The literature which takes a public choice approach to dictatorship, largely barren before 1990 except for Tullock’s Autocracy (1987), is now growing and may be entering a period of prosperity. This survey focuses on the most recent literature, and on three questions in particular: (1) The behavior of dictators, including the strategies that dictators use to stay in power; (2) The relative efficiency of dictatorship: Which is better, dictatorship or democracy, in promoting economic growth and efficiency?; and (3) What policies should the democracies adopt to deal with dictatorships if they are interested in promoting freedom?
This chapter is a revised and updated version of an essay that first appeared in The Encyclopedia of Public Choice edited by Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich Schneider and published in 2004 by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Volume I, 77–90.
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Wintrobe, R. (2008). Dictatorship. In: Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75870-1_21
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