Review: 7 steps to becoming a successful despot - Mark Van Vugt and Anjana Ahuja

The Globe and Mail, 4 Mar 20112. Curry favour by providing public goods efficiently and generously. Benevolent dictatorship was practised by Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore for 31 years. Lee believed that ordinary people could not be entrusted with power because it would corrupt them, and that economics was the major stabilizing force in society. To this end, he effectively eliminated