“Over the past few decades, advances in mathematical modeling and state-of-the-art statistical techniques have allowed scholars to examine the differences between democracy and dictatorship more carefully and systematically than ever before. The first generation of work using these tools seemed to corroborate the basic intuition that democracy is of the people, enacted by the people – and, crucially, for the people – in opposition to tyranny by one man or oligarchy by the few. But cracks have begun to emerge in the consensus that democracies are actually forged by the people and that their policies are intended to benefit the people”