This book was published in 2003 with ideas for ousting 2003's 45 existing dictators by 2025. We can now compare 2019's and 2024's dictators: some from 2003 are gone, some in 2019 are new, some have changed from an old dictator to a new dictator. Changes in the last 21 years were often military, with undemocratic results that Palmer predicted. Palmer was a diplomat, and gave ideas for non-military changes. Instead, Palmer wanted change by democratic movements encouraged within the country, and it looks like he was right about needing them.
On the down side, it looks like Palmer overestimated the strength of democratic movements, and underestimated tools which dictators use to suppress democratic movements. Palmer correctly noted the mineral wealth controlled by dictators, without noting the effect the same mineral wealth wealth might have on a democratic movement which ousted a dictator.
So this is an excellent book for refining current ideas on promoting freedom and democratic self-government. Palmer's ideas expected nations to go directly from dictator to self-government, and there is little evidence in 21 years that nations can make single leaps like that. Current ideas for promoting democracy still resemble Palmer's single leaps, so reading this book 21 years after publication may open eyes.
In 2019, 5 of Palmer's countries worth noting: Liberia, Iraq, Pakistan, Burma, Tunisia. Liberia after Charles Taylor showed itself able to self-govern, the other 4 struggled but progressed while avoiding new dictators. In 2024, Burma and Tunisia have lost the struggle: Burma to the military, Tunisia to a dictator's party.
In 2019, 4 countries without dictators worth noting because they show winner-take-all national elections can't block captures by a dominating political party: Venezuela, Hungary, Poland, Turkey. Palmer's ideas don't anticipate this route to losing freedom, so new ideas are needed for replacing a dictator while blocking dominating parties. In 2024, Turkey and Hungary are worse, while Poland has just begun a valiant effort.
Bottom line: we can read Palmer's ideas to see what is wrong with our own ideas. As a start, we can compare Palmer's ideas, which replaced dictators in national elections, to possible ideas for self-governing city elections. We might ask ourselves if it is better to grow democracy bottom up rather than top down? While working bottom up, outsiders would need to manage the wealth of newly freed nations, in order to keep sudden power and wealth away from unprepared citizens. With 21 years of hindsight, encouraging sudden power and wealth from a single winner-take-all election looks like a Palmer mistake that our current ideas seem intent on repeating, so a critical reading of Palmer is highly recommended to see that without a competent democratic government ready to fill a vacuum, after removal of one dictator there will be a new dictator. Competence in governing democratic nation-states seems unlikely to grow during a dictatorship. Competence in governing smaller partitions seems more achievable, if their future interactions were managed by contractors from solid democracies.
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