Punk & Pedagogy
Cart
☆ Find Your Stage
The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics cover
SEE THROUGH IT

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

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith

Tyrants follow a rulebook. Here it is.

For you if

you want to know why bad rulers do exactly what bad rulers do.

⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡

Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.

Buy New on Bookshop.org

Supports independent bookstores

— OR —

Find Used on Better World Books

Secondhand & sustainable

$20 MSRP · Paperback
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.

Two political scientists argue that leaders do not behave well or badly because of who they are, but because of who they need to keep happy. A ruler who answers to a few cronies pays them off and ignores everyone else; a ruler who answers to millions has to deliver roads, schools and clean water. Read this way, tyranny is a design, and so is the cure. It is blunt, cynical and weirdly clarifying, and it makes the news look like a rulebook.

Where This Book Lives

Themes
authoritarianismdemocracypolitical corruptionpropaganda

Pass with note. The model is deliberately simple, and critics say it flattens history, culture and ideology into cold self-interest. Readable, a little glib, and the authors are mainstream academics with no documented concerns. Gap-filler for the authoritarian-playbook shelf: structural rather than narrative. Close relatives: How Democracies Die, How Fascism Works, Autocracy, Inc. and The Origins of Totalitarianism.