lose support, but so will failing to achieve their foreign policy aims. To maximize their chance of remaining in power, democrats tend to declare war only when other options have failed and only when they believe they can win.

When democrats do wage war, they’re more likely to commit heavily when they face serious opposition. Their large power blocs mean that funding a war effort requires less sacrifice from each supporter. In addition, spending more on the war effort helps to protect the lives of soldiers and can turn a losing war into a victory—both of which are popular outcomes and will boost a democratic leader's support.

For example, when the US war in Vietnam encountered heavy resistance, the US government devoted additional funds and troops and continued fighting for over a decade.

(Shortform note: Some scholars disagree with the authors’ views on how war impacts the support of democratic leaders. They cite studies suggesting that joining or losing a war often doesn’t correlate with a democratic leader losing power. However, there are some notable exceptions: If a leader starts and then loses a war or is otherwise closely connected to it, they’re more likely to lose support and be replaced. In addition, a leader who is already politically vulnerable will likely suffer a larger loss of support when they lose a war. In these cases, further commitment to victory can offer leaders a way to hold onto power.)

Part 4: Why Democracy Is Preferable

After comparing how dictators and democrats gain and use their power, the authors conclude that populations are better off under a democrat than they are under a dictator. This is because the larger a leader’s power bloc is, the closer their personal interests will align with the interests of the public. As previously stated, the main interest of any leader is staying in power, and keeping their power bloc happy is a crucial way to accomplish this. Therefore, a leader with a large power bloc is more accountable to the population at large, as they are personally incentivized to keep people happy through rewards, public goods, low taxes, less corruption and repression, and so on.

The authors acknowledge that not everyone can be happy in a democracy—different people in a society will inevitably have different interests. But in a more democratic world with larger power blocs, more people will be more happy more of the time.

(Shortform note: Government accountability is an important part of the authors’ argument—the more people in a power bloc, the more accountable a government must be. But what does accountability look like in practice? In general, it refers to mechanisms that ensure a leader’s actions align with the interests of their power bloc. For example, transparency laws require politicians to disclose their activities to the public. This ensures members of a power bloc will know if and how their leader is doing what they want. Alternatively, independent committees of citizens can oversee government activities to ensure they’re doing their jobs appropriately.)