The last couple of years have been tough on dictators. For whatever reason — the advent of mass communications, the echo of the end of the cold war, or the poor economic environment — dictators have had to deal with a lot of uprisings. Many have lost their jobs (not to mention their heads).

So it’s easy to think that tyranny is on the way out and that the continued march toward modernization and enlightenment will eventually drive out the scoundrels.

Alas, not so. Or at least that’s the message of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics.

This is a book that anti-government types are going to love. Weaving their way between such tyrants as Mugabe in Zimbabwe and such crooks as the City of Bell officials, the authors paint a picture of how government corruption is usually a successful enterprise. We don’t always call it corruption — indeed, what happened in Bell was mostly legal. But whether legal or not, it amounts to bad behavior. And it tends to work.

I didn’t agree with everything in this book. For one thing, it’s too negative about human behavior. It’s also without much hope for improvement. But I did appreciate a lot of the points in the book and can see that the authors are onto something. They might stretch the realities a bit to prove a point (or to sell books), but it’s still a valid concern for all of us who pay taxes and have officials overseeing the public treasury.

It’s definitely worth reading. But I’d caution against too strong a response to the book.