The Dictator's Handbook Read online

  Che may have been second in power only to Fidel himself. Indeed, that was likely his greatest fault. Castro forced Che out of Cuba in 1965 partly because of Che’s popularity, which made him a potential rival for authority. Castro sent Che on a mission to Bolivia, but towards the end of March 1967 Castro simply cut off Guevara’s support, leaving him stranded. Captain Gary Prado Salmon, the Bolivian officer who captured Che, confirmed that Guevara told him that the decision to come to Bolivia was not his own, it was Castro’s. One of Fidel’s biographers remarked,In a very real sense Che followed in the shadows of Frank Pais, Camilo Cienfuegos, Huber Matos, and Humberto Sori Marin [all close backers of Castro during the revolution]. Like them, he was viewed by Castro as a ‘competitor’ for power and like them, he had to be moved aside ‘in one manner or another.’ Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia but at least he escaped the ignominy of execution by his revolutionary ally, Fidel Castro. Humberto Sori Marin was not so ‘fortunate.’ Marin, the commander of Castro’s rebel army, was accused of conspiring against the revolution. In April 1961, like so many other erstwhile backers of Fidel Castro, he too was executed.3

  Political transitions are filled with examples of supporters who help a leader to power only to be replaced. This is true whether we look at national or local governments, corporations, organized crime families, or, for that matter, any other organization. Each member of a winning coalition, knowing that many are standing on the sidelines to replace them, will be careful not to give the incumbent reasons to look for replacements.

  This was the relationship Louis XIV managed so well. If a small bloc of backers is needed and it can be drawn from a large pool of potential supporters (as in the small coalition needed in places like Zimbabwe, North Korea, or Afghanistan), then the incumbent doesn’t need to spend a huge proportion of the regime’s revenue to buy the coalition’s loyalty. On the other hand, more must be spent to keep the coalition loyal if there are relatively few people who could replace its members. That is true in two circumstances: when the coalition and selectorate are both small (as in a monarchy or military junta), or the coalition and selectorate are both large (as in a democracy). In these circumstances, the incumbent’s ability to replace coalition members is pretty constrained. Essentials can thereby drive up the price for keeping them loyal. The upshot is that there is less revenue available to be spent at the incumbent’s discretion because more has to be spent to keep the coalition loyal, fending off credible counteroffers by political foes.

  When the ratio of essentials to interchangeables is small (as in rigged-election autocracies and most publicly traded corporations), coalition loyalty is purchased cheaply and incumbents have massive discretion. They can choose to spend the money they control on themselves or on pet public projects. Kleptocrats, of course, sock the money away in secret bank accounts or in offshore investments to serve as a rainy-day fund in the event that they are overthrown. A few civic-minded autocrats slip a little into secret accounts, preferring to fend off the threat of revolt by using their discretionary funds (the leftover tax revenue not spent on buying coalition loyalty) to invest in public works. Those public works may prove successful, as was true for Lee Kwan Yew’s efforts in Singapore and Deng Xiaoping’s in China. They may also prove to be dismal failures, as was true for Kwame Nkrumah’s civic-minded industrial program in Ghana or Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, which turned out to be a great leap backwards for China.

  We have seen how the desire to survive in office shapes some key revenue generation decisions, key allocation decisions, and the pot of money at the incumbent’s discretion. Whether the tax rate is high or low, whether money is spent more on public or private rewards, and how much is spent in whatever way the incumbent wants dictates political success within the confines of the governance structure the leader inherits or creates. And our notion of governing for political survival tells us that there are five basic rules leaders can use to succeed in any system:

  Rule 1: Keep your winning coalition as small as possible. A small coalition allows a leader to rely on very few people to stay in power. Fewer essentials equals more control and contributes to more discretion over expenditures.

  Bravo for Kim Jong Il of North Korea. He is a contemporary master at ensuring dependence on a small coalition.

  Rule 2: Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible. Maintain a large selectorate of interchangeables and you can easily replace any troublemakers in your coalition, influentials and essentials alike. After all, a large selectorate permits a big supply of substitute supporters to put the essentials on notice that they should be loyal and well behaved or else face being replaced.

  Bravo to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin for introducing universal adult suffrage in Russia’s old rigged election system. Lenin mastered the art of creating a vast supply of interchangeables.

  Rule 3: Control the flow of revenue. It’s always better for a ruler to determine who eats than it is to have a larger pie from which the people can feed themselves. The most effective cash flow for leaders is one that makes lots of people poor and redistributes money to keep select people—their supporters—wealthy.

  Bravo to Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari, estimated to be worth up to $4 billion even as he governs a country near the world’s bottom in per capita income.

  Rule 4: Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal. Remember, your backers would rather be you than be dependent on you. Your big advantage over them is that you know where the money is and they don’t. Give your coalition just enough so that they don’t shop around for someone to replace you and not a penny more.

  Bravo to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe who, whenever facing a threat of a military coup, manages finally to pay his army, keeping their loyalty against all odds.

