The Dictator's Handbook or Rules for Rulers

[Altherion]

I've recently found an interesting YouTube video which is loosely based on a book called The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. Both of these promote "selectorate theory" which is an attempt to describe a variety of power structures in human societies (states, municipalities, corporations, etc.) based on how the leadership gains and keeps power. Briefly, every leader relies on a set of essential supporters (also known as the winning coalition or the keys to power) drawn from a larger group of influential individuals. The rest of the people within the structure (which the book calls the interchangeables) have little say in the selection of the leader, but they are still important because they are the source of the resources (via taxes, labor, etc.) which the leader distributes.

The key insight of this theory is that the leader's priority is to keep the set of essential backers satisfied because if they are not, then chances are they will go looking for a leader who will satisfy them better. This has several corollaries such as the leader wanting to minimize the number of essential backers and maximize the resources available for distribution to them. It turns out that at our stage of technological development, it is to be difficult to do both at the same time unless your wealth comes mainly from oil or something of the sort which leads to instability for states (but usually not for corporations).

The size of the winning coalition relative to the pool of interchangeables turns out to be a valuable tool for estimating the well-being of a randomly chosen citizen of a given nation. The theory also explains why corruption is tolerated in many countries, why foreign aid usually (but not always) does more harm than good, why wars are fought differently by different countries and many other things. It is far from perfect (I can think of at least two flaws off the top of my head), but I found it to provide a different perspective. What do people think?

[Iskaral Pust]

I'm interested to check it out, thanks for posting.