The Dictator's Handbook

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

  Saddam Hussein’s pattern of appointments is quite typical. His successor, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, purged the security services of all Sunnis and replaced them with Shia supporters, albeit with a gentler hand than his predecessor.8 These replacements did not have the experience and training of the existing security personnel. Both leaders knew that it is better to have loyal incompetents than competent rivals.

  Sometimes, of course, having competent advisers is unavoidable. Byzantine, Mughal, Chinese, Caliphate, and other emperors devised a creative solution that guaranteed that these advisers didn’t become rivals: They all relied on eunuchs at various times. In the Byzantine Empire in the ninth and tenth centuries, the three most senior posts below emperor were held almost exclusively by eunuchs. The most senior position of Grand Administrator had evolved from the position of Prefect of the Sacred Bedchamber and included the duties of posting eunuch guards and watching over the sleeping emperor. Michael III made an exception and gave this position to his favorite, Basil, rather than a eunuch. This decision cost him his life. When Basil perceived that Michael was starting to favor another courtier, he murdered the emperor and seized the throne.9

  Even in modern times the principle of choosing close advisers who cannot rise to the top spot remains good advice. It is surely no coincidence that Saddam Hussein as president of Islamic Iraq had a Christian, Tariq Aziz, as his number two.

  Keep Essentials Off-Balance

  What we can begin to appreciate is that no matter how well a tyrant builds his coalitions, it is important to keep the coalition itself off-balance. Familiarity breeds contempt. As noted, the best way to stay in power is to keep the coalition small and, crucially, to make sure that everyone in it knows that there are plenty of replacements for them. This is why you will often read about regular elections in tyrannical states. Everyone knows that these elections don’t count, and yet people go along with them. Rigged elections are not about picking leaders. They are not about gaining legitimacy. How can an election be legitimate when its outcome is known before the vote even occurs? Rigged elections are a warning to powerful politicians that they are expendable if they deviate from the leader’s desired path.

  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the first to really exploit the idea of substitute coalition members. In a one-party state, he nonetheless perfected a rigged election, universal adult suffrage system. Any action he took—say, sending so-and-so to Siberia—was the will of the people, and any of the people in the replacement pool had a chance, albeit a slight one, of being called up to serve as an influential or maybe even an essential somewhere down the line. Everybody in the Soviet selectorate could, with a very small probability, grow up to be general secretary of the Communist Party, just like the petty criminal Joseph Stalin and the uneducated Nikita Khrushchev. Those already in the inner circle knew they had to stay in line to keep their day jobs. Bravo, Lenin.

  Although Lenin perfected the system and probably came up with it on his own, the always fascinating country of Liberia experimented earlier on with the same phenomenon. Prior to Samuel Doe’s takeover, Liberia had been ruled by the True Whig Party. The country originated when a number of American liberal organizations, appalled by the evils of slavery, paid to repatriate former slaves to West Africa. Despite the nation’s philanthropic origins, the most important lesson the former slaves took from their experiences appears to be that slavery and forced labor worked much better for the masters than the slaves. These former slaves instituted universal adult suffrage in 1904, but with a property qualification that effectively excluded indigenous Africans from becoming insiders, making the selectorate large but the influential group relatively small. Thus, they established a system run for a small group of insiders despite the appearance of a universal franchise. This structure provided for strong loyalty to the incumbent that ensured the opportunity to suppress any opposition that might arise to their forced labor policies, a system whose policies differed from Soviet ones but whose security in office was the same.10

  Virtually every publicly traded company in the world has adopted the Leninist rigged-election system and for much the same reasons. It, along with a packed board, is one of the major factors ensuring that poorly performing CEOs hardly ever get fired. Carly Fiorina had the misfortune of heading a company that might have looked like a rigged election autocracy but up close and personal remained more akin to a monarchy. Although there were millions of shareholders who in theory could shape HP policy, so many shares were concentrated in a few hands that HP had more of the characteristics of a small coalition drawn from a small group of influentials within a mostly small, concentrated group of interchangeables; that is, members of the Hewlett and Packard families.

  The essence of keeping coalition members off-balance is to make sure that their loyalty is paid for and that they know they will be ousted if their reliability is in doubt. The USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev, thought to be a good guy in western political circles, certainly understood the necessity of rewarding loyalty and shucking off all those whose faithfulness was questionable. He replaced much of the politburo within his first two years in office, picking and choosing from the Communist Party (the real selectorate) those most loyal to him. It turns out, though, that Gorbachev was much less ruthless than contemporaries of the autocratic class. He forced adversaries, like Boris Yeltsin, out of the politburo to be sure. But, as Yeltsin surely realized, he would have been killed under Stalin. Equally, he and many others must have known that it was much better to cross swords with Gorbachev, an intellectual reformer, than with such contemporaries as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire or even Deng Xiaoping of China. Deng, after all, used ruthless force to end the prodemocracy uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Gorbachev, as we will see, did not hesitate to use force outside of Russia, but he also did not go around killing his political rivals. His reward was a short time in power first because he left himself vulnerable to a coup by hard-line communists and then because he allowed Yeltsin to resurrect himself politically, defeat the coup, and make himself into Gorbachev’s replacement.