  Rule 5: Don’t take money out of your supporter’s pockets to make the people’s lives better. The flip side of rule 4 is not to be too cheap toward your coalition of supporters. If you’re good to the people at the expense of your coalition, it won’t be long until your “friends” will be gunning for you. Effective policy for the masses doesn’t necessarily produce loyalty among essentials, and it’s darn expensive to boot. Hungry people are not likely to have the energy to overthrow you, so don’t worry about them. Disappointed coalition members, in contrast, can defect, leaving you in deep trouble.

  Bravo to Senior General Than Shwe of Myanmar, who made sure following the 2008 Nargis cyclone that food relief was controlled and sold on the black market by his military supporters rather than letting aid go to the people—at least 138,000 and maybe as many as 500,000 of whom died in the disaster.4

  Do the Rules Work in Democracies?

  At this point, you may be saying, Hold on! If an elected leader followed these rules she’d be out of the job in no time flat. You’re right—almost.

  As we’ll see throughout the chapters to follow, a democratic leader does indeed have a tougher time maintaining her position while looting her country and siphoning off funds. She’s constrained by the laws of the land, which also determine—through election procedures—the size of the coalition that she needs in order to come to power. The coalition has to be relatively large and she has to be responsive to it, so she does have a problem with Rule 1. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t try to follow Rule 1 as closely as she can (and all of the other rules too).

  Why, for example, does Congress gerrymander districts? Precisely because of Rule 1: Keep the coalition as small as possible.

  Why do some political parties favor immigration? Rule 2: Expand the set of interchangeables.

  Why are there so many battles over the tax code? Rule 3: Take control of the sources of revenue.

  Why do Democrats spend so much of that tax money on welfare and social programs? Or why on earth do we have earmarks? Rule 4: Reward your essentials at all costs.

  Why do Republicans wish the top tax rate were lower, and have so many problems with the idea of national health care? Rule 5: Don’t rob your supporters to gi
ve to your opposition.

  Just like autocrats and tyrants, leaders of democratic nations follow these rules because they, like every other leader, want to get power and keep it. Even democrats almost never step down unless they’re forced to.5 The problem for democrats is that they face different constraints and have to be a little more creative than their autocratic counterparts. And they succeed less often. Even though they generally provide a much higher standard of living for their citizens than do tyrants, democrats generally have shorter terms in office.

  Political distinctions are truly continuous across the intersection of the three dimensions that govern how organizations work. Some “kings” in history have actually been elected. Some “democrats” rule their nations with the authority of a despot. In other words, the distinction between autocrats and democrats isn’t cut and dried.

  Having laid the foundation for our new theory of politics and having revealed the five rules of leadership, we’ll turn to the big questions at the heart of the book, often using the terms autocrats and democrats throughout, to show how the games of leadership change as you slide from one extreme to the other on the spectrum of small and large coalitions. But just remember, there’s always a little mix of both worlds regardless of the country or organization in question. The lessons from both extremes apply—whether you’re talking about Saddam Hussein or George Washington. After all, the old saw still holds true—politicians are all the same.

  2

  Coming to Power

  FOR CENTURIES, “JOHN DOE” HAS SERVED AS THE placeholder name assigned to unidentified nobodies. And while his first name may have been Samuel, not John, in every other respect Liberia’s Sergeant Doe was just such a nobody until April 12, 1980. Born in a remote part of Liberia’s interior and virtually illiterate, he, like hundreds of thousands of others in his predicament, moved out of the West African jungle in search of work. He headed to the capital city, Monrovia, where he found that the army held great opportunities even for men, like him, who had no skills. One of these opportunities presented itself when Doe found himself in President William Tolbert’s bedroom on April 12. As the president slept, he seized the day, bayoneted the president, threw his entrails to the dogs, and declared himself Liberia’s new president.1 Thus did he rise from obscurity to claim the highest office in his land.

  Together with sixteen other noncommissioned officers, Doe had scaled the fence at the Executive Mansion, hoping to confront the president and find out why they had not been paid. Seeing the opportunity before him, he ended the dominance of Tolbert’s True Whig Party, a political regime created by slaves repatriated from America in 1847. He immediately rounded up thirteen cabinet ministers, who were then publically executed on the beach in front of cheering crowds. Many more deaths would follow. Doe then headed the People’s Redemption Council that suspended the constitution and banned all political activity.

  Doe had no idea what a president was supposed to do and even less idea of how to govern a country. What he did know was how to seize power and keep it: remove the previous ruler; find the money; form a small coalition; and pay them just enough to keep them loyal. In short order, he proceeded to replace virtually everyone who had been in the government or the army with members of his own small Krahn tribe, which made up only about 4 percent of the population. He increased the pay of army privates from $85 to $250 per month. He purged everyone he did not trust. Following secret trials, he had no fewer than fifty of his original collaborators executed.

