The Dictator's Handbook (46 page)

A country's relative share of freedom is ultimately decided by its leaders. Behind the world of misery and oppression lie governments run by small cliques of essentials who are loyal to leaders who can make them rich. Behind the world of freedom and prosperity lie governments that depend on the backing of a substantial coalition of ordinary people drawn from a large pool of influentials, who are in turn drawn from a large pool of interchangeables. It is not difficult to draw a line from the poverty and oppression of the world to the corrupt juntas and brutal dictators who skim from their country's revenues to stay in power. Politics, and political institutions, define the bounds of the people's lives.

By now it should be clear that there is a natural order governing politics, and it comes with an ironclad set of rules. They cannot be altered. But that does not mean that we cannot find better paths to work within the laws of politics.

We have suggested some ways to work within the rules to produce better outcomes. At the end of the day, the solutions we have suggested will not be applied perfectly. There are good reasons for that. Entrenched ways of thinking make altering our approach to problems difficult. Many will conclude that it is cruel and insensitive to cut way back on foreign aid. They will tell us that all the money spent on aid is worth it if just one child is helped. They will forget to ask how many children are condemned to die of neglect because, in the
process of helping a few, aid props up leaders who look after the people only after they have looked after themselves and their essential backers, if at all. But before we shift blame onto our “flawed” democratic leaders for their failures to make the world a better place, we need to remember why it is that they enact the policies that they do. The sworn duty of democratic leaders is to do precisely what we, the people, want.

American presidents, virtually since the nation's founding, have routinely endorsed the idea, if not the reality, of spreading democracy. President Woodrow Wilson, in calling on the Congress to declare war against Germany on April 2, 1917, reflected his deeply held view that, “The world must be made safe for democracy.... We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.” His sentiment was echoed nearly ninety years later when George W. Bush, in his second inaugural address, proclaimed, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world . . . So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Yet Wilson set his noble sentiments aside when it came to standing up for self-determination in the colonies controlled by America's allies. In the same spirit, President Bush, during the same speech in which he called for democracy “in all the world,” also noted: “My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats.”

The president's “solemn duty” highlights the problem. There is an inherent tension between promoting democratic reform abroad and protecting the welfare of the people here at home. Free, democratic societies typically live in peace with each other and promote prosperity at home as well as between nations, making representative government attractive to people throughout the world. Yet democratic reform, as the experiences of the United States with Khomeini's Iran and Hamas-led Palestine make clear, does not always also enhance the security or welfare of Americans (or citizens elsewhere in the world) against foreign threats and may even jeopardize that security.

Our individual concerns about protecting ourselves from unfriendly democracies elsewhere typically trump our longer term belief in the benefits of democracy. Democratic leaders listen to their voters because that is how they and their political party get to keep their jobs. Democratic leaders were elected, after all, to advance the current interests at least of those who chose them. The long run is always on someone else's watch. Democracy overseas is a great thing for us if, and only if, the people of a democratizing nation happen to want policies that we like. When a foreign people are aligned against our best interest, our best chance of getting what we want is to keep them under the yoke of an oppressor who is willing to do what we, the people, want.

Yes we want people to be free and prosperous, but we don't want them to be free and prosperous enough to threaten our way of life, our interests, and our well-being—and that is as it should be. That too is a rule to rule by for democratic leaders. They must do what their coalition wants; they are not beholden to the coalition in any other country, just to those who help keep them in power. If we pretend otherwise we will just be engaging in the sort of utopianism that serves as an excuse for not tackling the problems that we can.

We began with Cassius imploring Brutus to act against Julius Caesar's despotism: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” We humbly add that the reason the fault is in ourselves is because we, the people, care so much for ourselves and so little for the world's underlings. But we have also seen that there is hope for the future. Every government and every organization that relies on a small coalition eventually erodes its own productivity and entrepreneurial spirit so much that it faces the risk of collapsing under the weight of its own corruption and inefficiency. When those crucial moments of opportunity arise, when the weight of bad governance catches up with despots, then a few simple changes can make all the difference.

We have learned that just about all of political life revolves around the size of the selectorate, the influentials, and the winning coalition. Expand them all, and the interchangeables no more quickly than the coalition, and everything changes for the better for the vast majority of people. They are liberated to work harder on their own behalf, to
become better educated, healthier, wealthier, happier, and free. Their taxes are reduced and their opportunities in life expand dramatically. We can get to these moments of change faster through some of the fixes proposed here but sooner or later every society will cross the divide between small-coalition, large-selectorate misery to a large coalition that is a large proportion of the selectorate—and peace and plenty will ensue. With a little bit of hard work and good luck this can happen everywhere sooner, and if it does we all will prosper from it.

The Dictator's Handbook
is the culmination of nearly two decades of research into the motivation and constraints of leaders. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to friends, colleagues, coauthors, and critics who have helped sharpen our understanding of what makes the world tick and given us insight into how it can be made to tick more smoothly.

