“Democracy Erodes from the Top,” by Larry Bartels

“Democracy Erodes from the Top,” by Larry Bartels, makes a good companion volume. His data suggests that voters don’t tend to choose autocratic leaders because they want political extremism or authoritarian policies. Rather, such leaders often take advantage of scandals that discredit their opposition to win office, running on platforms more moderate than the ones they pursue once they’re in power.

Bartels also notes that voters tend to support leaders when their economies are doing well and things are otherwise stable, even if the leaders in question are dismantling democracy in order to preserve their own power.

A ‘Friends’ rule of politics

A great deal of politics comes from people trying to predict what others are going to do, and strategizing accordingly. This is the fundamental insight of game theory, which I’ve used as a lens for understanding Middle East instability and democratic backsliding this year.

But it’s a basic enough element of human behavior that it crops up in other contexts, too, including the classic “Friends” episode “The One Where Everybody Finds Out,” in which the main characters play a series of escalating pranks on each other by exploiting secret information to manipulate each others’ choices. (“They don’t know that we know they know we know.”)

Thomas Schelling’s work, including “The Strategy of Conflict” and “Arms and Influence,” lays out basic principles of game theory in international relations. But for a more accessible introduction to it, you might try “Jane Austen, Game Theorist,” by Michael Chwe, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He uses Ms. Austen’s novels to explain the dynamics of strategy and manipulation, a lighthearted approach that makes a serious point about how people and nations behave.