The Dictator's Handbook (47 page)

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.

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

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

2
“Bell Council Seeks Resignation of 3 City Officials,”
Los Angeles Times
Local section, July 21, 2010. Available at
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-721-bell-20100721,0,3475382.story
.

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).

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.

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.

1
Italo Calvino,
Under the Jaguar Sun
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1986), 36.

2
See, for instance, Andrew Ward, Karen Bishop, and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, “Pyrrhic Victories: The Cost to the Board of Ousting the CEO,”
Journal of Organizational Behavior
20 (1999): 767–781; see also Joann Lublin, “CEO Tenure, Stock Gains Often Go Hand-in-Hand,”
Wall Street Journal,
July 6, 2010. Accessed at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703900004575325172681419254.html
.

3
The chairman and CEO in 1999 was Lewis Platt. His board included Philip M. Condit, Patricia C. Dunn, Thomas E. Everhart, John B. Fery, Jean-Paul G. Gimon, Sam Ginn, Richard A. Hackborn, Walter B. Hewlett, George A. Keyworth II, David M. Lawrence, Susan P. Orr, David W. Packard, and Robert P. Wayman.

4
Carly Fiorina, “The Case for the Merger,” Speech at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference, Palm Springs, California, February 4, 2002.

5
See Bay Fang, “Saddam's Secret to Survival” at
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthreat.php?17319-Saddams-secret-to-survival-kill-your-foes-real-or-imagined
.

6
See Edward Mortimer, “The Thief of Baghdad,”
New York Review of Books,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1990/sep/27/the-thief-of-baghdad/?page=2
. See also Fuad Matar,
Saddam Hussein, the Man, the Cause and the Future
(London: Third World Centre, 1981).

7
See Patrick Cockburn, “Chemical Ali: The End of an Overlord,”
The Independent,
June 25, 2007. Archived at
http://www.webcitation.org/5n4hnapFg
. Part of Saddam Hussein's mercifulness was manifested in his allowing al-Bakr to resign rather that executing him, probably seen by Chemical Ali as a show of weakness.

8
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/iraqs-security-and-intelligence-gutted-in-political-purges-new-cables-show/67431/
.

9
S. E. Finer,
The History of Government
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 643.

10
Martin Meredith,
The Fate of Africa
(New York: PublicAffairs Press, 2005), 546.

11
Martin Meredith,
Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2002).

12
Ibid., 69.

13
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Report on Tanzania's Economic and Political Performance: Helping Tanzania Do Better,” Study prepared for the World Bank, April 20, 2009.

14
Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Contingent Prize Allocation and Pivotal Voting,”
British Journal of Political Science
, 2012, forthcoming.

15
See Richard L. Park and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita,
India's Political System,
2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979); and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita,
Strategy, Risk and Personality in Coalition Politics: The Case of India
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

16
See Bueno de Mesquita,
Strategy, Risk and Personality,
75.

17
Milton K. Rakove,
Don't Make No Waves, Don't Back No Losers: An Insider's Analysis of the Daley Machine
(Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1975), 16.

18
Waikeung Tam, “Clientelist Politics in Singapore: Selective Provision of Housing Services as an Electoral Mobilization Strategy,” University of Chicago, 2003, typescript.

19
The figure is based on leader time in office from Archigos. Winning coalition measure is based on Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson,
and James D. Morrow,
The Logic of Political Survival
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), with large coalitions coded as 1, the highest category.

1
Several scholars have examined how institutions affect transparency and the availability of data. See, for instance, James R. Hollyer, B. Peter Rosendorff, and James Raymond Vreeland,
Democracy and Transparency
, Working paper, 2010; also see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow,
The Logic of Political Survival
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

2
Quoted in Meredith Martin,
Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), 17.

3
Robert H. Bates,
Prosperity and Violence: the Political Economy of Development
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 74.

4
Gerard Padró i Miquel, “The Control of Politicians in Divided Societies: The Politics of Fear,”
Review of Economic Studies
74 (2007): 1259–1274.

5
The figure is constructed using the kg variable from the Penn World Tables, version 6.3. See
http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/
.

6
These tax estimates are based, in the case of China, on the tax brackets for that country identified at
www.worldwide-tax.com/china/china_tax.asp
and for the United States by filling out US tax form 1040 using H&R Block's 2010 Tax Cut program, with only the itemized deduction for our hypothetical American family of three.

7
Implicit taxation is the value associated with an activity that is lost to its producer as a result of government policy. High inflation, for instance, implicitly taxes wealth by diminishing its value.

8
Michael Wines, “Chinese Business Mogul Sentenced to Prison,”
New York Times
, Asia Pacific Section, May 18, 2010. Available online at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/world/asia/19china.html
.

9
William Shakespeare,
Merchant of Venice
, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Library (New York: Washington Square Press, 2009), Act 4, scene 1, 157.