In academic circles, our work has become known as
selectorate theory.
Together with two other founders of this way of thinking, Randolph Siverson and James Morrow, we published a comprehensive exposition of the theory,
The Logic of Political Survival,
in 2003 with MIT Press. That massive 500-plus page tome was full of mathematical models and complex statistical tests. Although we readily admit it is not an easy read, it is the most comprehensive statement of the theory. However, it was not the origin; nor was it the finale.

The genesis of selectorate theory was Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Randy Siverson's foray into examining what happens to leaders after they fight wars. Surprisingly, no one had systematically looked at how winning or losing wars affects leader survival. Given their background in international relations, Bruce and Randy continued to pursue warrelated topics, and brought in James Morrow and Alastair Smith—and the collaborative team of BdM
²
S
²
was born. In 1999 the four of us published “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace” in the
American Political Science Review
. This paper offered a solution to what at the time was the dominant question in international relations: why don't democratic nations fight each other? Many of the existing theories relied on asserting different normative motivations for democrats
and autocrats. Unfortunately, all too often democrats act contrary to these alleged higher values. In contrast, selectorate theory assumed leaders had the same objective, to stay in power, and what differentiated democrats from autocrats was that the former's dependence on a large coalition of supporters means democrats direct state resources to winning wars. Autocrats enhance their survival by hoarding resources to pay off cronies, even if this means losing the war. What started off as a desire to know why democracies don't fight each other ended up telling us how nations fight and what they fight over. As science is supposed to do, the answer to one problem provides answers to other problems and ends up posing a new set of questions.

In 2002, BdM
²
S
²
published a mathematical representation of the selectorate theory, “Political Institutions, Policy Choice and the Survival of Leaders,” in the
British Journal of Political Science
. We further refined this model and then tested its predictions. This material became the basis for
The Logic of Political Survival
. Since its publication we have continued to advance the theory. In articles in the
Journal of Conflict Resolution
in 2007 and
International Organization
in 2009, we examined how nations trade aid for policy concessions. Recent extensions of the mathematical model incorporate revolutionary movements and have been published in the
Journal of Politics
in 2008,
Comparative Political Studies
in 2009, and the
American Journal of Political Science
in 2010.

Selectorate theory offers a powerful, yet simple to use, model of politics. It forms the basis for the models in
Punishing the Prince
, for instance. That book, by Fiona McGillivray and Alastair Smith, examines how leaders sanction leaders in other states. By targeting punishments at leaders rather than the nations they represent, a leader leverages the effectiveness of their state's policies in three ways. First, such mechanisms provide an explicit means through which to restore relations between states. Second, they encourage the citizens in targeted nations to remove their leaders in order to restore cooperation. Third, since leaders fear removal, the threat of such targeted punishments encourage leaders to abide by international norms in the first place. By focusing on the interactions of leaders instead of thinking of international cooperation as only between nations, Fiona enriched our understanding of interstate relations. As was characteristic of her scholarship, she asked questions
that no one else had thought to ask and provided elegant answers that pushed scholarship in new directions. For instance, she examined how the dynamics of trade flows between nations depend upon the turnover of their national leaders. She found that the replacement of autocrats systematically altered trade flows in predictable ways.

Punishing the Prince
was published in 2008, just a few days before Fiona died. She is missed every day by everyone who knew her, but most especially by Alastair and their three children, Angus, Duncan, and Molly. She was both our greatest supporter and harshest critic. Fiona endured a long and terrible illness, but her humor and spirit never failed even in her darkest hour. She died waiting on a transplant list. Please sign your donor card. The doctors and nurses at Columbia-Presbyterian hospital and elsewhere, and especially Erika Berman-Rosenzweig and Nazzareno Galiè gave us extra time with her; they have our profound thanks. Although she ruled Alastair's life with a rod of iron, Fiona was the embodiment of a benevolent dictator.

Developing selectorate theory and writing this book have been a huge undertaking that we could never have done without the assistance of others. Randolph Siverson and James Morrow have been our collaborators from the start and many of the ideas presented here are as much theirs as ours. Financial support is also vital for any research and early developments of selectorate theory benefited from generous grants from the National Science Foundation. We also wish to thank Roger Hertog for his support through the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy at New York University.

Hans Hoogeveen, formerly Chief Economist for the World Bank in Tanzania, commissioned a study applying the selectorate framework to help explain why the World Bank's efforts in Tanzania had not been as successful as they had hoped. The opportunity to do that study helped sharpen our own understanding of selectorate theory and proved essential to advancing our views on the formation of blocs of interests, whether ethnic, linguistic, geographic, or occupational. The work undertaken at Hans's request was a great stimulus for us and we are most appreciative of his support and the opportunity he gave us. Our current employer, New York University, is a superb organization that has never hesitated in supporting our research and teaching. We are also grateful to the Hoover
Institution, Yale University, and Washington University in St. Louis for their support. The generosity of such organizations has allowed us to benefit from superb research assistance. Alexandra Bear and especially Michal Harari greatly assisted us in preparing materials for this book.

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.