Adam Bellow, In Praise of Nepotism:  A Natural History (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 576 pp., $30.

Frank K. Salter (ed.), Risky Transactions: Trust, Kinship and Ethnicity (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), 288 pp., $79.95. 

The United States currently confronts foreign policy challenges
involving such highly disparate foes, friends and in-betweens as
North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Jordan,
Morocco, the Congo and the Philippines. All these countries, however,
possess one striking common denominator. Although dynasticism is
supposed to have died and been buried by meritocracy, these countries
are all led by the children of former heads of state.

The same is true of America, whose president is not just the son of a
president, but also the grandson of a senator and brother of a
governor. Americans tend to be willfully blind to the crucial subject
of nepotism. We disapprove of it, so we feel we ought not to think
about it--a dangerous illusion as we pursue a more activist foreign
policy that brings us in touch with cultures that approach the topic
quite differently.

The return of family rule should not surprise us. Nepotism and its
more formal offspring dynasticism have provided the basic organizing
principles of politics for much of human history. For example, in the
early 20th century, the ruling aristocracy of Mongolia, which
comprised 6 percent of the population, still consisted of the
descendants in the direct male line of Genghis Khan, even though he
had been dead for almost 700 years.

Indeed, Genghis Khan, who was known as The Master of Thrones and
Crowns, was so successful at propagating his lineage, both by
fathering countless children and granting some of his heirs enormous
and enduring political privileges, that his genetic footprint on a
vast swath of Asia from the Pacific to Afghanistan leaps out at
population geneticists today. A 2003 study of male Y-chromosomes
discovered that about 16 million living men are his direct
patrilineal descendants. That's a level of dynastic success, in the
Darwinian sense of the term, approaching one million times greater
than that of the typical man who was alive back then.

As ferociously exemplified by The Mighty Manslayer, this urge to help
copies of one's genes survive and spread is the basis of nepotism,
which biologists define as altruism toward kin. It encourages human
beings to help their offspring and relatives achieve power and
prosperity.

The recent book In Praise of Nepotism by Adam Bellow (son of Nobel
Laureate Saul Bellow) documents how the great English biologist
William D. Hamilton's 1964 elucidation of the genetic reasons behind
altruism toward kin formed the plinth upon which the field of
sociobiology was built. Hamilton's paradigm became more widely known
from Richard Dawkins' 1976 bestseller, The Selfish Gene. A more
accurate, if still anthropomorphic name, would have been The Dynastic
Gene, since genes thrive by promoting copies of themselves in others.

Of course, biology can explain only the rudiments of the
manifestations of family feeling in the political world. Further,
scientists have barely begun to consider the flip side of the desire
to establish a dynasty--the widespread desire to be ruled by one.
Evidence for the resurgent importance of dynasticism and nepotism is
everywhere. In a broad swath of southern Asia, running from Pakistan,
through India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and on to the
Philippines, the dynastic urge has often worked in conjunction with
the democratic impulse. In each, voters have chosen widows or
daughters to carry on from their late men-folk the family business of
running the country.

Some of these women entered politics to avenge the killing or
overthrow of their husbands or fathers. For example, Corazon Aquino
was elected president of the Philippines following her husband's
assassination by dictator Ferdinand Marcos' goon squad. Benazir
Bhutto ruled Pakistan after the downfall of General Mohammad Zia
Ul-Haq, who had overthrown and hanged her father. Indonesian
president Megawati Sukarnoputri is the daughter of the former leftist
ruler Sukarno. Sheik Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh from
1996-2001, is the daughter of the founder of independent Bangladesh,
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who died in a military coup in 1975.

In India, the Congress Party chose as their leader in the 1999
election Sonia Gandhi, widow, daughter-in-law and
grand-daughter-in-law of prime ministers. She lost party control,
though, after leading Congress to merely a second-place finish.
Runner-up is considered a disgraceful performance for anyone bearing
the magic name of "Gandhi." The high hopes invested in Sonia were
testimony to the glamour of the dynasty. Without the Gandhi name,
Sonia--a Roman Catholic Italian who doesn't speak a single Indian
language terribly well--would have been just about the least likely
person to become head of a major Indian party.

American men have not thought highly of kings since 1776 (although
American women traditionally have been notoriously intent on being
presented at court). We chose not to revive the monarchy in
Afghanistan, even though sentiment for de facto dynasties is strong
in nearby countries, and the monarchy was the only institution that
had ever provided a centripetal force in that fractious land.

