
The Dictator's Handbook
Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics
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Narrated by:
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Dan Woren
About this listen
Now featuring a new chapter on the rise of illiberalism worldwide.
The essential book that lays out the real rules of politics: leaders do whatever keeps them in power, regardless of the national interest.
As featured in the viral video “Rules for Rulers,” which has been viewed over fifteen million times.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s canonical book on political science turned conventional wisdom on its head. They started 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 must.
Newly updated to reflect the global rise of authoritarianism, this clever and accessible book illustrates how leaders amass and retain power. As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind, but only in the number of essential supporters or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. And it is also the key to returning power to the people.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2011 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith (P)2022 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Simply the best book on politics written.... Every citizen should read this book." (CGP Grey)
"A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority.... Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are polymathic, drawing on economics, history, and political science to make their points.... The reader will be hard-pressed to find a single government that doesn't largely operate according to Messrs. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith's model. So the next time a hand-wringing politician, Democrat or Republican, claims to be taking a position for the 'good of his country,' remember to replace the word 'country' with 'career.'" (Wall Street Journal)
"Machiavelli's The Prince has a new rival. It's The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.... This is a fantastically thought-provoking read. I found myself not wanting to agree but actually, for the most part, being convinced that the cynical analysis is the true one." (Enlightenment Economics)
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-
Story
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a master of game theory, which is a fancy label for a simple idea: People compete, and they always do what they think is in their own best interest. Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory and its insights into human behavior to predict and even engineer political, financial, and personal events. His forecasts, which have been employed by everyone from the CIA to major business firms, have an amazing 90 percent accuracy rate.
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Don't make this a habit audible!
- By Joni23 on 06-13-13
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Power
- Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't
- By: Jeffrey Pfeffer
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Some people have it, and others don’t. Jeffrey Pfeffer explores why in Power. One of the greatest minds in management theory and author or co-author of thirteen books, including the seminal business-school text Managing With Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer shows listeners how to succeed and wield power in the real world.
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A mediocre book
- By Shayan Fazeli on 02-16-23
By: Jeffrey Pfeffer
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The Sovereign Individual
- Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
- By: James Dale Davidson, Peter Thiel - preface, William Rees-Mogg
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the best seller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization.
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Unfortunately distopian for mosty of humanity
- By Phil on 09-29-20
By: James Dale Davidson, and others
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Understanding Power
- The Indispensable Chomsky
- By: Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel - editor, Peter R. Mitchell - editor
- Narrated by: Robin Bloodworth
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" ( The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power.
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Current times demand you get this into your head.
- By Comatoso on 08-12-15
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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The Narrow Corridor
- States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
- By: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 23 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society.
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Hugely disappointing book!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-16-19
By: Daron Acemoglu, and others
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The Psychology of Totalitarianism
- By: Mattias Desmet
- Narrated by: Dan Crue
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow this collective psychosis to take hold. By looking at our current situation and identifying the phenomenon of “mass formation”—a type of collective hypnosis—he clearly illustrates how close we are to surrendering to totalitarian regimes.
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Is this the best book every written?
- By Susan M on 07-18-22
By: Mattias Desmet
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Superforecasting
- The Art and Science of Prediction
- By: Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.
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Great for Experts
- By Michael on 02-20-17
By: Philip Tetlock, and others
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Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran.
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A Triumphant Work -Puts It All Together With Laser Clarity
- By Sjhoffman on 09-19-24
By: Anne Applebaum
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Misbehaving
- The Making of Behavioral Economics
- By: Richard H. Thaler
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.
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Great book if it's your first about Behav. Econ
- By Jay Friedman on 09-30-15
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The Tyranny of Metrics
- By: Jerry Z. Muller
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In this timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging "gaming the stats" or "teaching to the test"....
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Opportunity Missed
- By Tim Acker on 02-22-19
By: Jerry Z. Muller
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Manufacturing Consent
- The Political Economy of the Mass Media
- By: Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.
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Eye opening
- By EFM on 03-24-18
By: Edward S. Herman, and others
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The Prince
- By: Niccolò Machiavelli
- Narrated by: Daniel Pagone
- Length: 3 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Delve into the timeless wisdom and political acumen of Niccolò Machiavelli’s "The Prince," masterfully narrated by Daniel Pagone. Written in the early 16th century, "The Prince" remains one of the most influential political treatises ever penned, offering keen insights into power, leadership, and statecraft that continue to resonate in modern times.
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The reader's complete inability to pronounce words and names correctly.
- By Jeff H on 11-27-24
Dry
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An eye opening experience.
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Abundance of Statistics.
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Trump derangement syndrome?
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Brilliant Insight, Tainted by Political Bias
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A solid grasp of the concepts—until recent times.
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Extremely thought provoking
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Penetrating
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Truth isn't always pretty.
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great book but not perfect
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