Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I contacted Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, the two NYU political scientists who, several years before that, co-authored a book entitled "The Dictator's Handbook," which outlines a novel theory of how political leaders — whether they are democratically elected politicians, unelected autocrats, or somewhere in between — acquire and …
The Indian state is the antithesis of what any state should do. Instead of investing in strengthening public goods and services, the state games electoral politics by giving away private entitlements. This shift from public goods to unequal private entitlements has been the modus operandi of the bloated and costly Indian state, post-liberalization. This is a government that prevents private …
