Book review: Spin Dictators

The 2023 book, Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 12st Century, was written by Russian economist Sergei Guriev (professor, Paris, France) and American political scientist Daniel Treisman (professor, UCLA). Putin ran professor Guriev out of Russia for writing an unflattering account of how Putin manhandled a political opponent. 

The book is easy to read and written for a general audience, not academics. It's reasoning and conclusions are heavily sourced and easily fact checkable. I highly recommend this book. In particular, one gets a solid understanding of what the authors are arguing by reading chapters 1, 7 and the last chapter 8. Chapters 2-6 are heavy with facts and accounts of dictators and their playful (brutal, actually) exploits. These authors really understand dictators and tyranny. 

Since this book was written after earlier experts like Hannah Arendt had published their works, e.g., Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, the book relies on the authors' insights from the perspective of later and current history. That informs the research and analyses that underly the author's central argument. And, the book comes from two relevant points of view, economics and political science. 

The author's central argument boils down to this: At the extremes, there are two kinds of dictators, fear dictators and spin dictators. Fear dictators operate mostly by brute force, often in public displays of violence and murder. Fear and violent repression, and control of mass communications are their main tools of control. Those tyrannies are usually wrapped in military regalia and uniforms. Think of Hitler and Stalin as examples. 

At the other extreme are spin dictators. They operate mostly by guile, deceit, spinning false realities, co-option of opposition, and also, control of mass communications. Those tyrants wear snappy business suits, and usually speak of the virtues of democracy, while rigging elections and subverting political opposition and democratic institutions and norms. Spin dictators usually tolerate a limited amount of political opposition. However, that opposition is carefully limited and controlled so that there is just enough to give an appearance of democracy and tolerance to the public at home and governments abroad. This kind of faux democracy deception usually works extremely well and home and abroad, at least for some period of time. Unlike fear dictators, spin dictators do care about public opinion. They tend to have a lot of public support. They work hard to gain it. They create false narratives about how they are valiantly fighting against dark forces internally** and externally to help both the little people and the great, but beleaguered nation. Think of Putin and Viktor Orban in Hungary as examples.

** The LGBQT community is a popular target for evil internal enemy propaganda.

Although those are the extremes, there are times when spin dictators will resort to killing when needed. There can be a lot of overlap in the operations of the two kinds of tyrant, e.g., both tend to create scapegoat groups for the public to hate on. But spin tyrant murders are usually committed quietly and accompanied by denials by the tyrant who falsely claims innocence. Spinner tyrants prefer to silence domestic critics by subverting them on false legal charges, e.g., by jailing them for tax evasion, or for being foreign spies or pedophiles. 

Some definitions and data

Spin dictatorships are defined as:

1. a non-democracy country; and

2. national elections with at least one opposition party running; and

3. tolerance of at least several media outlets that criticize the government each year; and

4. less than 10 political state killings per year; and 

5. less than 1,000 jailed political prisoners in any year.

That is a rule of thumb definition. There are variants, exceptions, complexities and hybrid fear and spin dictatorships. A spin tyranny can and sometimes does degenerate into a fear tyranny and vice versa as circumstances change. For example, some spin dictators have become more fear dictator-like when China steps in with needed loans for the country. Unlike Western financial donors, China does not criticize dictators for murdering people or brutally oppressing them. Western loans sometimes come with good dictator behavior strings attached. China never attaches pro-democracy strings like that to its loans.

For contrast, the rule of thumb definition for fear dictatorships is:

1. a non-democracy country; and

2. at least one year where there no or few media outlets criticize the government; and

3. at least 10 state political killings per year; and

4.  at least1,000 jailed political prisoners in at least one year.

The author's analysis of dictators in power at least 5 years for fear vs spin dictatorships from 1946 to 2015 indicate that fear dominated spin until the 1990s when spin dominated. In 1946-1949, it was about 47% fear, 8% spin and 45% hybrid. By 2015, spin was about 53% of dictatorships, fear 7% and hybrid 40%.

Other observations

A couple of other points merit mention. Technology has changed and is relevant but the concept of spin dictatorship with rule by deceit and guile is not completely new. Aristotle wrote aspects of about it in ~400 BC. Machiavelli's 1532 book, The Prince, was a guidebook for spin dictators of that time, not fear tyrants. The authors write and quote Machiavelli:

Machiavelli advised princes (dictators) to use "simulation and dissimulation." Since most people are influenced by appearances rather than by reality, an ambitious ruler should create illusions. He "need not have all the good qualities . . . . but he must be seen to have them." How to fool the public depends on context: "The prince can gain favor in many ways." But obtaining public support is crucial. "I will only say in conclusion that prince must have the people on his side."

Consider this. The people of Turkey have just re-elected spin dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, despite his authoritarianism and his significant flaws and failures. Euronews writes:

Turkish election 'free but not fair', say international observers

"Media bias and ongoing restrictions to freedom of expression created an unlevel playing field, and contributed to an unjustified advantage of the incumbent," the OSCE said on Monday.

