In a September interview with the New York Sun, the soon-to-be assassinated Benazir Bhutto explained how political ignorance fosters political nepotism by leading voters to support canddiates who are relatives of popular politicians (hat tip Kerry Howley):
Q: Why do you think that the U.S. seems to have a harder time with women at the highest level of power than other countries?
A [Benazir Bhutto]: In a country like Pakistan or India, when a charismatic leader dies, people are not sure that the traditions he symbolized will continue—there’s a lot of illiteracy and there isn’t the same access to information. So they tend to transfer allegiance from a male leader to a female descendant, in the hope that his policies will be continued. But in Westernized societies, it’s a little different, because people have greater education and greater access to information—they don’t have the same need to be sure of the message of the leader.
Because voters know very little about the details of candidates' ideology and issue positions, they use a candidate's family affiliation with a popular political leader as an information shortcut. Voters could instead analyze each candidates' qualifications and ideology in detail (though, as Bhutto noted, that may be impossible for those who are illiterate or poorly educated). However, rational ignorance ensures that most of them have neither the time nor the incentive to do so. Bhutto herself, of course, rose to power in Pakistan in large part because voters associated her with her father, a popular politician who had been executed by a military dictator in 1979.
Bhutto was wrong to assume that this logic is limited to female politicians in economically backward societies. Right here in the United States, George W. Bush would probably never have become president if not for the voter name recognition he enjoyed by virtue of being the son of a former president. Hillary Clinton would not now be a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination if not for her association with her popular ex-president husband. Few of the many Kennedys who have achieved elected office would have done so absent their family name. To paraphrase one of Senator Ted Kennedy's electoral opponents, he would never have made it to the Senate if his name were not Edward Moore Kennedy but Edward Moore.
Is this kind of ignorance-induced voter nepotism a bad thing? I would suggest that it often is. Political leaders who achieve high office in large part because of nepotism are likely to be less qualified, on average, than those who reach it by virtue of their own achievements. This is not surprising; it takes a lot less ability to win office on your daddy's or spouses coat tails than to do so without it. George W. Bush's incompetence on many issues is a case in point. Most of the Third World politicians who became heads of government by this means were also failures in office (see the examples Kerry Howley gives in her post linked above). Benazir Bhutto, for all her recent courage in opposing military dictatorship and radical Islamism, was ineffective in her two terms as prime Minister of Pakistan in the 1990s. Isabel Peron's disastrous term as president of Argentina after the death of her husband Juan Peron helped set the stage for a brutal military dictatorship (not entirely unlike the way that Bhutto's failures in office helped pave the way for Purvez Musharraf's military coup).
On rare occasions, the nepotism information shortcut pays off. Winston Churchill was first elected to Parliament in large part because voters associated him with his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a popular Conservative politician of the 1880s. However, Bush, Bhutto, and the lesser Kennedys are more typical beneficiaries of ignorance-induced political nepotism than Churchill.
As Bhutto pointed out, this form of nepotism does have one potential advantage: it can sometimes pave the way for women to reach high office in sexist patriarchal societies that might not otherwise accept them in such positions. I don't deny that such achievements have some symbolic value. But I'm not convinced that they're worth the high price we pay for them in the form of policy disasters caused by poor leadership. Moreover, it's not clear how much of a breakthrough for women such events really represent if people recognize that the women in question reached high office primarily because of their family connections. To my mind, the true breakthroughs for women in underdeveloped societies are likely to come when their opportunities and social status increase as a result of economic development. Ineffective political leaders of either gender are likely to set back such development - and with it the cause of women's rights.
Regarding Peron, you're wrong: Isabelita inherited a disastrous situation and she relied on the same person (Lopez Rega) that had been running the government between June 20, 1973 and April 1, 1974.
Don't you mean family affiliation, as in Democrat or Republican?
This applies to industries besides politics, too. Academia, law, even Hollywood... people in those fields should make sure the relatives who want to ride their coattails pay some dues along the way.
Her political party, the PPP, is a hereditary party. Don't feel bad though, Senator Clinton got that wrong also, as this blogger helpfully points out:
link
You're vastly overrating the importance of 41's connection to 43. GHW Bush had approval ratings as low as W's, falling from the 90% range after GWI due to internal party fights and a lingering recession. Name recognition might have played a part in obtaining the nomination but I don't think any one has a particular fondness for the four years that GWH Bush was president (in contrast to the current Bill Clinton-era nostalgia boom).
Also, W is/was less qualified than who, exactly? Among the current front runners for nomination are a senator who served a single term before declining to seek re-election and a senator who hasn't finished his first term. Neither have significant executive experience. W was twice elected governor of the second most populous state, defeating a popular and nationally recognized Democrat (Ann Richards) and subsequently winning re-election in a landslide.