Dynasticism is far from confined to Asia. Here at home, powerful
men's sons and, increasingly, their wives and daughters, are
succeeding to political leadership with a regularity reminiscent of
the feudal days of old Europe. In 2002, for instance, Senator Frank
Murkowski was elected governor of Alaska and promptly named his
daughter Lisa to take over his seat in the U.S. Senate, saying he
wanted the person who succeeded him to share his vision and values
for the future of the state, which apparently includes Alaska being a
satrapy of the Murkowski clan.

In Chicago, two of the biggest names--Mayor Richard M. Daley and
Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.--are also among the oldest. Winners in
the 2002 elections included House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi,
daughter of the former mayor of Baltimore; North Carolina Senator
Elizabeth Dole, wife of former Senator Bob Dole; Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney, son of George Romney, former governor of
Michigan; and New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu, son of former
Governor. John H. Sununu. Even California's new Republican governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, an immigrant bodybuilder who would seem to be
at first glance the most self-made of men, is the politically wayward
son-in-law of the dynasties of the Kennedys and their non-evil twins,
the Shrivers. It seems that as Americans have found other, more
amusing entertainments than following politics, the public appears to
have become increasingly reliant upon famous brand names.

Scions are also found in appointed positions. "No sooner had Bush
taken office (after an invocation by the son of Billy Graham)",
Bellow writes, "than he began handing out appointments to members of
other Republican families", such as fcc Chairman Michael Powell, son
of the Secretary of State, and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife
of Senator Mitch McConnell. The children of Antonin Scalia, Dick
Cheney and Strom Thurmond also benefited.

None of this has excited much disapproval among Americans. As Bellow
told me recently,

There is a deep emotional satisfaction that we all understand in the
pride of a father whose child wants to emulate him. Americans value
the reassurance and security of a certain amount of continuity at the
top in a highly mobile and volatile society. People are comforted by
a familiar name and face.

Indeed, the growing importance of women may be contributing to the
return of family ties among leaders. First, many rules against
nepotism in, say, academia were relaxed in the 1970s and 1980s when
it was realized that much of the best female talent was married to
the best male talent, and, consequently, rules intended to prevent
favoritism and corruption were harming the ascent of women, or at
least the ascent of talented women.

Further, as political consumers, women tend to be more interested
than men in the kind of family stories that dynasties generate. You
may recall the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Many commentators
curiously opined then that the tidal wave of grief signified that
royalty had outlived its time. In reality, dynastic life remains
highly popular because it offers soap opera in the guise of affairs
of state.

The women of the world did not idolize "Princess Di" for her charity
work or some other such bogus rationalization. No, they loved her
because Di, unlike other female celebrities such as Madonna, didn't
have to claw her way to the top of the celebrity heap. She didn't do
anything to get there. She was just picked out for who she
was--young, beautiful and a virgin: a princess from a fairy tale.

Monarchism would not have been so popular for so long if it also did
not offer to the ruled at least some practical benefits as well.
Compared to transient kleptocracies, the common folk benefit from
dynastic rule because the likelihood of passing royal dominions down
to their offspring encourages their rulers to think about the long
term. Science-fiction novelist Jerry Pournelle said, "Politicians
look to the next election. Statesmen may look to the next generation;
but monarchs must look to the next generation." Rather than laying
waste to their realms, the dynastic system gives kings incentive to
cultivate their domains well so their children can inherit a
prosperous and content land.

Dynasts are particularly inclined to build impressive civic
monuments. Consider Chicago, where Mayor Richard M. Daley has won
five terms, just one short of his father Richard J. Daley's record.
Many Chicagoans feel that when Daleys are not in power, tax dollars
often disappear into well-connected pockets without leaving a trace.
In contrast, the current Mayor Daley has seen to it that at least
some of the public's money gets spent on a long list of
beautification projects, many inspired by his visits to Paris and
other regal cities. If future generations of Daleys wish to run for
mayor, these elegant works will serve to remind voters of the
splendor of the name "Daley."

Although some dynastic systems institutionalized competition--most
notably, the Ottoman, in which scores of half-brothers would fight to
the death--one of monarchism's subtler appeals was its hint of
egalitarianism. Those who inherit their positions don't need to seize
them through raw talent or ruthlessness. While some Americans are
driven to fury by how George W. Bush seemed to amble into the Oval
Office without first displaying many distinctive accomplishments or
abilities, many others seem to find it appealing that their President
is a regular guy. When he says he only glances at newspapers, they
identify with him.