  Doe funded his government, as his predecessors had, with revenues from Firestone, which leased large tracts of land for rubber; from the Liberian Iron Mining Company, which exported iron ore; and by registering more than 2,500 ocean-going ships without requiring safety inspections. Further, he received direct financial backing from the United States government. The United States gave Doe’s government $500 million over ten years. In exchange the United States received basing rights and made Liberia a center for US intelligence and propaganda. It is believed that Doe and his cronies personally amassed $300 million.

  As for Doe’s policies, they couldn’t be called successful. Indeed he produced virtually no policies at all. He was lazy, and spent his days hanging out with the wives of his presidential guards. The economy collapsed, foreign debt soared, and criminal enterprises became virtually the only successful businesses in Liberia. Monrovian banks became money-laundering operations. Little wonder that the people of Liberia ended up hating Doe. And yet, provided he knew where the money was and who needed paying off, he managed to survive in power.

  Damn the idea of good governance and don’t elevate the concerns of the people over your own and those of your supporters: That’s a good mantra for would-be dictators. In such a way any John Doe—even a Samuel Doe—can seize power, and even keep it.

  Paths to Power with Few Essentials

  To come to power a challenger need only do three things. First, he must remove the incumbent. Second, he needs to seize the apparatus of government. Third, he needs to form a coalition of supporters sufficient to sustain him as the new incumbent. Each of these actions involves its own unique challenges. The relative ease with which they can be accomplished differs between democracies and autocracies.

  There are three ways to remove an incumbent leader. The first, and easiest, is for the leader to die. If that convenience does not offer itself, a challenger can make an offer to the essential members of the incumbent’s coalition that is sufficiently attractive that they defect to the challenger’s cause. Third, the current political system can be overwhelmed from the outside, whether by military defeat by a foreign power, or through revolution and rebellion, in which the masses rise up, depose the current leader, and destroy existing institutions.

  While rebellion requires skill and coordination, its success ultimately depends heavily upon coalition loyalty, or more precisely, the absence of loyalty to the old regime. Hosni Mubarak’s defeat by a mass uprising in Egypt is a case in point. The most critical factor behind Mubarak’s defeat in February 2011 was the decision by Egypt’s top generals to allow demonstrators to take to the streets without fear of military suppression. And why was that the case? As explained in a talk given on May 5, 2010, based on the logic set out here, cuts in US foreign aid to Egypt combined with serious economic constraints that produced high unemployment, meant that Mubarak’s coalition was likely to be underpaid and the people were likely to believe the risks and costs of rebellion were smaller than normal.2 That is, the general rule of thumb for rebellion is that revolutions occur when those who preserve the current system are sufficiently dissatisfied with their rewards that they are willing to look for someone new to take care of them. On the other hand, revolts are defeated through suppression of the people—always an unpleasant task—so coalition members need to receive enough benefits from their leader that they are willing to do horribly distasteful things to ensure that the existing system is maintained. If they do not get enough goodies under the current system, then they will not stop the people from rising up against the regime.

  Speed Is Essential

  Once the old leader is gone, it is essential to seize the instruments of power, such as the treasury, as quickly as possible. This is particularly important in small coalition systems. Anyone who waits will be a loser in the competition for power.

  Speed is of the essence. The coalition size in most political systems is much smaller than a majority of the selectorate. Furthermore, even though we tend to think that if one leader has enough votes or supporters, then the other potential candidate must be short, this is wrong. There can simultaneously be many different groups trying to organize to overthrow a regime and each might have sufficient numbers of lukewarm or double-dealing supporters who could aid them in securing power—or just as easily aid someone else, if the price is right. This is why it is absolutely essential to seize the reins of power quickly to make sure that your group gets to control the instruments of the state, and not someone else’s.
r />   Samuel Doe ruled because his group had the guns. He did not need half the nation to support him. He needed just enough confederates so that he could control the army and suppress the rest of the population. There were many other coalitions that could have formed, but Doe grabbed hold of power first and suppressed the rest. This is the essence of coming to power.

  Consider a room filled with 100 people. Anyone could take complete control if only she had five supporters with automatic weapons pointed at the rest. She would remain in power so long as the five gunmen continue to back her. But there need be nothing special about her or about the gunmen beyond the fact that they grabbed the guns first. Had someone else secured the guns and given them to five supporters of their own, then it would be someone else telling everyone what to do.

  Waiting is risky business. There is no prize for coming in second.

  Pay to Play

  Paying supporters, not good governance or representing the general will, is the essence of ruling. Buying loyalty is particularly difficult when a leader first comes to power. When deciding whether to support a new leader, prudent backers must not only think about how much their leader gives them today. They must also ponder what they can expect to receive in the future.

  The supporting cast in any upstart’s transitional coalition must recognize that they might not be kept on for long. After Doe took over the Liberian government, he greatly increased army salaries. This made it immediately attractive for his fellow army buddies to back him. But they were mindful that they might not be rewarded forever. Don’t forget that fifty of his initial backers ended up executed.