Podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/user-280580802/217-nepotism-and-southeast-asian-politics
In a recent op-ed Richburg (2024) noted that Southeast Asian politics is characterized by a significant amount of nepotism, i.e. the appointment of family members or close friends into high government positions. Nepotism is not easily reconcilable with rationalist modes of running a government. Max Weber had defined the six features that would make up a rational bureaucracy: specialization/ division of labor (rather than a powerful ruler trying to control most tasks), competence for job appointments, impersonality in bureaucracy, standard operating procedures and formal written records. Rational governments separate the officeholder from the ownership of the instruments of state power. Government leaders in rational bureaucratic systems are supposed to competently discharge their duties and not fill the bureaucratic ranks with incompetent family members.
The lack of rationality hinders predictable and stable institution-building which is a prerequisite to capitalist economic development. The nepotistic rulers counter that people that were born into power are the most knowledgeable in wielding it. Think of the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko clutching the hand of his infant son Nikolai during state events. By now, Nikolai is turning 20 years old and is taller than his father. He is groomed to become the next Belarusian leader, assuming Lukashenko is not toppled. It is true that the descendants of the more powerful have more education than the common folk, but not all political acumen can be easily taught. The history of monarchies suggest many cases of failing dynasties due to later generations of leadership being self-centered and incapable of running the country’s affairs. Chinese dynasties lasted no more than 300 years.
In this post, I focus on the Southeast Asian case studies of nepotism.
Several Ruling Families
In the following case studies there are several ruling families in the political order. They are competing and jockeying for the high offices of the state.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, a former military general, vice presidential candidate in 2009 and presidential candidate in all the last three elections, was now elected president. He ran twice as the leading candidate against his predecessor Joko Widodo and lost each time. Prabowo is a leader for the Gerindra Party and is the son of Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, the former minister for research and technology in the Suharto adminsitration. Sumitro’s father was Margono Djojohadikusumo, founder of the country’s first state bank Bang Negara Indonesia and wrote the post-independence constitution. Coming from a high functionary family, Prabowo entered military service in 1970 and was promoted to general. From 1976 onward, Indonesia fought a war with East Timor following its declaration of independence from the Dutch. Indonesia itself obtained its independence from the Netherlands in 1945.
The East Timorese Fretilin Party was pro-communist and the fearful Suharto wanted to prevent communist rule by annexing East Timor into Indonesia. What followed was a decades long East Timorese independence struggle which the Indonesian Army brutally suppressed. General Prabowo had commanded the Special Forces that were responsible for various massacres in East Timor. East Timor ultimately obtained independence in 2002. When the Suharto regime was facing mass unrest, Prabowo’s task was to intimidate protesters and suppress the riots. When Suharto resigned in May 1998, Prabowo was also forced out from the military ranks. After his military retirement, he spent a few years in Jordanian exile, but he continued to invest in various family businesses, including stakes in paper pulp, oil, gas, coal, palm oil and fishery. The businessman in the family is Prabowo’s brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo. Prabowo became the wealthiest politician, when he entered politics in 2008. Hashim’s two kids, Aryo and Rahayu, have served as MPs from 2014 to 2019, but they decided not to run for reelection. Prabowo’s son, Didit Hediprasetyo, is a fashion designer and has no interest in politics.
After his second loss against Jokowi, Prabowo was appointed as the defense minister, where he focused on increasing defense procurement in naval vessels and the air force. There are increasing concerns about naval piracy and contestation with China for control over the South Chinese Sea along with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. For the current presidential election, Prabowo ensured his victory by appointing the young Jokowi son, Gibran Rakabuming Raja, as his running mate. Gibran has been serving as mayor of Surakarta, a post held previously by his father Jokowi. Gibran is 36 years old and the Indonesian constitution stipulates the candidate to be at least 40 years old. The constitutional court permitted below 40 regional officials, including Gibran, to run as vice president, clearly implying that this was a loophole designed for the president’s son. It is not surprising that Jokowi subsequently endorsed his erstwhile political adversary and went against his party mate from PDI-P, Ganjar Pranowo. Jokowi is building up a political dynasty, which is ironic given that he himself comes from quite humble background unlike Prabowo. Jokowi was not shy with nepotism. He appointed Puan Megawati as culture affairs minister. She is the daughter of Megawati Sukarnoputri and PDI-P party leader.
