The Dictator's Handbook Read Free Page A

fabulous pension estimated at $650,000 per year. How best to keep their loyalty? That was easy: promote the means to transfer great private rewards in the form of lavish compensation packages to council members. 6
    Of course, if all were being done in the open, or if Bell remained a general city subject to control over compensation from Sacramento, Rizzo could not have provided the means to ensure that he would scratch the city council members’ backs and they his. When a leader’s
hold on power—his or her political survival—depends on a small coalition of backers (remember the small percentage of voters needed to actually win a seat on the city council), then providing private rewards is the path to long tenure in office: Mr. Rizzo kept his job for seventeen years. Furthermore, when that small coalition is drawn from a relatively large pool—just five council members, elected under a city charter ratified by only 354 voters out of a registered voter population (in 2009) of 9,395—then not only are private rewards to the small coalition an efficient way to govern, but so much budgetary and taxing discretion is created that the folks at the top have ample opportunity for handsome compensation, an opportunity that the city’s top leadership did not fail to exploit.
    Bell presents a number of lessons to teach us about the rules to rule by. First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of “We, the people.” Second, political survival is best assured by depending on few people to attain and retain office. That means dictators, dependent on a few cronies, are in a far better position to stay in office for decades, often dying in their sleep, than are democrats. Third, when the small group of cronies knows that there is a large pool of people waiting on the sidelines, hoping to replace them in the queue for gorging at the public trough, then the top leadership has great discretion over how revenue is spent and how much to tax. All that tax revenue and discretion opens the door to kleptocracy from many leaders, and public-spirited programs from a very few. And it means enhanced tenure in power. Fourth, dependence on a small coalition liberates leaders to tax at high rates, just as was true in Bell. Taxing at high rates has a propensity to foment the threat of popular uprisings, just as happened in Bell. Of course, in Bell it was easy for the people to rise up and end Rizzo’s rule because they have essential freedoms: the rights to free speech and assembly. We shall see that how the structure of government and the economy works explains variation in how many of these rights people have. This in turn accounts for whether the people take to the streets and whether they can succeed in orchestrating change, as we recently saw in some parts of the Middle East, or remain oppressed, as we saw in others.

    We will see that Bell’s story offers a nearly perfect script for how to govern when the hold on office depends on very few people, especially when they are selected from among many. The politicians of Bell intuitively understood the rules of politics. Leaders who follow these rules faithfully truly can stay on top without ever having to do “the right thing” for their subjects. The people governing Bell clung to power for a very long time before probes from outside uncovered their means of holding on to office. As we will see, what works for those at the top usually works against those at the bottom, hence our shock and surprise at headlines of the misdoings of so many in high positions. The way places like Bell are governed (and that is the way most places and most businesses are governed) assure the Bell Bottom Blues.
    One important lesson we will learn is that where politics are concerned, ideology, nationality, and culture don’t matter all that much. The sooner we learn not to think or utter sentences such as “the