Nepotism also doesn't explain why W was *re-elected* to both the Texas governorship and Presidency. Certainly after four years, enough information was available that even the most (rationally or not) ignorant would be able to judge him on his own merits.
I do support W, and used him as an example but I do think that Hillary Clinton supporters could made a similar objection if she were elected President twice.
That article is from August 2006, and things haven't improved.
I agree. I think Tori Spelling never quite pulled that off.
Are you kidding? Do you seriously believe George W. Bush would be anything other than a propane salesman (and that would be a pretty lofty achievement for him) living in Arlen, TX if he wasn't the son of George H.W. and grandson of Prescott Bush? I doubt he would have been admitted to the University of Texas, let alone Yale (and forget about Andover for prep school) if not for his family connections.
Still, you could certainly say that George H.W. Bush came from more modest beginnings than Al Gore or John Kerry, had fewer things handed to him, and did better in school and in business than either of them.
J.F. Thomas, how did Teddy Kennedy get into (and out of with a degree) Harvard? And brainiac Al Gore? How did that dimbulb get into college and get a degree (although evidently grad school in theology was too hard for him)? Would Eisenhower *ever* have become president (graduated fairly low from West Point) if he hadn't been lucky enough to have a major war to fight?
Poor old Harry Truman, didn't even go to college. Left office with an approval rating that looks like Bush's now.
Boy, this scenario playing is fun!
Regardless of what one thinks of GWB as President, I agree that his father's legacy probably played only a minor role in his political rise--and that he was elected President in 2000 more because of his record as Governor of Texas than as son and namesake of the first President Bush.
I would also note that if his name was Jeb Ellis, instead of Jeb Ellis Bush, the former Florida Governor would be a top-tier candidate based on his record as Governor, and not forced to sit out the campaign because his brother is the incumbent President.
Additionally, Maureen Reagan's famous name ended up being of little use when she tried to capitalize on it to gain a Senate seat in California.
Sean O'Hara points to the many members of Congress who are related to other members--but even the article he linked (from USA Today before the 2006 election) has as many eventual losers (4) as winners (4).
And I would also note that some of the relationships are probably, at best, irrelevant. I doubt very much, for example, that the people of North Carolina voted for Elizabeth Dole because she is married to Bob. Or even more, that the people of New JerseyNew Jersey voted for Rush Holt because his father served one term as a United States Senator from West Virginia that ended seven years before the younger Holt was even born.
If memory serves, the force of the comment was somewhat blunted by the family connections and political pedigree of the commenter, but I just can't recall his name at the moment.
I believe it was the 1962 special election and the opposing candidate was George Lodge. Not a very bright moment for Lodge.
One only has to look towards the Kennedy clan to see that things could have turned out very differently.
At some point even an individual born to privilige has to stand or fall on his own merits. The implication that ignorance and nepotism account for *re-electing*, with substantially greater margins of victory than in the first election, an incompetent says more about how you view the voters than the candidate.
It's not necessarily the details of politics, but also not this romantic "ethic of public service" either. It's the family political machine the gets built, gets inherited and self-perpetuates as long as there is at least some kind of material for the machine to mold. The moldable pieces are largely interchangeable as has been seen in the sequence of Kennedy brothers (whoever is the senior one left standing) and their kids, and the selection of Bush brothers appropriate for the moment (e.g., George instead of Jeb). At this point the Kennedy machine seems to have run out of suitable pieces. We shall see about the Bush and the Clinton machines in the future. Note, that these machines, thankfully, are not complete inheritable parties like in the third world, althogh they can dominate a party at times.
The importance of family name goes back at least as far as John Q. Adams.
I'm sorry but I dispute this.
NZ (1893); Australia (1902); Finland (1906); Norway and (with a degree of ambiguous phrasing) Denmark (1913); Canada (1917); Britain, Germany, Poland (1918); Netherlands (1919); USA (1920). Some forefront.
In exile, Bhutto did oppose the military dictatorship of Musharraf (and before him that of Zia ul-Haq, who hanged her father). But there was no other way back to power for her and her family. When in office, though, she is said by some to have cynically encouraged the rise of the Taliban; she claimed to be "out of the loop" while Pakistan was secretly developing nuclear weapons; and her family profitted hugely from corruption. This daughter of privilege and power, attractive, smart, speaking excellent English, socially adept, product of Harvard and Oxford, assembled a court around her not unlike that around JFK and later his brothers, and that court did much to help her burnish the secular saint image. How saintly was she, though?
We in this country are very ill-informed about Pakistan's internal affairs, though Pakistan is so dangerous a place for us. Anne Applebaum, perhaps the smartest person writing for the Washington Post, had an excellent column a couple of days ago (Jan 1) about Bhutto as a member of "that not-very-exclusive club of foreign politicians who are admired or respected in the West but bitterly despised by at least a portion of their fellow citizens."