  The execution of opponents is a longstanding practice among most autocrats. We should not fail to appreciate the moral significance of Gorbachev’s restraint. Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Samuel Doe, and so many others showed no such restraint. They had their erstwhile backers murdered once they worked out who was most likely to be loyal and who was not. We see a nicer version of such behavior as a routine part of corporate changes when there’s a new CEO. Although the CEO is supposed to answer to the board, it is commonplace for boards to be reconstituted after a new CEO comes to power; the tail apparently wags the dog.

  Being purged from the initial coalition is often fatal. Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. During his rise to power he relied heavily on the Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary force also known by the abbreviation, SA, or by a description of their uniforms, the Brownshirts. Hitler perceived the SA’s leader, Ernst Rohm, as a threat. He built up an alternative paramilitary, the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and then, on what became known as the night of the long knives, he ordered the assassination of at least eighty-five and possibly many hundreds of people between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Thousands more were imprisoned. Despite Rohm’s long term and essential backing (Rohm had been with Hitler during his failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch), Hitler showed no sentimentality. He replaced him with men like SS leader Heinrich Himmler, whom he deemed more loyal.

  Robert Mugabe is likewise a master at keeping his coalition off-balance. He was elected president of Zimbabwe in 1980 following a negotiated settlement to a long civil war. The struggle against the white-only rule of the previous Rhodesian regime was led by two factions that crystallized into political parties behind their respective leaders: Robert Mugabe’s ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union). Initially, Mugabe preached reconciliation: If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend and ally with the same n
ational interest, loyalty, rights and duties as myself. If yesterday you hated me, you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you. . . . Draw a line under the past.... The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten. If ever we look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequalities that must never find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practiced by white against black or black against white.11

  A naïve observer might have thought that Mugabe planned to bring ZAPU elites into his winning coalition. That might have made sense at the outset, but once ZANU’s power was consolidated there would be no reason to keep ZAPU loyalists around. And once Mugabe’s power was consolidated, he’d have no need to keep some of his old friends from ZANU around either.

  Mugabe also reached out to many in the white community, and particularly former leaders and administrators, to help him run the country. Many whites who had feared the transition, began to refer to him as “Good Old Bob.” Mugabe needed their support. He could not run the country without them and he needed to know where the money was. In this he was greatly assisted by the international community. They pledged $900 million during his first year. However, once he was ensconced in power, Mugabe’s attitude changed.

  In 1981 he called for a one party state and began arresting whites, saying “we will kill those snakes among us, we will smash them completely.” Mugabe was even harsher towards his former comrades in arms. He forced Nkomo out of the cabinet and sent a North Korean trained paramilitary group, the Fifth Brigade, to terrorize Matabeleland, Nkomo’s regional stronghold. As one ZANU minister put it, “Nkomo and his guerillas are germs in the country’s wounds and they will have to be cleaned up with iodine. The patient will scream a bit.” The operation was called Gukurahundi—a Shona word that means, Wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains. Many veterans from the fight against white rule resisted. In retaliation Matabeleland was effectively sealed off and 400,000 people faced starvation. As one of Mugabe’s henchmen, a brigade officer, stated, “First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your cattle, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children and finally you will eat the dissidents.”12

  Mugabe needed the assistance of ZAPU fighters to defeat white only rule. He needed the assistance of white farmers and administrators and the international community to find the money to solidify his control over the state. Only when he was entrenched in power did “Good Old Bob” show his true colors.

  Democrats Aren’t Angels

  As we all know, the victor writes history. Leaders should therefore never refrain from cheating if they can get away with it. Democrats may have to put up with real and meaningful elections in order to stay in power, but it shouldn’t be shocking to see that whenever they can, they’ll happily take a page out of Lenin’s book. There’s no election better than a rigged one, so long as you’re the one rigging it.

  The list of tried and trusted means of cheating is long. Just as quickly as electoral rules are created to outlaw corrupt practices, politicians find other means. For instance, leaders can restrict who is eligible and registered to vote and who is not. In Malaysia, under a system known as Operation IC, immigration is controlled so as to create demographics favorable to the incumbent party. New York City’s infamous Democratic Party machine, Tammany Hall, acquired its Irish flavor by meeting and recruiting immigrants as they left the boat, promising citizenship and jobs for their vote.

  When leaders can’t restrict who is eligible to vote or else are unable to buy enough votes, they can use intimidation and violence to restrict access to polling places. North Indian states, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, experience “booth capture,” where party supporters capture the polling place and cast every eligible voter’s vote for their party.

  Cheating does not stop once ballots are cast, of course. Leaders never hesitate to miscount or destroy ballots. Coming to office and staying in office are the most important things in politics. And candidates who aren’t willing to cheat are typically beaten by those who are. Since democracies typically work out myriad ways to make cheating difficult, politicians in power in democracies have innovated any number of perfectly legal means to ensure their electoral victories and their continued rule.