PDI-P is a formally left-leaning progressive party founded by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the first female president of Indonesia from 2001 to 2004. Megawati is the daughter of former founding president Sukarno, who served from 1945 to 1967. Sukarno was overthrown by a pro-western military junta under Suharto due to his sympathies with the Soviet Union and the Non-Aligned Movement. Other prominent members of the Sukarno family were Sukarno’s other daughter Rachmawati Sukarnoputri, Member of the Presidential Advisory Council, and was in opposition to her older sister, Sukmawati Sukarnoputri, who founded an unsuccessful small party called Indonesian National Party (PNI), and son Guruh Sukarnoputra, an MP in Megawati’s PDI-P and musician.
Megawati had handpicked Jokowi as PDI-P presidential contestant in 2014, which made it easy for him to become the party nominee. Megawati was not a great public speaker, but she had significant political backing because of the political halo of her father, who was the founder of the nation. When Suharto’s dictatorship was toppled in 1997, she was the rising political star and became vice president in the 1999 elections. She ascended to the presidency following the impeachment of Abdurrahman Wahid, who had illegally dissolved the parliament and suspended Golkar Party, which was Suharto’s Party that held absolute political power until 1999 when the first democratic free and fair elections were held. Prabowo himself was a member of Golkar until 2008.
To round out the Indonesia discussion, President Suharto attempted to promote his own family members into politics as well. Suharto’s daughter Tutut was deputy chairperson of his Golkar Party, became first lady after the death of Suharto’s wife in 1996 and served for two months as social affairs minister before Suharto’s toppling. Suharto was building Tutut up as his successor, but his fall probably prevented that. When Tutut announced her run for the presidential elections in 2004, her party, the Concern for the Nation Functional Party (PKPB) only obtained 2.1% of the vote, so she was not eligible to stand. Her younger sister Titiek joined Gerindra, Prabowo’s political party. Previously she was an MP for Golkar. Titiek is the former wife of Prabowo. The most notorious Suharto offspring was the son Tommy, who is the leader of Berkarya a small party that failed to get any seats. He previously attempted to become the Golkar party leader. He was convicted for killing a judge who convicted him of corruption, serving 4 years in jail before being released in 2006. During Suharto’s rule, Tommy benefited from business concessions in cloves, a toll road, a car company, explosives producers, an airline and the state oil company, and he made sure to skim off the top. Corruption prosecutions did not happen until after the fall of Suharto. The Suharto family’s estimated net worth is north of $15 billion.
The membership of multiple family members in political offices indicates a significant degree of nepotism as part of the normal operation of politics, although the roots of Jokowi, Prabowo or Sukarnoputri’s political rule are still shallow unlike in the Philippines.
Philippines
Similar to Prabowo in Indonesia, Bongbong Marcos was elected president of the Philippines in 2022 appointing Sara Duterte as vice president. Sara served as mayor of Davao City. Sara is the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, the former president from 2016 to 2022. Marcos secured the support of his predecessor in his electoral campaign, though in the Filipino election system presidential and vice presidential elections happen on separate ballots. It was the first election where the president and vice president from the same party ticket were elected. Marcos himself is the son of the former president and long-running dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was the president from 1965 until 1986. Under Ferdinand Marcos thousands of dissidents were incarcerated, tortured and killed. The Marcos clan originated from Ilocos Norte in the northern island of Luzon, while Duterte’s power base is the southern island of Mindanao, where Duterte served as mayor of Davao City. In the 2022 presidential elections, Bongbong carried both population centers in Luzon and Mindanao, leaving only the smaller islands of Visayas to his adversary Leni Robredo.
Marcos first became politically active at the age of 22, when he was appointed vice governor of his father’s home province of Illocos Norte (1980-1983). The governor was his aunt, Ferdinand Marcos’ sister Elizabeth Marcos-Keon. Marcos received a promotion to the governorship in 1983 when his sick aunt retired. Marcos-Keon’s son Michael Marcos-Keon would serve as Illocos Norte governor in 2007 to 2010. Bongbong’s sister Imee Marcos served in that role from 2010 to 2019. Imee had attended Princeton University but never graduated from it. The incumbent governor is Matthew Manotoc, the son of Imee. Imee herself admitted, “It’s pretty feudal in the Philippines still, even though we like to fool ourselves.” (SMH 2012)
Bongbong Marcos had briefly attended the University of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School but couldn’t pass his exams and left without the respective degrees. Nepotism grazed in Ferdinand Marcos administration, as he appointed his son as chairman of the Philippine Communications Satellite Corporation in 1985. He was collecting a hefty salary without any formal responsibilities. The three Marcos children were assigned a mansion in Manila and Baguio. Bongbong’s mother, the First Lady Imelda, was infamous for her large shoe collection. The Marcos family has hidden an estimated $7 billion in foreign bank accounts, only a portion of which had been recovered by the Philippine government. By 1986, the Marcos party was over, because Ferdinand Marcos was toppled in a democratic uprising which brought the pro-democracy activist Corazon Aquino to power (more on them later).
Marcos and his family involving 80 individuals fled to Hawaii, where Ferdinand Marcos died in exile in 1989, but the rest of the Marcos family returned to the Philippines in 1991 to face various financial charges. But they were quickly integrated back into politics. Bongbong promptly ran for Congress in 1992, then served again as Ilocos Norte governor from 1998 until 2007. In 2016, Bongbong ran on the vice presidential ticket serving with Miriam Defensor Santiago, but the duo lost to Rodrigo Duterte and Leni Robredo. Bongbong was unhappy about the election result and demanded a recount. Duterte had threatened to resign if the vice presidency was handed to Bongbong. But the recount increased Robredo’s majority and the Presidential Election Tribunal dismissed Bongbong’s electoral recount. With Bongbong’s 2022 victory with the help of the Dutertes, the Marcos family returned to national power. All of the stolen money and human rights violations of the earlier Marcos regime no longer mattered to the electorate.
The other power faction were the Aquinos from Tarlac. Tarlac is in Luzon, but closer to the capital Manila than Iloco Norte. Corazon was the widow of the other pro-democracy activist Benigno Aquino Jr. or Ninoy, who was assassinated in 1983. Corazon was born to the Cojuangco family. Her father was Jose Cojuangco, a Tarlac businessman and Congressman. Ninoy was the son of Benigno Aquino Sr., Senate majority leader from Tarlac. Ninoy was the opposition leader attempting to challenge Ferdinand Marcos for which he was killed. The soldiers in charge of the assassination were later convicted during the Corazon Aquino presidency. Corazon entered politics following the killing of her husband and had the most legitimacy among the opposition groups. Corazon’s rule was somewhat controversial because her promise of land redistribution faced barriers, and the authorities had exempted her Cojuangco clan, major landowners, from redistribution. Instead, land shareholdings were handed to the local farmers. Ninoy and Corazon had four daughters and a son. The son, Benigno Aquino III or Noynoy, became Congressman for Tarlac (1998-2007), Senator (2007-2010) and president (2010-2016). Noynoy declared his run for the presidency only 40 days after the death of his mother, citing his desire to carry forward his family’s legacy. He won the election with that political energy. Noynoy retired in 2016 due to the term limit and passed away in 2021.
It is noteworthy that the term limit does not become an impediment to dynastic rule. In fact, the ambition of multiple family members can be better accommodated with term limits for the presidency, while there are enough House and Senate seats to accommodate the rest of the family.
Cambodia
In Cambodia, there is a monarchy under the House of Norodom. The dominant actor in the second half of the last century was King Norodom Sihanouk, who served as king from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993-2004. In 1955, he abdicated and handed the title to his father, so he could become prime minister. Sihanouk’s father passed away in 1960 after which Sihanouk became Chief of State. He was toppled by the Khmer Rouge communists in 1970 after which he served as government-in-exile. He returned in 1975, but had poor relations with the Khmer. He was put under house arrest from 1976 to 1979. In 1979, the Vietnamese government invaded Cambodia and toppled the Khmer, putting a loyalist People’s Republic of Kampuchea in charge. Sihanouk opposed that government and instead formed a government-in-exile. The 1991 Paris Peace Accords finally organized a general election forming a coalition government between Sihanouk’s son Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen. Sihanouk was reinstalled as king in 1993 before his abdication in 2004. Sihanouk died in 2012.
