The Logic of Political Survival (2003)

The Logic of Political Survival (2003) was authored by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of New York University (NYU), Alastair Smith of NYU, Randolph M. Siverson of UC Davis, and James D. Morrow of the University of Michigan 

Part One introduces the main instrumental variables of the selectorate theory. The selectorate theory posits that each society's nominal population can be decomposed into political institutions that are subpopulations, namely a winning coalition, a selectorate, and the total population, each of which is a subset of the latter. The authors introduce mechanisms by which a leader ascends to power or falls out of power as a consequence of both her performance and her constraints derived from by the institutions previously described. The chapters in this part further detail the effect of institutions on the performance of a country's macroeconomy and, subsequently, the effect of the nation's economy on the international macroeconomy. The authors also contend that the poorest autocracies and the richest democracies are the most stable forms of government. For poor autocracies, the logic is that the vanishingly small odds of being in a challenger's winning coalition encourages members of the winning coalition to remain highly loyal to incumbents. In this institutional arrangement, bribery and kleptocracy flourish while the general economy collapses. For rich democracies, members of the winning coalition have a very high chance of being in a challenger's coalition and discourage loyalty to poorly-performing incumbents. In this institutional arrangement, the health of the economy rapidly improves. Furthermore, the wealth of the economy in rich democracies is abundant in proportion to the total resources of the government, thus eliminating the incentive of either societal elites or the poor to prefer autocracy to democracy.

Part Two elaborates on the economic implications of the selectorate theory while also elaborating on the effect of domestic institutions on the likelihood of conflict. Regarding conflict, the authors introduce logic describing the attractiveness of war as derivative of the institutional constraints placed on leaders. All leaders are incentivized to reward their backers and may take whatever means needed to retain the loyalty of their necessary backers. The authors describe autocrat's tendency to begin wars that are largely driven by a desire for riches and extractable wealth, while democrats tend to fight wars for policy. The authors also reason that democracies are less likely to fight one another when the two are more equal in capabilities, but find that rich democracies are likely to fight very poor democracies and autocracies. The authors notably find evidence that contradicts the conventional belief that democratic leaders are inherently more pacifistic. The author's findings on the democratic peace are largely derived from their findings in a paper they published three years prior to the publication of their book.

Part Three describes the effect of a leader's effect on the institutions in her nation. The authors introduce several hypotheses on the effect of leadership activities on population migration, disenfranchisement, purges and coup d'états, as well as detail the means by which regimes can transition from autocracy to democracy. The authors introduce through a number of examples the various ways by which leaders can be deposed. The book concludes with arguments on how peace and prosperity might best be secured given the constraints imposed in the selectorate theory.

The authors additionally discuss Hume's Discourses from Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary and Leviathan and decide that the philosophy in Discourses results in better governance.

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