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

For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head.

They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power.

They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they have to.

This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction.