What do you think?
Rate this book
The Logic of Political Survival
The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.
550 pages, Paperback
First published August 28, 2003
49 people are currently reading
1055 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
39 books275 followersBruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist, professor at New York University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in international relations, foreign policy, and nation building. He is also one of the authors of the selectorate theory.
He has founded a company, Mesquita & Roundell, that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using a computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory. He is also the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.
He was featured as the primary subject in the documentary on the History Channel in December 2008. The show, titled Next Nostradamus, details how the scientist is using computer algorithms to predict future world events.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He has founded a company, Mesquita & Roundell, that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using a computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory. He is also the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.
He was featured as the primary subject in the documentary on the History Channel in December 2008. The show, titled Next Nostradamus, details how the scientist is using computer algorithms to predict future world events.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 9, 2020
There is another version of this book called the Dictator's Handbook that is intended for general audiences, and the large bulk of readers are going to be better off reading that one. However, as someone with an MA in political science, I thought maybe I should try the more academic text and see what I could get out of it.
Honestly, I probably should have read the general audience version, too, but my hubris got the better of me again. There's a lot of math and a lot of abstraction in this text, with some real life examples sprinkled in to help the reader. Still, I had the familiar feeling from my graduate studies of reading a text that I certainly do not fully comprehend, but still trying to grasp the gist of it.
In short, the authors argue that there is a direct relationship between the governance decisions of a ruler and size of the electorate (they term this the "selectorate" - very cute) who elects or otherwise chooses them. Even dictators depend on maintaining a certain coalition to stay in power and must please their supporters in certain ways to continue to rule.
Their models show (or purport to show anyway, since I am not mathematically literate enough to make a serious judgement) that there is demonstrable link between larger selectorates and public policies that tend to distribute public goods to wider portions of the population. Selectorates where smaller numbers determine the outcome of who rules tend to result in greater graft and provision of private goods to members of the selectorate. There is a certain level of intuitive sense that this makes. Democracies with large franchises on the whole tend to have better public policy than countries ruled by juntas or dictators.
There are also some interesting findings regarding selectorate size and war-making, with the less intuitive finding that democracies tend to avoid wars more than autocracies, but once they commit to fighting a war that they "try harder." The authors believe a successful outcome of the war, and subsequent public policy victory, is more important in a large selectorate setting. A small selectorate has less to gain from winning a war as long as a loss does not imperil the leader's ability to continue keeping his coalition satisfied with the provision of private goods.
The entire problem is treated solely from a rational choice theory perspective, and by necessity the authors collapse some huge categories into abstract stand-ins, for instance acting as though all political leadership in a modern democracy can be said to making decisions as if it were a single entity. These kinds of big simplifications do seem to raise some issues, but given that the authors are trying for a hugely ambitious theory of political behavior spanning from the earliest nation states to the present day, you do have to allow for some simplification.
It's an interesting book, but as I indicated earlier, there were big sections that I could have pretty much skipped since I knew my comprehension would be minimal. I guess I could have read a 50 page condensed version of this and still gotten the key points. But for the true political science nerds out there, and those nerd wannabes such as myself, it's a worthwhile though tiring read.
Honestly, I probably should have read the general audience version, too, but my hubris got the better of me again. There's a lot of math and a lot of abstraction in this text, with some real life examples sprinkled in to help the reader. Still, I had the familiar feeling from my graduate studies of reading a text that I certainly do not fully comprehend, but still trying to grasp the gist of it.
In short, the authors argue that there is a direct relationship between the governance decisions of a ruler and size of the electorate (they term this the "selectorate" - very cute) who elects or otherwise chooses them. Even dictators depend on maintaining a certain coalition to stay in power and must please their supporters in certain ways to continue to rule.
Their models show (or purport to show anyway, since I am not mathematically literate enough to make a serious judgement) that there is demonstrable link between larger selectorates and public policies that tend to distribute public goods to wider portions of the population. Selectorates where smaller numbers determine the outcome of who rules tend to result in greater graft and provision of private goods to members of the selectorate. There is a certain level of intuitive sense that this makes. Democracies with large franchises on the whole tend to have better public policy than countries ruled by juntas or dictators.
There are also some interesting findings regarding selectorate size and war-making, with the less intuitive finding that democracies tend to avoid wars more than autocracies, but once they commit to fighting a war that they "try harder." The authors believe a successful outcome of the war, and subsequent public policy victory, is more important in a large selectorate setting. A small selectorate has less to gain from winning a war as long as a loss does not imperil the leader's ability to continue keeping his coalition satisfied with the provision of private goods.
The entire problem is treated solely from a rational choice theory perspective, and by necessity the authors collapse some huge categories into abstract stand-ins, for instance acting as though all political leadership in a modern democracy can be said to making decisions as if it were a single entity. These kinds of big simplifications do seem to raise some issues, but given that the authors are trying for a hugely ambitious theory of political behavior spanning from the earliest nation states to the present day, you do have to allow for some simplification.
It's an interesting book, but as I indicated earlier, there were big sections that I could have pretty much skipped since I knew my comprehension would be minimal. I guess I could have read a 50 page condensed version of this and still gotten the key points. But for the true political science nerds out there, and those nerd wannabes such as myself, it's a worthwhile though tiring read.
September 17, 2017
Brilliant, academic reading of how bad behavior is almost always the right choice for politicians...the academic version on which The Dictator's Handbook is based.
Highly Recommended...even for Lefties. ;-)
Highly Recommended...even for Lefties. ;-)
September 30, 2019
This 2003 treatise divided into three consecutive (constructive) parts, presents theories of governance and political survival, depicts a series of hypothesis, theories, and arguments. Their ideas formulate that since political survival depends on followers’ support, one puzzle (they propose several) is what keeps autocratic leaders, who more often than not, bring less security and prosperity to their constituents than their democratic counterparts, longer in power than the last ones; In other words, often(but not always) bad policies boost political survival. Their findings contribute to multiple fields (IR, Comparative Politics, War Studies, Political-Economics, Sociology of Organizations, etc.), but this complicates the digestion of the material. They discuss works such as Hobbes’ Leviathan or The Matter, Form and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, and Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, to sustain their theories; i.e.: “Our theory challenges Hobbes’s view that an absolute sovereign -the Leviathan- is the best form of governance, while also probing and questioning the perspectives of Machiavelli [...] about the virtues of republics.” (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph Siverson, and James Morrow, 2003: xi). By doing so, they miss many other interpretations of what makes up good governance practices. They apply a mathematical-statistical method to test their ideas.
By building on Hobbes observation (as cited in Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003) that life in the state of nature is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes [1651] 1996, chap. 13, p.89), and on Machiavelli’s idea that “individual liberty provided by a republic over the corruption of monarchy” (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 3) is preferable, the authors address several puzzles. The top 3:
1. Democrats offer their citizens more peace and, by some accounts, more prosperity than autocrats. Yet autocrats last in office about twice as long, on average, as do democrats. Why is this so? (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 5). Problem: Not always. When? Where? Components of exceptionalism?
2. Why would any authoritarian state adopt universal adult suffrage as part of its political system? (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 6) Question is “why not”, when history (in particular cases, such as the ones they mention) shows that authoritarianism lead to misery.
3. Can the choice to produce peace and prosperity or war and misery be shown to follow from the same factors that influence preferences for government institutions and the time leaders survive in office? (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 7) Good question, however, particularity of cases, with positive and negative answers, could apply.
Two pillar ideas are those of the selectorate and of the winning coalitions, which they elaborate on under the theory of the selectorate (one of several addressed). According to their findings a winning coalition of supporters is at the base of political survival, however the size (more considered in their research) and form (less mentioned) of that coalition affects the political-economical formula of governance (policies and institutions). One problem is that the authors consider S (the selectorate) as an internal factor of the organisation of the nation-state, however, they do not address the case in which key actors do not correspond to such consideration: “We define the selectorate as the set of people whose endowments include the qualities [...] institutionally required to choose the government’s leadership...” and “All selectorate members within a polity, therefore, share certain common characteristics” (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003: 42). The only scenario in which they include the “external” actor is when they consider war.
Argument: “Political leaders need to hold office to accomplish any goal. Every leader answers to some group that keeps her in power: her winning coalition” (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003: p. 7). One problem is that the authors consider three kinds of decisions for the leaders to keep in power, however, the three of them are institutional and economical (taxation, material benefits), and in instances, leaders act out of them. What about governance by fear, division, inclusion, exclusion, psychographic distribution of strategies, etc.? By this observation, the second part of the book can be flawed.
Argument: in a democracy, W (winning coalitions) are large, whilst in autocracies, winning coalitions are small (both cases in relation to the size of S); Not necessarily. The work misses that there is no such thing as an absolute democracy or absolute autocracy; in pragmatic terms, there are only tones of greys in terms of regimes. Same case when the authors speak of weak and strong bonds between L(leader)-R(Residents)-S-W. Relativity should come into play.
Argument: A smaller W favours kleptocracy. Again, democracies do not require spending “more” in a large W to keep in power, since the first can resort to other means to prolong the stay of the leader in a favourable position. An example is the U.S. as I write (which in the past fitted the argument; deregulation of markets, less taxation, a decrease of the welfare state, etc. is the paradigm). Another example is the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico from 1929 to 2000 (the PRI was “the perfect dictatorship under a democratic regime”).
When the authors discuss the role of the IMF and of the World Bank in bailing out governments (leaders) out of financial crisis, they imply that the problem is that by doing that, these institutions obstruct reform and foster corruption, however, they fail to place these trans-governmental institutions as an active part of S, which would mean that S influence can be observed from more perspectives than indicated.
The case selection seems to be made to favour the conclusions of the research and not to justify the general application of the theory; since the cited examples “fit” the arguments, hypothesis and theories, they fail to show general operationalisation of the work (as represented in some of the mentioned examples). This is particularly applicable in the extension of the work towards war. i.e. the hypothesis that “Defeat in war increases the odds that a leader will be deposed.” and “This risk is much higher if the defeated leader heads a large-coalition polity” (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003: 455) applies well to the cited example of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, Benito Mussolini, and even Francisco Franco examples, but fails to stand in the cases of Napoléon Bonaparte, and other leaders in which defeat, turned into victory at some points.
In conclusion, this work is as contributing as the limits imposed by the authors of the study. Within these demarcations (variables), this book answers more than satisfactory to the posed puzzles, however, its generalisation and applicability comes into question, because of the same reasons. Perhaps political survival is a case-by-case, an object of study and that the essence of strategy is precisely the adaptation of different courses of action, according to multiple factors, which depends on time and space of occurrence.
By building on Hobbes observation (as cited in Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003) that life in the state of nature is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes [1651] 1996, chap. 13, p.89), and on Machiavelli’s idea that “individual liberty provided by a republic over the corruption of monarchy” (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 3) is preferable, the authors address several puzzles. The top 3:
1. Democrats offer their citizens more peace and, by some accounts, more prosperity than autocrats. Yet autocrats last in office about twice as long, on average, as do democrats. Why is this so? (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 5). Problem: Not always. When? Where? Components of exceptionalism?
2. Why would any authoritarian state adopt universal adult suffrage as part of its political system? (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 6) Question is “why not”, when history (in particular cases, such as the ones they mention) shows that authoritarianism lead to misery.
3. Can the choice to produce peace and prosperity or war and misery be shown to follow from the same factors that influence preferences for government institutions and the time leaders survive in office? (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003: 7) Good question, however, particularity of cases, with positive and negative answers, could apply.
Two pillar ideas are those of the selectorate and of the winning coalitions, which they elaborate on under the theory of the selectorate (one of several addressed). According to their findings a winning coalition of supporters is at the base of political survival, however the size (more considered in their research) and form (less mentioned) of that coalition affects the political-economical formula of governance (policies and institutions). One problem is that the authors consider S (the selectorate) as an internal factor of the organisation of the nation-state, however, they do not address the case in which key actors do not correspond to such consideration: “We define the selectorate as the set of people whose endowments include the qualities [...] institutionally required to choose the government’s leadership...” and “All selectorate members within a polity, therefore, share certain common characteristics” (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003: 42). The only scenario in which they include the “external” actor is when they consider war.
Argument: “Political leaders need to hold office to accomplish any goal. Every leader answers to some group that keeps her in power: her winning coalition” (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003: p. 7). One problem is that the authors consider three kinds of decisions for the leaders to keep in power, however, the three of them are institutional and economical (taxation, material benefits), and in instances, leaders act out of them. What about governance by fear, division, inclusion, exclusion, psychographic distribution of strategies, etc.? By this observation, the second part of the book can be flawed.
Argument: in a democracy, W (winning coalitions) are large, whilst in autocracies, winning coalitions are small (both cases in relation to the size of S); Not necessarily. The work misses that there is no such thing as an absolute democracy or absolute autocracy; in pragmatic terms, there are only tones of greys in terms of regimes. Same case when the authors speak of weak and strong bonds between L(leader)-R(Residents)-S-W. Relativity should come into play.
