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Hereditary Democracy
Abstract
Hereditary democracy is the phenomenon whereby the children, spouses, or other close family members of powerful politicians are themselves elected to high office. It is a ubiquitous feature of democracy worldwide. What causes it? What are its consequences? To explain hereditary democracy, the article develops a framework that looks at both supply- and demand-side factors, with respect to both the voting masses and party elites, that contribute to an inherited incumbency advantage. The article argues that the practice of hereditary democracy should be condemned. While it has helped women leaders to reach high office in unlikely places, it artificially shrinks the pool of political talent, can lead to disappointed voter expectations, and is fundamentally unfair.
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Between 1999 and 2016, 20 former first ladies ran 26 times for the presidency, vice presidency, or Congress in Latin America. Despite the growing importance of this unique type of candidate, political analysts routinely describe them as mere delegates of ex-presidents. We argue that this view has overlooked the political trajectory of former first ladies and claim that women with elected political experience should be regarded as politicians that use the ceremonial role of first lady as a platform to enhance their careers. Therefore, we hypothesize that first ladies with elected political experience are more likely to become candidates and run for office as soon as they leave the executive branch. We test our argument by analyzing the 90 former first ladies who were eligible to become candidates in 18 Latin American countries from 1999-2016. The results support our argument, opening up a new research agenda in the study of women's representation.
The existence of political families is a well‐known fact in Mexican politics. Since the early 20th century, national and subnational politicians in Mexico have been related to other politicians. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mexico initiated a democratization process that opened the political system to greater contestation, participation, and enforcement of electoral rules. Yet, 30 years after the onset of democratization and the demise of single‐party rule, political families and dynasties continue to be important in Mexican politics. It is even more noticeable at the subnational level, where governors with blood or marital links to other politicians have governed in 27 of the 32 states (84%) since 1989. The aim of this article is to map the existence of subnational political dynasties in Mexico since the transition to democracy and to analyze some possible explanations of this phenomenon. The article makes three main contributions. First, it provides a comprehensive overview of the family relations of all governors elected to the 32 federal entities (states and the autonomous Mexico City) since 1989. Next, it explores some of the explanations advanced by the literature and analyses them in the Mexican case. Finally, it analyses the 2021 gubernatorial elections and the role that family politics played in these elections.
The results of the 2013 Philippine mid-term elections highlighted the dominance of political dynasties in the country. With all 80 provinces littered with political families, 74 percent of the elected members of the House of Representatives came from such dynastic groups. Despite overwhelming recognition that political dynasties breed patronage politics and corruption, no substantial steps have been undertaken to address this issue. This article examines the general nature of Philippine political dynasties, the reasons for their continuing existence and their adverse impact on the country. This problem emanates basically from three factors: (1) the political and socio-economic foundations upon which political dynasties are built; 2) the inability to effectively implement Philippine constitutional provisions by enacting an enabling law; and 3) the weakness of potential countervailing forces that would challenge political dynasties.
Hereditary succession, the conventional method for preserving monarchies, has also been used to perpetuate republic-style dictatorships. With an original data set of 258 post-World War II nonmonarchical autocrats, the author tests Gordon Tullock's hypothesis that hereditary succession appeals to the ruler and to nonfamilial elites wary of a leadership struggle. The full data and close comparisons of succession outcomes are consistent with Tullock's account. In the absence of prior experience selecting a ruler through a party, regime elites accepted filial heirs apparent; when the incumbent had arisen from a party, his successor predominantly emerged from that organization. Among twenty-two cases of potential hereditary succession, variations in institutional history account for 77 percent of succession outcomes. Where the ruler preceded the party, five rulers in seven cases groomed sons and all five sons took office. In contrast, where the party predated the ruler, incumbents successfully installed sons in only three of fifteen cases.
Political dynasties, a salient feature of the electoral politics in many electoral democracies, have critical governance implications. However, careful empirical estimates of the dynasty premium in Indian elections and explanation of their constituency-level demand side (voters) and supply side (political parties) determinants are absent. To fill this gap, we analyze the candidate-level (N = 8251) data on the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and find that a dynastic candidate is a significant 13% more likely to win and has a significant 18%–20% higher vote share than a non-dynastic candidate. This result is robust to consideration of an alternative dynasty variable as outcome, usage of alternative indicators of candidate criminality as controls, and a procedure of deducing bias due to selection on unobservables from selection on observables. In the constituency-level analyses, having a dynastic incumbent legislator in fray and dynasts’ relative wealth increases the probability of a dynastic winner and a more competitive election given the dynastic incumbent reduces it. Voter dissatisfaction, dynasts’ relative wealth, reserved constituency, and given a dynastic incumbent, higher political competition reduce voter preference for dynasts, whereas dynastic entrenchment and dynastic incumbent reduce it. The dynastic incumbent, dynasts’ relative wealth, and voter dissatisfaction significantly increase political parties’ preferences for dynasts.
