In order to make an impact in the political world, we need to understand the science of politics, which means setting aside emotion and designing general models of strategic behavior and equilibrium drawn from game theory. These models may not only explain the past but predict the future.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist, a professor at New York University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an author, and his latest work is titled, The Invention of Power: Popes, Kings, and the Birth of the West, where he argues that battles over power nearly 1000 years ago have had profound consequences for European history up to the present.

Bruce and Greg discuss all of Bruce’s books, how to use game theory, and to look at political science analytically, just like any other science. They go over the emergence of Western Europe, the rise and fall of dictatorships, and the possible fate of Vladimir Putin.

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Episode Quotes:

What makes game theory such a powerful tool for predicting present and future outcomes?

13:45: People think about their own well-being. They're interested in making themselves, their families so forth, better off. They understand that rivals, competitors are thinking exactly the same thing about themselves. So you have to figure out what should I do? And how will people competing with me react to what I do. Will I be worse off if I do what I really want, or will I be better off doing what I really want or doing something else? Well, that's the domain of game theory. It is how entities—in this case, people—interact strategically.

Why dictators keep their inner circle small

23:41: Dictators depend on very few people to keep them in power, so they have to keep those people sufficiently happy that they don't find a rival who could do better by them.

One of the unfortunate features of political science

02:52: If you want to improve the way the world works, from whatever lights you have as to what is an improvement. You can't do that without understanding what makes it come out the way it is so that you can figure out how to incentivize, by rewarding or punishing people, to behave differently. That requires science. It doesn't require opinion. It doesn't require speculation. It doesn't require partisanship.

Rationality doesn’t require that you’re right

21:08: Rationality doesn't require that you're right. It just requires that your actions are motivated by your beliefs about what are the things that you should do now.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

Guest Profile:

Faculty Profile at NYU
Professional Profile at American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on LinkedIn
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on TEDTalk

His Work:

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