The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy

This was a fantastic book - extraordinarily interesting.

As it is new to my library, I haven't read it yet, only scanned it. But it is certainly well-written, comprehensive and important. It's important to always pay attention to politics as that is what determines what our societies are or will be.

An interesting account of covert political organizations throughout the world and their work against long-standing political regimes which ruthlessly hang on to power.

Spannend geschrieben und mit vielen interessanten Details, aber zu wenig reflektierend und selbstkritisch. Es handelt sich irgendwie auch um ziemlich naive US-Propaganda. Der Autor glaubt in der Überwachung ein Kriterium für Diktatur gefunden zu haben. Das ist ziemlich ironisch, wenn man an die USA im Zeichen des Patriot Act denkt. Im Übrigen ist es überhaupt nicht neu, dass sich Diktaturen ein demokratisches Mäntelchen umhängen. Man denke an die kommunistischen Staaten, die alle ein vorgebliches Mehrparteiensystem hatten. Auch ein gewisses Maß an Reisefreiheit als Ventil ist nicht neu.

I would have given this book five stars if it had more historical context. Even if readers prefer its 20th century discussions, the concept of tyrant and dictator have Greek (as in Xenophon's "Tyrannicus") and Roman historical connections that could have been placed in an appendix section.I also would like to read the author's explicit definitions of "totalitarianism" and "authority." Rather than expand this review with quotations from Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism," Max Weber's "Theory of Social and Economic Organization" and Georg Simmel's "Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies," I suggest that these readings enrich understanding of the last three centuries of regimes considered free, dictatorial or authoritarian.Readers could work out for themselves whether or not Dobson's assertion that totalitarian regimes are a 20th century phenomenon. Arendt points out a specific structural relation among totalitarian regimes that she ties to failures of democratic institutions. Weber understands the role of charisma in emotional attachment to a Leader (Lenin, Evita, Hitler and more) that becomes routinized by subsequent generations. Simmel understands the nature of cloaking actual relations in a regime that underlie its public facade.What I like about this book is that it helps refresh memories of 20th century events and stands ready to assist 21st century readers with a review of political economies of "authoritarian" regimes. Learning curves of control-driven personalities with a shaky grasp on ethics are important to document. And extant "democracies" still have the flaws described by Machiavelli in his three good forms of government that produce three bad forms of government. Broadly, it is the same flaw: failure to govern. Princes become tyrants in very few generations, aristocrats forget obligation (Weber again) to become oligarchs and deme-ocracies descend into licentiousness by voting themselves "bread and circuses."There is another technical issue I will raise related to non linear developmental tracks in a history of governance: the hope that a group of leaders will be "safer" in terms of political voice than a single person. Plato's "Republic" raises but does not solve "the problem of the guardians." Rather, it suggests that guardians of a state are like "noble dogs" who are given training to know friend or enemy. By the time of the American revolution, a unique design for guardians was developed in the US Constitution's separation of powers. This was and is, an "unstable hierarchy" with specific rules of interaction, similar to that of "scissors-paper-rock." Compromise in this circular set of relations allows each participant some things desired, but requires skill at negotiating peacefully. Or it might result in the American habit of "disjointed incrementalism" or muddling through (William Ophuls "The Politics of Scarcity"). A five part unstable hierarchy can be found in the rules for "scissors-paper-rock-lizard-Spock" (for example, Spock refutes paper, lizard poisons Spock). Unstable hierarchies are tricky, because they demand constant attention to detail (small picture) related to the actual effort of governing (intermediate to large picture). In this century, there are a number of states that have triple authority entities. Number of actors is not salvation, but adherence to clearly balanced rules is a road to survival with reasonable freedoms. I will leave it to readers to figure out which multiple entities are in the Middle and the Far East. Are the guardians of the state armed? What about President Eisenhower's warning concerning military-industrial complexes? And how many Americans have read all of the Federalist Papers? Does the current mode of war fighting a diffuse enemy rather than conventional war for territory (see Admiral McRaven's book "Spec Ops") pose problems connected with secret "black operations" for democracies that could be exploited by dictators? What is jointly learned about "crowd control technologies" (see Dobson's Chapter 8) by interacting authorities and demonstrators?If this "Dictator's Learning Curve" is to find its place in a history of dangerous trends of controlling populations under the rubric of a "state," then it needs some more explicit connections to human efforts to safely provide food and shelter with political voice for their populations. The potential is there in its eight case studies. Maintaining democratic rule is always labile and demands diligence from its deme.Finally, Chuang Tzu (Zuangzi) of more than two milennia ago points out in his tale of "Binding Trunks" how Robber Wu can steal a trunk (analog of a state) if its bindings are sufficiently strong.