Ranariddh and Hun Sen led different political factions with a power-sharing agreement. Hun Sen led the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). By the late-1990s, the more power-hungry Hun Sen pushed Ranariddh to the political sideline. Ranariddh served as Prime Minister from 1993 to 1997. In 1997, Sen removed Ranariddh in a political coup. Ranariddh served as president of the National Assembly from 1998 to 2006. In 2006, Ranariddh was ousted by his own party, FUNCINPEC. He founded his own party but now Hun Sen used an embezzlement charge to drive Ranariddh into exile. In 2008, he returned to Cambodia and founded a new political party in 2014. In 2015, he returned to FUNCINPEC. By that point, he was completely marginalized politically. In 2018, he got into a car accident which killed his wife. He was on frequent medical treatment and died in a hospital in France in 2021.
Ranariddh’s younger brother Norodom Chakrapong served in both major political parties. He started in his brother’s FUNCINPEC, then joined Hun Sen’s CPP serving as deputy prime minister from 1992 to 1993. He then led a secession attempt for which he was forced into brief exile. In the mid-2000s, he returned to his brother’s camp. In 2007, he quit politics and was appointed to the Supreme Privy Council and in 2013 to the Constitutional Council by the King, his nephew Norodom Sihamoni. Sihamoni spent most of his childhood in Czechoslovakia, speaking fluent Czech, and reading about the Czech theater scene. He keeps a politically low profile, although he has advocated for “free and fair elections”, which is meant as an underhanded criticism of Hun Sen’s quasi-dictatorial rule as prime minister. Another daughter of Sihanouk is Norodom Arunrasmy, who served as president of FUNCINPEC (2013-2015) and Senator since 2018. Ranariddh’s son, Norodom Chakravuth, is the current FUNCINPEC leader and leader of the opposition. In his investiture speech Chakravuth said, “I am going to reunite the former royalists, Sihanoukists and Ranariddhists, so that the party can return to its former levels of success.”
The actual political power in Cambodia is vested in Hun Sen and his family. Sen came from a family of monks but joined the Khmer Rouge in 1970, then gradually climbing the political ranks within the military. He had the ability to align himself with any dominant power. When the Khmer Rouge regime expelled him in 1977, he fled to Vietnam. Vietnam toppled Khmer Rouge in 1979 and installed Sen as deputy prime minister. In 1985, he became prime minister. After the Paris Accord of 1991 he continued his rule with the power-sharing agreement with Ranariddh, which ended with Ranariddh’s removal from power. In every election, henceforth, Sen’s CPP received more and more votes. In 2013, CPP lost votes to the opposition party led by Sam Rainsy, who was forced into exile due to bogus charges of publishing a map giving up Cambodian territory to Vietnam. There were mass protests due to opposition perceptions of voter fraud, but Sen crushed the protests. In 2017, Sen barred the opposition from questioning government ministers and then dissolved the main opposition party. Opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested for treason. The 2018 elections were rigged again by CPP and Sen appointed his son Hun Manet as military deputy commander-in-chief. Five years later, Sen resigned as prime minister and handed the title to his son Manet. Manet’s brother Hun Manith is lieutenant general and deputy commander-in-chief in the Army. Hun Many is the current deputy prime minister and minister of civil service. There is a non-monarchical dynasty in the making. Is it only a question of time until the Huns will remove the Norodoms?
Singular Ruling Families
There are further honorable mentions across the Asia-Pacific space, where there are ruling families, although these are more singular rather than multiple and competing.
Thailand
Thailand recently had a political shift. Thaksin Shinawatra, businessman and former prime minister (2001-2006) returned to Thailand to become the kingmaker of a coalition government with the conservative/ monarchist/ military parties that were previously led by Prayut Chan-o-cha. Prayut was a military general, who had seized the power in a military coup 2014 but due to significant popular pressure he relented to returning to democratic election. Prayut retired last summer but was appointed Privy Councillor, adviser to the king, in November 2023. The prime minister of the new government is Srettha Thavisin from Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party. Thaksin’s willingness to work with the military is all the more ironic given that he had lost power twice due to a military coup that was approved by King Bhumibol.
Thaksin came from a Hakka Chinese business family that immigrated to Thailand in the 1860s. Thaksin was elected as a popular billionaire in 2001, promising subsidized rice prices, universal health care and reduction of poverty for poor farmers in the northern and northeastern population centers, while angering the middle classes in Bangkok as well as the monarchy and the military, who felt that Thaksin was too challenging to the status quo. In the meantime, Thaksin was accused of corruption as he used government funds to benefit his companies that soared on the stock market. The military junta used the excuse of corruption and lese majeste, the defamation of the Thai monarchy, which is a criminal act, to oust Thaksin in 2006 while he was visiting the UN summit.