Free but not fair is an oxymoron for elections. If an election is not fair, it's not free. That's just reasonable, rational thinking. This reflects the amazing effectiveness of dictators holding sham elections. The democratic West is mostly fooled or confused and the dictator stays in power and continues to pretend to be supporting democracy. However, the dictator non-West is not fooled. Those tyrants watch and learn the art of killing democracy while claiming to defend it.

Future prospects

What the authors think the future of democracy will be was not quite clear to me. They seem to be torn between not being alarmist and not being naïve or too optimistic. My confusion aside, maybe the overall thrust of history and current events is mildly positive for democracy. Based mostly on dictatorships since the 1980s, the authors do an in-depth analysis of what they call the modernization cocktail. It has three ingredients, (i) the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society**, (ii) economic and information globalization, and (iii) the rise of a liberal international order. Together, those developments tend to push nations from fear dictatorships to spin dictatorships and finally to democracies. The modernization cocktail is an international social and political force or phenomenon that is emergent from all three ingredients acting together on post-industrial societies and the rest of the world. 

** A post-industrial society is one where services and information processing is a more important aspect of the economy than old-fashioned manufacturing. The US completed the transition to a post-industrial country in the years after WWII. We're not going back, despite what politicians say about it.

There is a lot of historical fact and analysis to support that argument. Their argument is well documented and plausible in my opinion. For example, America's radical right relentlessly attacks globalization claiming it hurts people and the status quo, and undermines freedoms and traditions. The radicals largely appeal to a time when America was industrialized. That cannot happen. It has been tried and it fails. 

It is likely that in post-industrialized countries like the US that globalization defends people and their freedoms and traditions more than it undermines them. The US just has not adapted very well to post-industrialization. The authors cite Singapore's pioneering spin dictator of the 1990s Lee Kuan Yew as fully understanding the implications of the modernization cocktail:

With today's high technology, you just can't squeeze the maximum productivity out of advanced machinery without a self-motivated and self-governing work force. . . . . One simply cannot ask a highly educated work force to stop thinking when it leaves the factory. 

There was the problem in a nutshell. Too many people in post-industrialized countries have college degrees. You cannot control their thinking. Stalin had the same problem. The authors commented on the dictator's dilemma using Stalin as the example: 

Despite the inefficient organization of Stalinist industry, labor was still more productive in the factories than on peasant farms. But once progress required imagination [in the post-industrial society], Stalin-style coercion no longer worked. You could not order people to have ideas. Bureaucratic disciplined stifled innovation, which almost by definition requires breaking rules. Ideology was even more deadly. . . . . Dictators had to contend with a third, related challenge. The spread of higher education and creative works catalyzed another disruptive development. This one had to do with the beliefs and values of citizens.

The authors go on to point out that global survey data is clear on this point, which applies in all ~100 countries surveyed: As countries develop economically, their citizens undergo dramatic shifts in values and beliefs. Those values and beliefs tend to be pro-democratic. That, coupled with the rise of mass internet communications makes it hard for dictatorships in post-industrial countries to fight against sliding into democracy. 

[A spin dictator] can even hire the creative types to design an alternative reality for the masses. [it does not work against informed people, but they are rare and can be neutered] . . . . Co-opting the informed takes resources. When those run low, spin dictators turn to censorship, which is often cheaper. They need not censor everything. All that really matters is to stop opposition media reaching a mass audience. . . . . The less educated are alienated from the creative types by resentment, economic anxiety, and attachment to tradition. Spin dictators can exploit these sentiments, rallying the remaining [industrial?] workers against the "counterculture" while branding the intellectuals as disloyal, sacrilegious or sexually deviant.

Does any of that sound familiar? It should. That reflects mainstream rhetoric and tactics by America's authoritarian radical right, including alternative reality and independent thinker bashing.

The book concludes with these thoughts:

Internationally, Western societies are now linked to the dictatorships of the world by multiple capillaries [information, and economic and trade ties?]. There is no safe way to opt out of the global system. . . . . Spin dictators would like their citizens to trust them and distrust the West. They thrive in a world of cynicism and relativism. But the West has something they do not: a powerful idea around which it can unite, the idea of liberal democracy. This idea -- although some today see it as tarnished -- is, in fact, the West's strongest weapon. . . . . But the only way to defeat an idea is with a better idea, and they do not have one. That spin dictators pretend to be democrats proves they have no vision to offer. They can only delay and discourage us for a while -- if we let them.

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To a large extent Guriev and Treisman see the situation with democracy about the same as reflected in many of the politics posts here. I take my own assessment as mostly reinforced by the analysis and reasoning that Spin Dictators lays out. What the Republican Party and its leader Trump have done and are still doing looks a lot like spin dictatorship to me. Too much like it. 

Maybe my assessment of authoritarian threat in the US has been significantly overstated. A reassessment after the 2024 elections are over will be in order. Until then, erring on the side of alarmism seems prudent.

What remains unclear and unpredictable is the ultimate fate of democracy. Despite clear historical evidence that the human situation was slowly moving toward democracy, the ultimate power of the dark internet, global overpopulation, climate change and other pressures could tip mankind back to tyranny as the norm everywhere. Maybe countervailing historical forces like the modernization cocktail will prevent that. Maybe not.