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.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Professor of Politics at New York University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Alastair Smith is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University.
Randolph M. Siverson is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis.
James D. Morrow is Professor of Political Science and Senior Research Scie...
- "Leaders make three related sets of decisions. First, they choose a tax rate that generates government revenue and that influences how hard people work. Second, they spend the revenue raised in a manner designed to help keep incumbents in office, particularly by sustaining support among members of th"
- "We take as axiomatic that everyone in a position of authority wants to keep that authority and that it is the maneuvering to do so that is central to politics in any type of regime. When we say it is central, we mean that all actions taken by political leaders are intended by them to be compatible w"
- "Our focus is on political incentives and institutions that encourage or discourage leaders from promoting economic policies conducive to growth and general social welfare. We assume that political leaders are self-interested and that their actions are chosen to be politically beneficial to themselve"
- "We suggest that the variation in actions in different political systems can be explained as a result of a common utility function or set of objectives for all leaders, with all political leaders embedded in an institutional environment that includes constraints on coalition size, selectorate size, a"
- "There is, in the logic of the selectorate theory, a natural tension between public welfare and the combination of the absolute size of the winning coalition and the ratio of the winning-coalition size to the size of the selectorate."
- "First-past-the-post parliamentary systems, for instance, require a winning coalition equal to only about one-quarter or less of the selectorate. If such a system has only two political parties and the prime minister requires support from half of the legislators in order to remain in power, and each "
- "Although the challenger can promise defectors that he will continue to reward them for their aid in bringing him to power, he cannot bind himself to carry out this promise. The inability of the challenger to guarantee that the prospective defectors will always be members of his winning coalition is "
- "The challenger’s inability to commit to prospective defectors is central to understanding the stability of winning coalitions over time. Members of the current winning coalition have greater confidence that they will be in the winning coalition, and so will receive private goods, in the future under"
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