Still, in a competitive world, the main practical shortcoming of
hereditary rule is regression toward the mean. Dynasties are
typically founded by exceptional men, but the genetic randomness
inherent in sexual reproduction means their children are unlikely to
match fully their capabilities. The children of highly intelligent
couples, for instance, tend to wind up with iqs roughly halfway
between the average of their parents and those of the general
population. Dynasties have long revitalized their gene pools by
marriages to up-and-coming commoners, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There are, of course, more sinister aspects to the revival of
nepotism. Frank K. Salter, an Australian political scientist now with
the Max Planck Institute in Andechs, Germany, points out in the book
he recently edited, Risky Transactions: Trust, Kinship, and
Ethnicity, that in failed states where the government cannot provide
security and justice, the boundaries between freedom-fighters,
gangsters and terrorists can become obscure and shifting. The common
denominator tends to be that they organize around blood ties, because
the highest level of trust is found within families.

These intense family bonds are most often found in areas where
government is ineffective or illegitimate or both. These are places
where you need your extended family's muscle to survive, because the
police are either feckless or predators. There's a vicious circle:
Strong and just governments are also hard to establish and maintain
among populations whose extended family structures are conducive to
mafia-like activities.

This might be especially true in countries where inbreeding is
common: cousin marriage is remarkably common from Morocco to parts of
India. For example, two studies in the later 1980s found that half
the married people in Iraq are wed to either a first or second cousin
(versus under 1 percent in the United States). These "consanguineous"
marriages strengthen family loyalty. If you arrange for your daughter
to marry your brother's son, your grandson and heir will also be your
brother's grandson and heir, so there is no need to fight over who
inherits the family land or herd.

On the other hand, cousin marriage undermines loyalty to the state
and society, which is one reason why Middle Eastern countries teeter
between anarchy and tyranny. Shortly before the recent war,
commentator Randall Parker wrote on his website, parapundit.com:

Consanguinity is the biggest underappreciated factor in Western
analyses of Middle Eastern politics. Most Western political theorists
seem blind to the importance of pre-ideological kinship-based
political bonds in large part because those bonds are not derived
from abstract Western ideological models of how societies and
political systems should be organized. Extended families that are
incredibly tightly bound are really the enemy of civil society
because the alliances of family override any consideration of
fairness to people in the larger society. Yet, this obvious fact is
missing from 99 percent of the discussions about what is wrong with
the Middle East. How can we transform Iraq into a modern liberal
democracy if every government worker sees a government job as a route
to helping out his clan at the expense of other clans?

Salter also points out that family-based mafias especially flourish
when totalitarian regimes collapse, as in the Soviet Union, the
Balkans and now Iraq. The ideological dictatorships destroyed most of
the non-family associations of civil society (such as corporations,
labor unions and political parties). Along with the secret
policeman's alumni club, one of the few forms of organization that
always survives totalitarianism is the basic biological one of
kinship.

Not surprisingly, failed and ex-totalitarian states torn apart by
battling clans generate large numbers of refugees and émigrés. They
tend to gravitate toward more ethnically homogenous, less nepotistic
northern regions like Scandinavia, where the Rousseauvean citizenries
offer lavish welfare because they are not yet familiar with their new
arrivals' more Hobbesian worldviews.

The organized crime business is particularly attractive to immigrants
with strong family loyalties because their ability to ostracize
family members who betray their trust can give them a competitive
advantage in illegal enterprises where participants can not demand
that the courts enforce their business agreements. If a relative
cheats, they do not have to shoot him. Instead, they can just make
sure nobody will marry his children.

A chapter in Risky Transactions penned by University of Amsterdam
anthropologist Anton Blok quotes Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta's
book The Sicilian Mafia on the value of family ties between the
Italian and American crime families:

These ties allowed greater flexibility and safety. In the
relationships between [Sicilian] Mafioso organizers and the
Italo-American gangs receiving the merchandise [heroin], where there
is mutual trust over time, it is possible for one courier to arrive
from America with the money while the merchandise itself is entrusted
to another courier. Since no such privileged bonds existed between
Sicilians and Middle Eastern suppliers, importing was a more
cumbersome operation.

