Book Review: Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

In 1976, I was living in Singapore doing a research project on Western foreign correspondents in Southeast Asia. One of my interviewees was James Fu, who deftly combined the roles of Lee Kwan Yew’s press secretary with being news director at the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. He spent mornings in the Prime Minister’s office and afternoons at the TV studio. He was an early embodiment of the theme of this book Spin Dictators. Guriev and Treisman argue that over the last generation the earlier “fear dictators” who intimidated their citizens through violence and sought total control have been increasingly supplanted by dictators using more sophisticated control measures. Their examples include Singapore’s pioneering Lee, Russia’s Putin, Peru’s Fujimori, Venezuela’s Chavez, Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamed and his successors, Hungary’s Orban, and Turkey’s Erdogan. The rich array of examples under these and other rulers are complemented by quantitative data on different regime types, including for example numbers of political prisoners and political killings. The move from fear to spin dictators is very much a result of—and in turn a driver of —what they call “the modernisation cocktail.” It reflects the changing political dynamics in a postindustrial society. Whereas fear dictators aim to intimidate their citizens and often publicly parade their violence in suppressing dissent; spin dictators aim to encourage affection and respect. They are more likely to conceal or camouflage any violence. Rather than instilling fear, they place a higher priority on projecting their competence, and ability to advance the country. Whereas fear dictators sought total and obvious censorship spin dictators aim for “sensible censorship,” with a much lighter, less publicly visible touch and more sophisticated means of surveillance. Many have moved from censoring the media to coopting them, seeking celebrity endorsements, or staging international sporting events. Book Review