While the percentage of female heads of state in the world has increased to around 10 percent in the 2010s, a female president or prime minister still remains an exception. Recent scholarship has proposed a number of explanations behind this phenomenon, but there exist important gaps. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we use new and comprehensive data to undertake a systematic examination of the differences in the personal, education, and career backgrounds between female and male effective political leaders from 1960 to 2010. We find that female leaders are as qualified as men. Second, because the phenomenon of female leadership is still a rare occurrence, we argue that this fact must be accounted for in empirical modeling. Third, we show that many female leaders tend to acquire the necessary resources, support, and name recognition through political dynasties. To that end, women leaders need to rely on family ties more than men do. However, the importance of such connections attenuates when female suffrage has been in place for longer, and citizens are more open to women in politics.
In this essay, the authors propose a three-part ideal-type typology that distinguishes between “ruling monarchy,” “constitutional monarchy,” and what they call “democratic parliamentary monarchy” (or DPM for short). For us, the defining characteristic of a DPM is that only the freely elected parliament forms and terminates the government. In a constitutional monarchy, by contrast, there is a strong element of dual legitimacy in that parliament and the monarch need each other’s support in order to form or terminate a government. In still greater contrast, in ruling monarchies the monarch can often unilaterally form or terminate the government. Moreover, each of these three types comes with its own set of patterns concerning the rule of law, constitutional constraints on the monarch, the status of parliament, and the relative autonomy of the judiciary.
Copresidencia de Murillo es un 'capricho' que ni siquiera cabe con una reforma a la Constitución
"Copresidencia de Murillo es un 'capricho' que ni siquiera cabe con una reforma a
la Constitución," Confidencial, 22 February 2023.
Political Dynasties and the Selection of Cabinet Ministers
Smith, Dynasties and Democracy, 4-5, 216-217. See also Daniel M. Smith and
Shane Martin, "Political Dynasties and the Selection of Cabinet Ministers," Legislative
Studies Quarterly 42 (February 2017): 131-165.
See also Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
- Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the
French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 17. See also Francis
Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the
Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
William H. Macy Said He Had 'No Problems' Giving Daughters a 'Leg Up' in Hollywood Prior to College Scandal
- Meredith B Quoted In
- Kile
Quoted in Meredith B. Kile, "William H. Macy Said He Had 'No Problems' Giving
Daughters a 'Leg Up' in Hollywood Prior to College Scandal," Entertainment Tonight, 16
March 2019.
Candidate Selection: The Choice Before the Choice
- Gideon See
- Rahat
See Gideon Rahat, "Candidate Selection: The Choice Before the Choice," Journal
of Democracy 18 (January 2007): 157-170.
On the Social Contract
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "On the Social Contract," in Donald A. Cress, ed., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987 [1762]),
181-182.
The three related to other important male leaders were Gro Brundtland of Norway
- Janet Jagan Of Guyana
- Mireya Moscoso
- Panama
Janet Jagan of Guyana; and Mireya Moscoso of Panama. The three related to other important male leaders were Gro Brundtland of Norway,
Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, and Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua.
Mireya Moscoso of Panama, and Xiomara Castro of Honduras were all wives or widows of former male presidents. Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro was the widow of an assassinated opposition leader
- Presidents Cristina Fernández De Kirchner Of
Presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, Mireya Moscoso of Panama, and Xiomara Castro of Honduras were all wives or widows of former male presidents.
Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro was the widow of an assassinated opposition leader.
For a summary of these contradictory findings, see Smith, Dynasties and Democracy
- Lisa See
- Thomas L Solowiej
- Brunell
See Lisa Solowiej and Thomas L. Brunell, "The Entrance of Women to the U.S.
Congress: The Widow Effect," Political Research Quarterly 56 (September 2003): 283-292.
24. For a summary of these contradictory findings, see Smith, Dynasties and Democracy, 242-244.