After several generations of assimilation and increased returns to
southern Italians from honest work, the Italian mafia has faded in
importance on the world stage, only to be replaced by new immigrant
mafias. For example, Canada's National Post reported on April 13,
2000 that

"Kosovo Albanians make the perfect mafia--even better than the
Sicilians", said Marko Nicovic, vice-president of the New York-based
International Narcotics Enforcement Agency. "They are a small ethnic
group made up of clans or families that have very close to family
relations. The brotherhood, or Fic, is impenetrable by outsiders. It
is difficult to find translators to work with police and impossible
to get an informer or agent inside the organizations."

Finally, radical regimes that have lost their faith tend to gravitate
toward nepotism and dynasticism, as ideology fades and biology
reasserts itself. Having been founded on a revolutionary rejection of
legitimacy, they wind up with crypto-hereditary systems with few of
the legitimizing trappings and functions of the monarchies that many
of them originally overthrew.

There are sources of legitimacy and mechanisms for transferring power
in democracies and monarchies that revolutionary powers do not
possess. In Europe, the certainty of accession provided the assurance
of stability. And, the rigorous military training traditional for
European royalty had character-building benefits (seen as recently as
1981, when Spain's King Juan Carlos coolly faced down a coup).

The United States is almost the only state that has a genuine
republican tradition that can call on the pride and loyalty of its
citizens. Almost all other republics either have disputed
constitutional histories (France) or a rather dry legalistic
character that shrinks from requesting patriotism (Belgium or Blair's
UK).

The Chinese Communist Party seems to be following in the footsteps of
Mexico's amusingly named former ruling party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), as the Communists seeks to maintain
legitimacy by constant appeals to the glories of the Revolution
combined with informal term limits on its supremos.

The enormous productivity of China's coastal provinces has provided
the elite with a sizable margin for error. Still, the greed of the
Party's princelings engenders much resentment, perhaps more than any
other aspect of the regime. To combat this, the Party occasionally
executes a corrupt lower-level official to encourage the others.

Since there is little racial difference between the rulers, the
entrepreneurs and the masses in China, frustration tends to be
diffused toward multiple minor targets. In contrast, as detailed in
Amy Chua's book World on Fire, in Southeast Asia, the corruption of
the ruling families and the riches of the Overseas Chinese business
elite make for a volatile combination. The children of the indigenous
dictators, such as Bong-Bong Marcos in the Philippines and Tommy
Suharto in Indonesia, tended to pocket huge profits by granting
Chinese cronies monopolies in return for partnerships. The overthrow
of the Indonesian regime in 1998 coincided with an anarchic pogrom
against the Chinese minority.

In the Middle East, the fizzling of leftist secular ideologies has
led to dynasticism, as it has in Syria where Ba'athism has given way
to Assadism. In neighboring Iraq, however, neither of that gruesome
twosome, Qusay and Uday Hussein, will be following their father into
power. Farther westward, in Egypt, the noisy secularist ideology of
Gamal Nasser may become literally nominal--one of the two main
candidates to succeed Hosni Mubarak is his son, Nasser's namesake
Gamal Mubarak.

The failure of the revolutionaries in the face of rising Islamic
fundamentalism paradoxically makes dynastic succession appear to be
the safest choice for those fearing an Islamist takeover. Yet, the
unfairness and inefficiency of nepotism can also feed Islamic
extremism, as in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, when many Afghan
patriots, tired of the battling of the family-based warlords, turned
to a movement of religious students in the hopes that their Quranic
ideals would heal the rifts between clans. They were known as the
Taliban, and everyone is aware of how that story ended.

The evolutionary anthropologist Gregory M. Cochran suggests that the
future of hereditary rule is even brighter than its present. Some
day, megalomaniacal strong men like Saddam Hussein will be able to
avoid breeding flagrantly defective potential successors like Uday, or
even normally regressive ones like Qusay, merely by cloning
themselves.

America's lack of intellectual discourse on nepotism and dynasticism
provides a near perfect example of what Harvard's human nature
scholar Steven Pinker calls (with a nod to David Hume's "naturalistic
fallacy") the "moralistic fallacy." We think these phenomena ought
not to exist and therefore we speak and write as if they do not
exist. This is a luxury we simply can no longer afford.

Steve Sailer is the National Correspondent for UPI, a columnist for
www.VDARE.com and the film critic for the American Conservative.