The wisdom of politics

Like many, I'm outraged at the signs of blatant authoritarianism arising in the USA and elsewhere. It feels like a battle between the forces of democracy and the forces of dictatorship. Yet, this duality hides a fact of life: politics - of any persuasion - is actually less about the national interest, the common good, or the general welfare, and more about individuals who are motivated to do what is good for them, not what is good for others.

Politics is the game of getting power and holding on to power. If we don't know the rules of the game, then we're the ones being played. In their 2011 book, "The Dictator's Handbook", political scientists Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith proposed a model for why some leaders are overthrown and others survive.

"The goal of politics", they write, "is not to improve conditions for the population at large; it's to extract resources from the population at large and give them to the leader's winning coalition".

Despite the book's title, their model applies to democracies as well as dictatorships. The authors argue that dictatorships and democracies don't really differ in kind, but instead, in the size each requires to maintain a leader's winning coalition. It may sound cynical, but it is unfortunately, the way the game has been played for millennia.

Which got me thinking: where does wisdom figure in politics?