Thaksin remained in exile in Dubai and invested in various businesses like Manchester City Football Club. He purchased and received Montenegro’s citizenship in 2009. In late-2008, Somchai Wongsawat, who was married to Thaksin’s sister Yaowapha, became prime minister for three months. Somchai was removed for neglecting his duties as secretary in the Justice Department. Thaksin later promoted his younger sister Yingluck Shinawatra as his successor. She promptly won the first open election since his ouster in 2011. Yingluck entered the premiership and attempted to pardon her older brother but the junta blocked her request. In 2014, the military got sick of her and during anti-government protests it removed Yingluck from power for supposedly taking bribes for a rice-pledging scheme that was supposed to benefit poor farmers, who sold their rice at a guaranteed above-market price to the government. Yingluck was tried and convicted in absentia. In 2017, Yingluck had fled to Dubai to join her brother in exile. The Thai government cancelled her citizenship and she received UK and Serbian passport. In March 2024, Yingluck was acquitted by the Supreme Court of Thailand. In the meantime, Pheu Thai has been led by Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
Thaksin was biding his time in exile but returned in a deal with the military junta just in time for the 2023 parliamentary elections where Pheu Thai received the second-most votes, initially forming part of a pro-democracy, anti-military coalition with the Move Forward Party led by Pita Limjaroenrat. Move Forward received the most votes (38%), and Pheu Thai received the second most (29%). Prayut’s United Thai Nation only received 12% of the vote and landed in third place. Thaksin switched Pheu Thai’s support to the pro-military faction because the military had promised him a deal to commute his eight-year jail sentence. Upon his return to Thailand in August 2023, he served a half-year sentence in a hospital before he was released on parole in February 2024. While Srettha Thavisin is the prime minister, it appears to be the case that he owes his power to the Shinawatra family, including the patriarch Thaksin and his daughter and Pheu Thai leader Paetongtarn.
Pheu Thai’s decision to back the junta in their coalition is electorally costly and Move Forward is sure to capitalize from it. The new government is promoting higher minimum wage and a digital wallet redistribution scheme to generate popular support, but it’s too early to tell whether that will work. The military retains a lot of control over the political process because they appoint most of the 250 members of the Senate, which meant that the pro-democracy parties needed 375 of the 500 House seats to gain a majority. Move Forward’s Limjaroenrat only obtained 324 votes and could not become prime minister. In the latest December poll, Move Forward increased its majority from 38% to nearly 62%. The electorate is still sick and tired of junta rule and the Shinawatra’s arrangements can ultimately backfire. Move Forward is also significantly more progressive than Pheu Thai, demanding a higher minimum wage, a 40 hour workweek, more welfare services, public education funding, LGBT rights and even reforms to the lese majeste laws to lessen punishments for criticizing the monarchy.
Singapore
Singapore was founded by Lee Kuan Yew. He had taken over control over the People’s Action Party (PAP) and sidelined and purged the pro-communist party rivals. Once Singapore obtained independence from Malaysia in 1963 and PAP won most of the seats in the 1968 elections, PAP’s predominant position can no longer be challenged. Lee thought long and hard about succession. He believed in meritocracy, i.e. the smartest and most talented people should take the top jobs in politics and business. But he also believed that intelligence must be hereditary. Indeed, his elder son Hsien Loong was a Senior Wrangler in Cambridge University, i.e. he was the best mathematician at the college. He also earned a degree in computer science. The father pressured Hsien Loong to return to Singapore, where he joined the army and became a brigadier. In 1984, he joined politics in PAP, and was promptly appointed deputy prime minister in 1990, when Kuan Yew resigned in favor of Goh Chok Tong. Goh surrendered the premiership in 2004, opening the door for Lee Hsien Loong as third generation PAP leader. There were rumors about whether Hsien Loong’s older son Hongyi wanted to become a political leader. He became an army general and deputy director of the Government Technology Agency. Hongyi has denied these ambitions, although he is still a youthful 37 year old. For now, Hsien Loong anointed Lawrence Wong as his fourth generation successor. Wong is in his early 50s and so the fifth generation leadership issue has some time to be resolved. Will the PAP retain its legitimacy for this long?
