Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Books

The key to understanding political stability lies not in ideology or morality, but in mathematics—the arithmetic of loyalty. Every regime operates through a stratified population divided into distinct groups that we call the selectorate, the real selectorate, and the winning coalition. The selector...

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

If you want to know what keeps leaders secure, look not at constitutions or speeches—look at money. Resources are the lifeblood of loyalty. In the political survival game, leaders use resources—material, institutional, or symbolic—to keep their coalition close and dependent. In small-coalition syst...

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

At the core of our analysis lies a simple but powerful triad: the selectorate, the winning coalition, and the interchangeables. The selectorate represents all those individuals with a formal say in choosing the leader—it might include the voting public in a democracy or a small circle of elites in a...

From The Logic of Political Survival

Different political institutions structure the size and composition of the selectorate and winning coalition. Democracies have expansive electorates—large selectorates—and thus require large coalitions to remain in power. Monarchies and autocracies, by contrast, often limit participation to a very s...

From The Logic of Political Survival