The Dictator's Handbook

There's a lot to debate in this book, but I fundamentally didn't understand political power before reading it.

on HN, 2024

One simple axiom - leaders do what is necessary to stay in power. Using that idea they explain the basis of all political systems, whether autocracy or democracy or somewhere in between. I didn’t really understand politics before I read this.

on HN, 2019

The book I learned the most from was probably The Dictator's Handbook. Again, a very simple idea - how can we predict a politician/leader's behaviour based on a simple assumption - they will try their best to stay employed.

on HN, 2018

"The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith reveals the simple principles used by everyone from CEO's, politicians, and autocrats to gather and consolidate power, depending on as few people as possible.

on HN, 2020

This is the book that spawned the video essay series by CGP Gray: Rules of Rulers ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs ). It has been a strong recommend for me on how and why the political world is the way it is.

on HN, 2024

It changed the way I look at politics in the world. In particular it completely changed the way I perceive a so called "Revolution" that happened in my country when I was a teenager (in 1989, the fell of communism).

on HN, 2019

It lays out the inevitable power dynamics behind any political system, democratic, autocratic or corporate. The rules for the players are the same, despite different terrain.

on HN, 2019

"The Dictator's Handbook" by DeMesquita and Smith is a popular take on their academic work that describes a metamodel for reasoning about power and politics that bypasses how things "may" or "should" work and talks about how they "must" work.

on HN, 2019