There are already disputes within the Lee family. Lee Kuan Yews younger children are Lee Wei Ling and Lee Hsien Yang and they accuse their older brother and prime minister Hsien Loong of violating Kuan Yew’s will to destroy his Oxley Road residence. Kuan Yew, Wei Ling and Hsien Yang argued that the founding leader did not want to be worshipped by Singaporeans, but Hsien Loong is exactly attempting to do this by converting the Oxley Road house into a museum. It could build legitimacy for PAP. Because the younger siblings kept speaking up, Hsien Loong deployed the prosecutors to disbar Lim Suet Fern, Hsien Yang’s wife. She is a lawyer, who drew up the will for Lee Kuan Yew. Hsien Yang then decided to support the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) in the 2020 elections, which is a snub to his elder brother. PSP did not win any seats but the message was clear. Hsien Yang is not interested in running for political office, which potentially reduced PSP’s appeal. Hsien Yang briefly considered a 2023 presidential run but he was in exile in the UK and the Singaporean authorities are likely to block his access to the ballot given the government lawsuits around his neck. One of Hsien Yang’s sons, the Harvard economist Li Shengwu, was fined by Singaporean courts for private Facebook posts accusing the Singaporean court system for being pliant and litigious. All the more ironic that the very same court system was punishing him for “slander”, which western courts consider freedom of speech. Shengwu also accused his cousin Hongyi of harboring political ambitions and he has decided not to return to Singapore, arguing that political dynasties are bad for Singapore and fearing arrest upon return even though he had paid the fine.
North Korea
In North Korea, there is a communist regime that took over the northern portion of the Korean peninsula in 1945. Its first leader was Kim Il-Sung, who had received shelter in China in the early-1930s when the Japanese occupiers had banned the Korean communists. He also received military training and support from the Soviet communists in Khabarovsk. When the Soviets invaded Manchuria and northern half of Korea, they promoted Kim as the new communist leader in North Korea. The southern half of the peninsula was under American occupation and declared the Republic of Korea in 1948. Kim armed his defense forces and invaded the South. The Korean War ended in a stalemate near the 38th parallel, and for a while North Korea’s economy flourished with the help of the Soviet Union. Kim created a cult of personality and purged all internal party opponents, thus creating a full dictatorship. Land was controlled by the state and private landlords were expelled. Ordinary people dependent on state rations and daring to oppose the regime were collectively punished with their non-offending relatives. In the songbun caste system people were divided into “core”, “wavering” and “hostile” castes with harsh treatment given to the latter two.
Kim secured his power by appointing family members into the high offices of the state: His brother Kim Yong Ju was vice premier and vice president. His son Kim Pyong Il became ambassador in various countries. His daughter Kim Kyong-hui became Secretary for Organization in the Worker’s Party. But the most important family member was his son Kim Jong Il, the anointed successor as General Secretary. He was successor designate in 1974 and took over leadership in 1994 after Il Sung’s death. Kim Jong Il was a bon vivant and died age 70 in 2011. He anointed his even more morbidly obese son Kim Jong Un as successor. Kim Jong Un is trying to build up his daughter Kim Ju-ae as successor. He showed her in public during the missile launch in November 2022, although Korean society remains very patriarchal. Jong Un also trusts his younger sister Kim Yo-jong, who acts as a de facto foreign minister and right-hand person to her brother. Another Kim Jong Il daughter Kim Sol-song is a propaganda secretary and lieutenant colonel in the Army. Another son Kim Jong-chul is active in a rock band, has attended Eric Clapton concerts and has no interest in politics.
Not all Kim family members are doing well. Jang Song-thaek, husband of Kim Kyong-hui and uncle of Jong Un, was killed in the power struggle following Kim Jong Il’s death. Jong Un’s half brother Kim Jong-nam, who was seen as Jong Un’s competitor in power, was assassinated in the airport of Kuala Lumpur. At least the Singaporean authorities do not kill unruly family members.
