Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Books
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist known for his work on game theory and international relations. Alastair Smith is a political economist specializing in political survival and leadership strategies.
Known for: The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics
Books by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith
The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics
This book explores the logic of political survival, arguing that leaders—whether dictators or democrats—act primarily to maintain power rather than to serve the public good. Using a rational-choice framework, the authors explain how political systems incentivize self-serving behavior and why corruption and manipulation often underpin stable governance.
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The Logic of Political Survival and the Selectorate Theory
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
Power, Loyalty, and Resource Allocation
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
About Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist known for his work on game theory and international relations. Alastair Smith is a political economist specializing in political survival and leadership strategies. Both are professors at New York University and have collaborated on several influentia...
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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist known for his work on game theory and international relations. Alastair Smith is a political economist specializing in political survival and leadership strategies. Both are professors at New York University and have collaborated on several influentia...
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist known for his work on game theory and international relations. Alastair Smith is a political economist specializing in political survival and leadership strategies. Both are professors at New York University and have collaborated on several influential works in political science.
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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist known for his work on game theory and international relations. Alastair Smith is a political economist specializing in political survival and leadership strategies.
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