The dictator’s learning curve

Over the past few years we have all witnessed the toppling of dictators and regimes across the world. Where has the credit been given for these movements? Most of the time, it’s been given to masses of concerned individuals, many of whom use social media. Because of this, it stands to reason that criminals, dictators, and authoritarian regimes are changing the way they work.

William J. Dobson, the politics and foreign affairs editor of Slate, has written a book called “The Dictators Learning Curve”. This book explores how authoritarian leaders are changing their tactics to stay in power, and how frustrated citizens are keeping them on their toes.

A recent article in The New York Times lays it out like this:

“The Dictator’s Learning Curve” is agile and light on its feet, but among its salient points is that pro-democracy movements need to be more than that. Happy thoughts and hippie clothes are not enough. “Revolutions, if they are to be successful,” Mr. Dobson writes, “require planning, preparation, and an intelligent grasp of how to anticipate and outwit a repressive regime that thinks of little beyond preserving its own power.”

Events may move suddenly, Mr. Dobson writes, “but there is usually a movement or organization that put months or years of dangerous (often tedious) work into making that day possible.”

Since forming revolutions is kind of what we do, and since the way that revolutions are formed and acted out is fascinating to us, you can be pretty sure we’re going to give this one a read. If you want to read it, go ahead and buy it here.

- Brady

(Photo credit: digitaltrends.com)
9 notes   -  18 June 2012

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The Rise of the New Groupthink “Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature. One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation.” Continue to the full article.

The Rise of the New Groupthink

“Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation.”

Continue to the full article.