India
While Kim is the currently ruling dynasty in North Korea, the same cannot be said about the Indian Nehru-Gandhi clan. The earliest documented Nehru was Raj Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit. The patriarch of the family was Motilal Nehru, a prominent leader of India’s independence movement. He served as the president of Congress Party (Indian National Congress, INC), which was founded in 1885. Congress became the dominant political party in India being a catch-all secular party. The first major political leader was Motilal’s son Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the founding prime minister serving until his death in 1964. Jawaharlal Nehru succeeded his father as INC president in 1929. His sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit became a diplomat and president and UN General Assembly president. His wife Kamala Nehru was a social reformer and member of the All India Congress Committee. His cousin Brijlal Nehru was the finance minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Brijlal’s son Braj Kumar Nehru was ambassador to the US and commissioner to the UK. He was a governor of various Indian provinces.
Nehru was a proponent of socialist development and used Five-Year Plans to push the direction of the Indian economy. After Jawaharlal’s death, Indira Gandhi, his only daughter, became prime minister (1966-1977, 1980-1984). She married fellow politician Feroze Gandhi, who died of a heart attack in 1960. She became a dictator during the state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 which resulted in grave abuses of power. She was pushed into opposition in 1977 but won the following election in 1980. In 1984, she was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for Operation Blue Star where the Indian army killed Sikh separatists. Indira was inherited by her son Rajiv Gandhi, who won the election that same year, but then lost power in 1989. Two years after that, he was assassinated too, this time by the Sri Lankan Tamil LTTE, which was resentful of Gandhi’s decision to deploy Indian soldiers to crush the Tamils. Rajiv’s wife Sonia Gandhi, a native Italian, took on INC chairwomanship, but never wanted to be prime minister herself. When INC won the majority in 2004, she drafted Manmohan Singh as prime minister, while she continued to decide on government policy via her party leadership.
Nehru-Gandhi was finally removed from most political offices of power when the rival BJP won the national election under Narendra Modi in 2014. He is poised to win a third term with Rajesh Gandhi (Sonia and Rajiv’s son) as INC lead candidate, not standing a chance. Priyanka, Rajesh’s sister, is the General Secretary of INC. Ironically, their cousin, Varun Gandhi, son of Sanjay Gandhi and grandson of Indira Gandhi, is a BJP politician.
Conclusion
In the Southeast Asian space nepotism, the appointment of family members into high political offices, is common practice. It is true that nepotism stands in opposition to meritocracy, i.e. the promotion of the most competent people to power, and meritocracy forms the basis for more rationalist political rule. On the other hand, nepotism is the natural human order, while rational/ meritocratic rule appears to develop in specific cultural contexts, e.g. in western Europe or China. Even in so-called rationalist governments, we can find some amount of nepotism and dynastic formation, e.g. the Kennedys, Bushs or Trumps in the US or Xi Jinping or Bo Xilai’s clans in China. It should be noted that more rationalist governments have a hard time institutionalizing such dynasties. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s political career abruptly ended with the end of the Trump presidency and Robert Kennedy does not benefit sufficiently from his father and uncle’s reputation in the 1960s for his current presidential run.
By natural human order, I refer to the sentiment of every individual to ensure that his offspring does well financially and politically. Nepotism is based on the biological instinct of procreation and the thriving of one’s descendants. The most extreme form of nepotism is the monarchy. Here, the successor is written into the state constitution, while uncertainty of succession results in palace intrigues, e.g. Ottomans and Chinese empires. With the exception of some Islamic countries (e.g. Saudi), absolute monarchies have been replaced by constitutional monarchies or republics. Even in these cases more surreptitious forms of political succession bring about family intrigues and the jockeying for power. The assumption in nepotistic political structures is that there is a weakly developed independent middle class who could form a broader layer of people from which a political leadership class could be drawn and who could form a strong educated opposition to excessively nepotistic anti-rationalist practices.
Controlling nepotism is not the only factor that forms the basis for democratic, pluralist and economic development. But it is an important factor. The fact that absolute monarchies are already quite rare suggests that human societies can change and nepotism can be curbed, but it can continue to flourish for a long time given that the powerful are merely applying their biological program of taking care of their own offspring. Rational bureaucratic rule is a cumbersome institutional framework that takes continuous cultivation to maintain like swimming against the river stream. If it gets reversed, we are back to traditionalist nepotistic rule that works as straightforwardly as being carried in the direction of the river stream.
Further readings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabowo_Subianto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joko_Widodo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukarno
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawati_Sukarnoputri
https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/suharto-clan-still-business-stumbling-politics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquino_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Duterte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Norodom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun_Sen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinawatra_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_family_(Singapore)
Mr Liu's Opinions 