Here is the link fromSlate and here is the link from the Washington Post (same article).
Do you know any politician who isn't despised by at least a portion of their fellow citizens?
Although, I do think in this case, political nepotism results from what I believe is it's actual cause, ie People like stability, aka the trough stays full, which is probably different from the thought that people are ignorant, rather, they're just self-interested.
Bhutto was hated by a significant number of her countryman (no, I have no data to offer), and that threatened to turn murderous, as it did, and even threatened something close to civil war (still a threat without her around). When politicians are that despised in a country as divided, unstable, and volatile as Pakistan, it isn't a good thing for them or us. Many of those who hated Bhutto are unquestionably despicable, but that isn't so relevant here. (Sadat was better than what Egypt had had and what it has had since, but the despicable Muslim Brotherhood types were determined to dispose of him, and they did.)
We need to understand the world as it is and act accordingly, not go with misinformed, but pleasing notions (e.g., Bhutto as a Muslim Joan of Arc) that lead us in the wrong direction on foreign policy.
[PS Why have I never been able to create a link on VC using the link function and pasting in the website address?]
Simply recommending the indepth analysis to the rationally ignorant avoids the hard issue. Start with the idea that they will absolutely not do the analysis, and they absolutely will vote. Now, what do you recommend that's better than family connections?
From the get-go at that: John Adams and John Quincy Adams
One positive thing is that American political dynasties seem to burn out pretty fast. They aren't backed by the kind of wealth that the old feudal aristocracies were, if you think of the percentage of wealth in the society as a whole, so they remain more open to challenge by up-and-comers. Regression to the mean also plays a role, so you find a lot of dumb rich kids without the brains or ambition to run for city counsel. And, frankly, there are better ways to make money. All this keeps the political class churning, even if some families seem unusually prominent for a time.
Your original post implied that Americans shouldn't become enamored of foreign politician who are despised by at least a portion of their population. It doesn't say significant portion. But that's sort of beside the point. Anybody who makes great changes will be despised by a significant portion of the population. Winston Churchhill, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Lincoln, Reagan, Oliver Cromwell.
If we don't "become enamored" of any foreign politican who is despised by a portion of their population, or even a significant portion, doesn't that mean we will miss both the good and the bad. Perhaps more importantly, given that all politicians are despised, doesn't that imply that we should keep ourselves ignorant of foreign affairs? Hardly the choice most of us would support.
My point wasn't that "that Americans shouldn't become enamored of foreign politicians who are despised by at least a portion of their population." Every politician will be despised by some portion, substantial or insubstantial, of their countrymen and loved by others. (If none of their countrymen favored them, how could they be even minimally successful?) And some of those despising those politicians will themselves be among the most despicable (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt vis-a-vis Sadat, the Taliban types in Pakistan vis-a-vis Benzir Bhutto, etc.). My point was that it is perilously foolish of us to rely on the "package" persona we are served up here in the US of someone like Bhutto rather than inform ourselves about their track records while in opposition and in office, what they are really about rather than just how well they interview here, what forces are with them and against them, etc.
Again, I highly commend Anne Applebaum's 1/1/08 "The Two Benzir Bhuttos." Then put that together with the NYT's 12/30/07 "How Bhutto Won Washington."
What are you suggesting as an alternative seeing as most people could not find Pakistan on a map and that the news is bombings and assassinations? All they hear from "people who know" is that Bhutto is that democracy supporting brave woman in that country that starts with a P. Since Pakistan is in no way central to their world what is left? We will continue to go down the perilous trail. Most people don't know national issues let alone international ones. If you can't get off your ass to find out about the plethora of national issues we have your not even going to reach for the remote on international ones.
I do not mean to do a special number on Bhutto, she just happens to be a timely and very apt example of "image" that may not fully comport with "reality." We could talk about Putin, who our president assured us was OK because he had looked into the Russian's heart and seen that it was a good one, but I find it too painful to do so. (I'd like to believe that George W. isn't that stupid, that he was just trying to sell Vladimir to us because it was politically expedient at the time, but I'm not convinced.)
I do not even begin to hope that this will change. Too much exposure to foreign affairs and American perception as an Intel Analyst. The real deal is that until the perception is the country is a direct threat to the U.S. it won't change. Right now the perception is its a peripheral threat. And I have absolutely no confidence the average perception molder can place Pakistani politics in a form that is both accurate and easy to understand. Damn furriners!!
(Compare this to Bayh, Casey, Landrieu, Pryor, Murkowski, Sununu, and Dodd, all elected from areas where their parents were Big, and Gore, Taft, Chaffee, and Jerry Brown, doing the same earlier.)