Argument: A smaller W favours kleptocracy. Again, democracies do not require spending “more” in a large W to keep in power, since the first can resort to other means to prolong the stay of the leader in a favourable position. An example is the U.S. as I write (which in the past fitted the argument; deregulation of markets, less taxation, a decrease of the welfare state, etc. is the paradigm). Another example is the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico from 1929 to 2000 (the PRI was “the perfect dictatorship under a democratic regime”).
When the authors discuss the role of the IMF and of the World Bank in bailing out governments (leaders) out of financial crisis, they imply that the problem is that by doing that, these institutions obstruct reform and foster corruption, however, they fail to place these trans-governmental institutions as an active part of S, which would mean that S influence can be observed from more perspectives than indicated.
The case selection seems to be made to favour the conclusions of the research and not to justify the general application of the theory; since the cited examples “fit” the arguments, hypothesis and theories, they fail to show general operationalisation of the work (as represented in some of the mentioned examples). This is particularly applicable in the extension of the work towards war. i.e. the hypothesis that “Defeat in war increases the odds that a leader will be deposed.” and “This risk is much higher if the defeated leader heads a large-coalition polity” (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003: 455) applies well to the cited example of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, Benito Mussolini, and even Francisco Franco examples, but fails to stand in the cases of Napoléon Bonaparte, and other leaders in which defeat, turned into victory at some points.
In conclusion, this work is as contributing as the limits imposed by the authors of the study. Within these demarcations (variables), this book answers more than satisfactory to the posed puzzles, however, its generalisation and applicability comes into question, because of the same reasons. Perhaps political survival is a case-by-case, an object of study and that the essence of strategy is precisely the adaptation of different courses of action, according to multiple factors, which depends on time and space of occurrence.
April 11, 2008
Eh, I guess it is worth 4 stars because I can't think of a reason to give it 3 stars, although it isn't earth-shattering if you know what I mean.
December 24, 2012
Excellent comprehensive theory of conflict and war. I don't buy it completely, but its rationality is incredibly thorough.
December 27, 2024
Several selected ideas that lead to inspirations:
- "subject to winning, political leaders want to maximize their control over policy choices and minimize the price they must pay to their coalition members and so build minimal winning coalitions when possible." (Remotely reminds me of co-authorship, or co-promotion of an initiative)
- TBA
- "subject to winning, political leaders want to maximize their control over policy choices and minimize the price they must pay to their coalition members and so build minimal winning coalitions when possible." (Remotely reminds me of co-authorship, or co-promotion of an initiative)
- TBA
June 18, 2022
I got this sent to me by some algerian bloke
Much like he (apparently) got stabbed in Algiers, this book stabbed me in the brain with facts and logic
Much like he (apparently) got stabbed in Algiers, this book stabbed me in the brain with facts and logic
Read
July 30, 2011I first read this book as a first semester graduate student in an IR and Comparative hybrid course. At the time I didn't totally understand it, the methodology, the terminology, practically all of it was beyond my comprehension at that point.
However, I just picked up "The Logic of Political Survival" and reviewed it for comprehensive exams. I found this book absolutely invaluable to the understanding of both the demoratic peace theory and political institution building. The selectorate model proposed by BDM et al is absolutely comprehensive, and seems almost without rival. It just explains so much, and yet is inevitably so simple!!!
This is a must read for any comparative politics or international relations scholar and, come to think of it, could very well be applied to public administration, political theory, or American politics as well. BDM et al make a convincing case for structural arguments of both comparative politics and the democratic peace which, in my opinion, are without parallel.
However, I just picked up "The Logic of Political Survival" and reviewed it for comprehensive exams. I found this book absolutely invaluable to the understanding of both the demoratic peace theory and political institution building. The selectorate model proposed by BDM et al is absolutely comprehensive, and seems almost without rival. It just explains so much, and yet is inevitably so simple!!!
This is a must read for any comparative politics or international relations scholar and, come to think of it, could very well be applied to public administration, political theory, or American politics as well. BDM et al make a convincing case for structural arguments of both comparative politics and the democratic peace which, in my opinion, are without parallel.
January 23, 2013
A classic rational choice manifesto on state leadership and behavior. Bad leaders tend to be more successful than good ones. The evidence is based on a formal model called selectorate theory. A good read but obviously unspecified as a model. Wouldn't be surprised if his results were considered spurious within the next ten years.
Want to read
November 8, 2011Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews