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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (; born November 24, 1946) is a
political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
, professor at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...
, and senior fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, an ...
.


Biography

Bueno de Mesquita graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1963, (along with
Richard Axel Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and List of university professors at Columbia University, university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medic ...
and Alexander Rosenberg), earned his BA degree from
Queens College, New York Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...
in 1967 and then his MA and PhD from the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
. He specializes in
international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...
, foreign policy, and
nation building Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to ...
. He is one of the originators of
selectorate theory The selectorate theory is a theory of government that studies the interactive relationships between political survival strategies and economic realities. It is first detailed in ''The Logic of Political Survival'', authored by Bruce Bueno de Mesqu ...
, and was also the director of
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...
's Alexander Hamilton Center for
Political Economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
from 2006 to 2016. He was a founding partner at Mesquita & Roundell, until that company merged with his other company, Selectors, LLC, that used the selectorate model for macro-level policy analysis. Now, the company is called Selectors, LLC and uses both the forecasting model and the selectorate approach in consulting. Bueno de Mesquita is discussed in an August 16, 2009 Sunday '' New York Times Magazine'' article entitled "Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?" In December 2008 he was also the subject of a
History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...
two-hour special entitled "The Next
Nostradamus Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book '' Les Prophéties'' (published in 1555), a collection ...
" and has been featured on the 2021
Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
series How to Become a Tyrant. He is the author of many books, including '' The Dictator's Handbook'', co-authored wit
Alastair Smith
and the forthcoming boo
''The Invention of Power''
(January 2022).


Work in Forecasting

Into the early 2000s, Bueno de Mesquita was known for his development of an expected utility model (EUM) capable of predicting the outcome of policy events over a unidimensional policy space. His EUM used
Duncan Black Duncan Black, FBA (23 May 1908 – 14 January 1991) was a Scottish economist who laid the foundations of social choice theory. In particular he was responsible for unearthing the work of many early political scientists, including Charles Lutw ...
's
median voter theorem The median voter theorem is a proposition relating to ranked preference voting put forward by Duncan Black in 1948.Duncan Black, "On the Rationale of Group Decision-making" (1948). It states that if voters and policies are distributed along a one-d ...
to calculate the median voter position of an N-player bargaining game and solved for the median voter position as the outcome of several bargaining rounds using other ad-hoc components in the process. The first implementation of the EUM was used to successfully predict the successor of Indian Prime Minister Y. B. Chavan after his government collapsed (this was additionally the first known time the model was tested). Bueno de Mesquita's model not only correctly predicted that Charan Singh would become prime minister (a prediction that few experts in Indian politics at the time predicted) but also that Y. B. Chavan would be in Singh's cabinet, that Indira Gandhi would briefly support Chavan's government, and that the government would soon collapse (all events that did occur). From the early success of his model, Bueno de Mesquita began a long and continuing career of consulting using refined implementations of his forecasting model. A declassified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency rated his model as being 90 percent accurate. Since 2005 or so, Bueno de Mesquita developed a superior model, now known as the Predictioneer's Game or PG that forecasts in a multi-dimensional space, uses the Schofield mean voter theorem, and solves for Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium in an N-player bargaining game that includes the possibility of coercion, essentially a greatly generalized version of the 2-player game i
War and Reason
This model predicts significantly more accurately and does a substantially better job of identifying opportunities that players have to improve the outcome by exploiting uncertainties. This model is documented in ''A New Model for Predicting Policy Choices: Preliminary Tests'', and discussed and applied to examples in ''The Predictioneer's Game''. Bueno de Mesquita's forecasting model have greatly contributed to the study of political events using forecasting methods, especially through his numerous papers that document elements of his models and predictions. Bueno de Mesquita has published dozens of forecasts in academic journals. The entirety of his models have never been released to the general public.


Publications

* * ''Forecasting Political Events: The Future of Hong Kong'' (with David Newman and Alvin Rabushka). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. * ''Predicting Politics''. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2002. * (with Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, James D. Morrow) * (with Kiron K. Skinner, Serhiy Kudelia, Condoleezza Rice) * * * Principles of International Politics. 2013. * *'' The Invention of Power: Popes, Kings, and the Birth of the West''. PublicAffairs. 2022. ISBN 9781541768758


Family

Bueno de Mesquita has three children and six grandchildren. His son, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, is a political scientist working at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.


References


External links


Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's under faculty at NYU



To See The Future, Use The Logic Of Self-Interest
– ''
NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
'' audio clip * * ** (TED2009)
The New Nostradamus
– on the use by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of rational choice theory in political forecasting
Example of Model Applied To Iran’s Nuclear Program
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce Game theorists Living people 1946 births American political scientists Queens College, City University of New York alumni University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni Scientists from New York City New York University faculty American people of Portuguese-Jewish descent