The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political                  question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office                  while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this                  political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some                  countries experience successful economic development and others do not.The authors                  construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific                  formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how                  political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders                  create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend                  the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the                  book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy                  France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The                  authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical                  language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by                  presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically                  and empirically.

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