Every now and then I go back to the ideas developed by Mesquita and his colleagues about the Selectorate Theory. They entered public discourse via CGP Grey’s videos, and a book called The Dictator’s Handbook.

The wikipedia article I linked to above, gives a pretty good overview. I see it as a work in the line of Machiavelli, or Gramsci: a theory of how power operates. There are some very good common-sense arguments there for example for expanding democratic participation (“the size of the selectorate”) as much as possible in as many spheres as possible, because small selectorates simply mean less public goods. At its limit, it leads quite naturally to egalitarianism in politics, the economy, etc.

I’m not saying it is perfect as a universal theory of everything, of course. It’s an abstraction, but it seems a very useful one. I think that it’s a very useful tool that seems to be completely ignored in left/socialist circles.