"I must now once again confess that I do not have a general theory of dictatorship or a general theory of how dictators stay in power. I've been concerned about the problem of dictatorship for almost as long as I've been interested in public choice... The reasons that my writings have mainly been concerned with democracies is simply that dictatorship turns out to be a very difficult subject."

Gordon Tullock, Autocracy. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987, p. 18.