.jpg)
By Svetozar Pejovich
This book has a terrific title. Every dictator
should have a copy. In it Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith explain
the brainchild they call the “selectorate” theory.
The focus of that theory is the leadership of
governments, organizations, business establishments, and other associations.
Leaders’ power and longevity depend on the balance of power among three key
groups in their respective communities: 1) the nominal selectorate, or
“interchangeables”; 2) the real selectorate, or “influentials”; and 3) the
winning coalition, or “essentials.” The nominal selectorate consists of the
pool of all potential supporters. The real selectorate is the group actually
choosing the leader. And the winning coalition is the subset of the real
selectorate on whose support the survival of all leaders depends.
The crucial implication of the authors’ analysis
is that our belief that there is a great difference between dictators and
democratic “representatives” is just a convenient fiction. In their
Machiavellian view, all kinds of rulers aim at their own survival, not “the
public good.”
Dictatorships are defined by a large nominal
selectorate (such as all adult citizens in China, or the entire royal family in
Saudi Arabia), a relatively small real selectorate (members of the Party in
China, senior princes in Saudi Arabia), and a small winning coalition (members
of the Central Committee of the Party in China, the innermost group of princes
in Saudi Arabia). Democracy is defined by a very large nominal selectorate (one
person, one vote in the United States), an almost equally large real
selectorate, and a large winning coalition (about one-fifth of the vote,
efficiently placed across the United States.)
Bueno de Mesquita and Smith offer numerous
observations in support of their claim that the three key groups provide the
foundation for our understanding of the workings of governments and other types
of associations. Observations range from the policies of medieval kings to
Saddam Hussein’s rise to power; from the founding of American democracy to City
Manager Robert “Ratzo” Rizzo of Bell, California (whose mastery of selectorate
theory wheedled him a prodigious salary in a small, poor town); from Tiananmen
Square in China to the 2011 revolution in Egypt.
The authors argue that democracies have large
winning coalitions and dictatorships have small ones. By implication, survival
for dictators depends on the provision of private goods for the winning
coalition—for the essentials—and requires little if any concern about providing
public goods for the interchangeables or even the influentials. “Members of a
small coalition live in luxurious but constant fear: make the coalition smaller
. . . and they may be out; make the coalition bigger and their special
privileges diminish.” Leaders in democracies where the real selectorate is
almost the same as the nominal selectorate, and the winning coalition is large,
must provide the “hugely valuable public good called freedom.”
While the authors identify democracies with
freedom, they do not address the incentive of leaders to seek a balance between
social responsibilities and individual liberty. They merely note that in
addition to guaranteeing free speech, free assembly, and a free press,
democracies must also satisfy demand for public goods such as education, health
care, and a welfare safety net. All of that spending covers a multitude of
special interest programs that benefit their supporters.
Selectorate theory claims to be a complete
theory, explaining the rise, behavior, and demise of governments,
organizations, business establishments, and human associations. This isn’t the
first attempt at a complete theory of history. Karl Marx used two key variables
to develop another complete theory of human history: 1) the productive forces,
representing the relation between man and nature in the process of production,
and 2) the relations of production or property rights, representing the
relation among men themselves in the process of production. With clever use of
those two variables and the labor theory of value, Marx thought he could fully
explain the past and predict the future. A number of empirical tests of Marx’s
theory of history in the last century (some still going on) contradict its
premises.
Selectorate theory with its three variables is
more benign and better grounded in positive analysis than Marxism. The authors
identify and discuss the factors (the three key groups) that determine the
political and economic lives of different human associations, but they skip
analysis of the circumstances on which those factors depend. Like Marxism,
selectorate theory falls short as a theory of political, social, and economic
forces at work throughout history.
Nevertheless, the book is very readable and full
of important observations that shed
No comments:
Post a Comment