This week I just started reading The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, and I am only up to Chapter 2, Coming to Power. That is already enough to make me question my book choices. Some people unwind with novels. Others read productivity manuals. I apparently relax by reading a cold, clinical explanation of why bad political behavior is not a flaw but a feature. Please do not judge my reading list. I do that plenty on my own.

The book wastes no time with ideals. Politics, as presented here, is not about virtue or service. It is about survival. Power does not come from “the people” in the abstract. It comes from the people who matter. The selectorate. The winning coalition. Dictators grasp this instinctively. They do not try to please everyone. They work to make sure only a few people can remove them, and then they take very good care of those few.

Once you see politics this way, dictators stop looking irrational. Coming to power is not about popularity. It is about exclusion. Narrow the circle. Sideline rivals. Rewrite the rules so fewer voices count. Every person excluded lowers the cost of staying in power. Politics becomes cheaper, cleaner, and more predictable. What looks like authoritarian excess is often just careful design.

Loyalty emerges quickly as the real currency. Dictators choose loyalists over experts because loyalty is safer than competence. A competent person might question decisions. A loyal one will defend them. From the outside, this looks like incompetence or self-sabotage. From the logic of political survival, it is risk management. Politics rewards those who minimize danger, not those who maximize performance.

Violence and repression enter the picture early and without drama. They are not framed as madness or cruelty, but as tools. A small amount of visible repression discourages a large amount of opposition. Fear prevents coordination. Silence isolates rivals. Persuasion is expensive. Repression is efficient. Reading this laid out so calmly is unsettling, and I keep wondering why I did not choose a safer book for bedtime. Again, please do not judge my bookshelf.

Dictators also benefit from speed. With no opposition to slow them down, decisions look decisive. Decisiveness is mistaken for strength. Strength attracts allies. Allies reinforce power. The loop tightens quickly. What gets praised as leadership is often just the absence of anyone allowed to say no.

Even at Chapter 2, the warning is already visible. Systems built on small coalitions are fragile. They depend on constant loyalty. One defection matters. One miscalculation can collapse everything. Dictators are good at getting into power because they optimize ruthlessly for survival. That same optimization quietly plants the seeds of failure later.

This is where the book starts to feel uncomfortably familiar if you think about the Philippines. On paper, the country is a democracy. In practice, power has often flowed through small coalitions. Political families, business allies, security forces, local power brokers. Elections matter, but once the votes are counted, politics returns to managing a much smaller group. Loyalty over competence, stability over accountability, order before freedom. These are not abstract ideas. They are patterns Filipinos have seen play out again and again.

Strongman politics sells certainty in a country tired of chaos. Discipline first. Reform later. Democracy is slow. Strongmen move fast. Speed looks like strength when institutions are weak and opposition is fragmented. The logic in The Dictator’s Handbook helps explain why these messages resonate, and why they keep coming back.

Two chapters in, the lesson is already uncomfortable. Dictators are good at politics because politics rewards incentives, not intentions. They understand who matters, exclude everyone else, and trade loyalty for survival.

So yes, this is what I am reading right now. Please do not judge my book choices. If anything, judge how often a book like this feels less like theory and more like a mirror, especially when you think about places like the Philippines.