Category: society

22nd September 2020

Who wouldn’t want to be a dictator? I can’t see the downside unless you worry about being toppled in a horrible way oh and maybe if you have morals. Admittedly many do come to a sticky end, but implemented well, for many years you could be on the receiving end of amazing boot licking and the thought of having your every command listened to is very seductive. Now I don’t write this from personal experience of being a dictator but it would be remiss of me not to mention that very surprisingly, my family accuse me of having dictatorial tendencies. I just see it as good management skills and weeding out inefficiency……

Data varies but I have seen figures that suggest that about half the worlds population (c4bn) live under non democratically appointed leaders and that the average leadership tenure of a dictator is c13years (although the range around this is wide). All well and good, but If you are a dictator newbie, what do you need to think about to ensure you have longevity?

Research has found that the local environment and circumstance are important factors in influencing how you start your life as a dictator and how you can proceed. So be very mindful of the point in time that you decide to take power. Then there are certain textbook approaches to staying in power you must be on top of. Enforce control; keep a small group of people loyal to you in your inner circle and hold rigged elections. 

Control is usually enacted through causing fear and terror. Sometimes violence and torture is used along with less obvious techniques to intimidate. But it is clear that you must also seize control and management of a country’s finances to maintain your grip. Becoming slick with social media enables you to tighten that grip, helping you to monitor the people of your country, smearing opponents, blocking anarchic content and surveilling messages. 

Keep your close circle well off either legally or not though whatever you do – keep them on your side. You do not need to keep a huge number of people around you well paid – just an important few. The types of people you could consider for your inner circle can be Generals commanding your army to those managing the flows of finance in your country, so such numbers could just be in the 10’s of people. The problem you need to resolve when you come to power is that you usually don’t know where the money is, so you need to manage the expectations of these confidants. You need to persuade them that they would be better off supporting you than switching to a rival.

Once you have the lay of the land, corruption is an attractive way to keep some one well paid as such payments do not need to come from tax revenues. But beware. Collecting money to fund these corruption payments is problematic in that you don’t always know exactly how much is being collected but it obfuscates to those beady eyes, so corruption is necessary. Over time as your leadership matures you will need to weed out less useful inner circle members. Citing corruption as a reason for their departure always goes down well with the public and deflects blame from you. 

Elections are a necessary tool in the kit of a dictator. The majority of elections put on by a dictator are rigged. One such method to rig an election is to physically put in extra ballot papers favouring your party in the ballot boxes. But here you can let your creativity flow. Your fellow dictator peers have thought to create unfavourable situations for their rivals. For example letting ballot papers be filled in using pens with disappearing ink or not allowing opposing candidates to return to their country to rally their supporters citing visa issues or arresting such candidates prior to the election date. You run the country – you decide the rules.  

But you may wonder what the purpose is of holding a meaningless election? The reason to do so is to provide information to you about who and what areas support you. This enables future planning and the ability to divide competition and so disrupt collaboration that may be able to bring you down. Elections can be used to mobilise your supporters to demonstrate to the people of the country how popular and strong you are. It is a way of signalling strength within and to the outside world and counter-intuitively confers some legitimacy on your leadership. Winning an election against a splintered competition is an especially powerful signal. But as dicatorships require a cult of personality – this also demonstrates that you personally have the people’s support. 

But remember, stepping away from the life of a dictator is difficult. When you lose power whether voluntarily or forcibly, you are then at the mercy of your competitors. Old age for a dictator is also another difficult transition. When you are looking to retire and to who your successor will be, it raises a lot of uncertainty and can make your position more unstable. 

So as we know, there are clearly alot of benefits to being a dictator and very few of us would turn that job opportunity down. But you should not underestimate the skills and deftness necessary to be successful longer term. My advice would be to think about your early stage career planning and how you develop the necessary skills so that when you arrive you can land on your feet and are an obvious choice to your inner circle. Any further support needed, Rascal’s school for Dictators will be open soon….