  One counterintuitive strategy is for leaders to encourage additional competitors. This is why some states have so many political parties, even though only one really wins. The conventional wisdom about America’s two-party system tells us that fringe parties allow for a more vibrant and responsive government. But even in multiparty states, there are always leading parties—you have to ask yourself whether the leading parties would allow the fringe parties to exist if they weren’t somehow serving their interests.

  Tanzania’s parliament and presidency are perennially controlled by the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM), even though as many as seventeen parties routinely compete in Tanzania’s free and fair elections. The CCM government actually provided campaign financing, as we would expect, in an opaque way, to small parties until quite recently, thereby encouraging them to compete and divide the opposition vote. This makes it easier for the relatively centrist CCM to win. Although the CCM wins a large percentage of the vote, all it needs to win is one more vote than the second largest party in half the parliamentary constituencies. That turns out to mean the CCM needs much less than 10 percent in most districts. The number of supporters a party needs affects the kinds of policies it pursues. In those constituencies in Tanzania where an opposition party generates lots of votes, the CCM needs to appeal to many voters and therefore generally provides better health care, education, and services. In constituencies where the CCM needs fewer votes, cash transfers, such as vouchers for subsidized fertilizer, are more common.13

  Multiparty democracy provides a similar means for one or two parties to dominate governments in democracies from Botswana to Japan and Israel. There is more to representing the people than just allowing them to vote, even when the vote is done honestly.

  Designated seats for underrepresented minorities is another means by which leaders reduce the number of people upon whom they are dependent. Such policies are advertised as empowering minorities, whether they are women, or members of a particular caste or religion. In reality they empower leaders. That a candidate is elected by a small subset of the population reduces the number of essentials required to retain power. At a very basic level, electoral victory in a two-party parliamentary system requires the support of half the people in half the districts; that is, in principle, 25 percent of the voters. Suppose 10 percent of the seats were reserved for election by one specific group that happens to be geographically concentrated (such as gay voters in the Castro in our earlier account of Harvey Milk’s election in San Francisco). To retain half the seats in parliament, the incumbent party need only retain 40 percent of the regular single member district seats, which is readily done with just over 22 percent of the vote. So by focusing on districts in which the privileged minority is prevalent, a party can reduce the number of votes it requires by 12 percent.

  Delegated positions also make it easier to form a small coalition. Consider Tanzania’s Parliament, the Bunge. There are 232 directly elected seats, seventy-five seats reserved for women who are nominated by the parties in relation to the number of seats they capture in the election, and five seats nominated by the Zanzibar Assembly. (Zanzibar is a beautiful island off the mainland that united with mainland Tanganyika in 1964 to form Tanzania.) In addition, the president gets to nominate ten cabinet appointees and an attorney general to serve in parliament. This gives a total of 323 seats, of which the president needs 162 to control the Bunge. Given that he appoints eleven, and that the CCM is regionally based in Zanzibar, he already controls sixteen seats. If the CCM wins 111 elected seats, the
n he controls parliament. That is, 111 directly elected seats, 16 appointed seats, and 35 of the appointed women’s seats (75 seats x 111/232), which totals 162. The CCM needs substantially less than half the directly elected seats. And as we have already seen, by funding many opposition parties the CCM can win many seats with less than a 10 percent vote share. In practice the president controls nearly all the women’s appointments and he tends to appoint women who lack an independent base of support. Indeed, few women win direct election to Tanzania’s parliament.

  While Tanzania has free and fair elections, the reality is that the incumbent CCM party can sustain itself in office with as little as 5 percent of the vote. Of course, in most districts they get much more support because politicians find inventive ways to incentivize voters. One of these ways is the creation of voting blocs.14

  Bloc Voting

  Bloc voting is a feature common in many fledgling democracies. It was also the norm under party machines in large US cities. For instance, under the influence of Tammany Hall, whole neighborhoods in New York City would turn up to vote Democratic. Many of India’s electoral districts have followed a pattern similar to the old Tammany Hall. That is, a small group of local notables or village patrons can deliver their community’s vote and extract great rewards for themselves in return.

  During Bueno de Mesquita’s time doing field work in India in 1969–1970 he observed firsthand how the quest for power coupled with the influence of power blocs undermined any notion of the pursuit of political principles other than the principles, win, and get paid off.

  Senior people in villages and towns, and indeed, up and down the levels of governance in India’s states, would pledge to a particular party the support of those they led. In return, they would receive benefits and privileges. By and large, all the “clients” of these “patrons” followed their patron’s lead and voted for the designated party. What is most fascinating is that the affiliations between voters and parties need not have had any ideological rhyme or reason. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populace state, for instance, the free-market, anticommunist Swatantra Party, the socially conservative and anticommunist Jana Sangh Party, and the Communist Party of India formed a coalition government with each other following India’s 1967 election. This was true despite the Swatantra Party’s leadership’s description of the Communist Party of India as “public enemy number 1.” What did these parties have in common? Only their desire to band together and beat the Congress Party so as to enjoy the benefits of power. This sort of odd bedfellows coalition-building strategy was long rampant throughout India.15