Political Favoritism and Regime Stability: Why Bad Policy is Almost Always Good Politics

The Growth Lab's Development Talks is a series of conversations with policymakers and academics working in international development. The seminar provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to discuss both the practice of development and analytical work centered on policy.
Speakers:
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Silver Professor; Professor of Politics, New York University
Alastair Smith, Bernhardt Denmark Professor of International Relations, New York University
Moderator: José Morales-Arilla, Research Fellow, Growth Lab; Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Politics, Princeton University

[@amoszweig]

hello Prof. DeMesquita and Prof. Smith How would you evaluate the original athenian form of democracy: government by revolving random council? for every political question, roughly 10 people are chosen from the whole population at random, and they then have to debate until they reach a unilateral agreement on the course of action. it seems to me, that corruption would be straight out the window, because one would have to bribe the entire population, and also in the random councils egoistic decisions would be very unlikely, because such a decision could just be repudiated by a next random council.