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Spin Dictators:
The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century

By Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

"This engaging and frightening book argues that Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew pioneered a new kind of dictatorship based not on in-your-face brutality, but on a more subtle ruthlessness obscured by the apparent use of democratic instruments. Shut down universities with troublesome student bodies on the pretext of low enrollment; throw opponents in jail over charges of defamation or embezzlement – the possibilities are endless. The key, Lee determined, is to maintain the façade of democracy while you subvert it. And his playbook has since been copied and expanded, though Lee’s imitators almost never aspire to his economic success." Article PDF Available

June 2023
Anali Pravnog fakulteta u Beogradu 71(2):386-403

Authors:

University of Belgrade, School of Law

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Abstract

After a long history of psychopathic, kleptocratic, sadistic, cruel, bloodthirsty, destructive, sometimes somewhat enlightened, and even benevolent dictators (fear not, the last exist only in economic theory, not in the real world), the reader now encounters innovative subspecies – the spin dictators. Do they actually exist? Who are they? What kind of dictators are these novels? What is their modus operandi? Why have they not existed in the past? This is just the beginning of the list of questions the authors of the book place on their agenda – not exactly a research agenda, since the book, as they point out, collates the insights that are based on the results of the theoretical and empirical research that they have already published in economics and political science academic journals.