Asia’s Political Dynasties

The end of World War Two in Asia marked the end of the prewar elites and the end of Empire on the continent. From the ashes of war and colonialism rose new power centers, often based around extended families who took upon themselves the mantle of leadership, replacing the largely discredited pre-war rulers and colonial administrations. Before the war most of the families that made up the new elites had been outsiders; challengers, but often far from obvious candidates for leadership of newly forming and reforming nations. Yet they seized opportunities, found sponsors in the new Cold War era, and rose to prominence as symbols of a new postwar order. In 2015, the majority still resonate across their nations and the continent. Dynastic politics remains crucial to understanding postwar Asia while untangling the intestines of dynastic relationships is still a key indicator as to who the future leaders of Asia will be. The dynasties may not now always be entirely blood relations, but rather deeply co-dependent networks of families built up over the last 70 years.

For a while it looked as if the era of postwar dynastic politics was coming to an end. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and its political vehicle, Congress, took an electoral battering in the May 2014 Indian elections. Two months later in Indonesia Prabowo Subianto, the son-in-law of the former president Suharto, was bested in the polls by man-of-the-people Joko Widodo – the first president not to have emerged from Jakarta’s political elite. Elsewhere dynastic politics looked increasingly fragile.

Fourth-generation politician Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III has faced repeated scandals reducing his popularity; similarly in Malaysia with Najib Razak – the son of former Prime Minister Abdul Razak. Elsewhere it seemed perhaps it was time to move on. Lee Kuan Yew died in March 2015 and the succession was not altogether clear; Kim Jong-un, grandson of the DPRK’s founder Kim Il-sung, looked weak in Pyongyang; in Taiwan, the KMT of Chiang Kai-shek, and then his son Chiang Ching-kuo, looks headed for a major electoral defeat. Perhaps a significant shift was underway?

Yet, here we are, on the cusp of 2016 and arguably dynastic politics in Asia, despite some setbacks, are actually as strong as ever. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy was triumphant in the November elections in Myanmar. It is impossible not to see her emergence from decades in the political wilderness as somehow a vindication of her father Aung San’s attempts to cement an independent, non-colonized Burma before his 1947 assassination. In South Korea, President Park Geun-hye, daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, appears firmly in control, while Lee Hsien Loong, Lee Kuan Yew’s eldest son, has taken the political reins in Singapore (where talk of “dynasty” is a legal issue and remains highly sensitive). Kim Jong-un has, with incredible violence it seems, maintained the Kim dynasty’s paramount position in the DPRK. Elsewhere recently rather bruised postwar dynasties may actually be poised for a comeback – the son of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto is working to revitalize the Pakistan People’s Party and Bhutto family control of it.

Political dynasties have been the great survivors of post-war Asia. Revolutions, popular uprisings, economic crisis, the collapse of the Cold War – none managed to ultimately shift them. Dynastic regimes have morphed and adapted – from Maoism to market; dictatorship to democracy. Yet they have largely remained.

How have they managed it? Largely it has been, with the exception of the DPRK where the iron fist remains paramount, by adaptation and building their networks outwards to embrace others, anoint the loyal and create extended clans of interdependent elites; new super-dynasties that can be hard to disentangle from the outside looking in. It’s hard to prove that any of the successful, surviving and thriving dynasties work solely for their own ends. They have successfully established themselves, and their wider networks, as the embodiments of the ruling parties and the guarantors of independence and continuance – across South Asia, in Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia, as much as in China and Japan. It’s not us, they cry, but the party, the nation.

Dynasties, in their extended interlinked clan form, are how political power can be passed on. The “princelings” in China who control the CPC, descended from interlinked families, are not so different in form from Japanese politics where the LDP is essentially a similar interweaving of connected families formed in the mid-1950s and retaining power (with only short interruptions) ever since. Both Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe come from politically connected families and have fathers who were prominent in the first postwar political generations (Xi Zhongxun and Shintaro Abe respectively).

Defenders of political dynasties argue that they operate on extended time horizons and pursue longer-term goals than politicians on short time lines and needing to court the popular vote. But what, if anything, will ultimately determine their continuance? Many believe it is whether or not they can deliver sustainable economic growth. It’s a compelling argument. The Princelings of the CPC look weaker now than for a long time as China’s economic trajectory appears to have peaked; Rahul Gandhi arguably lost India for Congress because he had no real growth path to offer. Similar public concerns over continued economic growth seem to potentially threaten Najib in Malaysia and Lee in Singapore. The successes of the fathers are not necessarily inherited by the sons (and occasional daughters). But surviving boom and bust is where the extended clan comes into play – the passing of power between various groupings within the extended dynasty throughout the economic ebb and flow. There’s precedent – between seemingly rival but interlinked dynasties in the Philippines, similarly so in Indonesia and Japan too.

And this might be why the era of political dynasties is far from over in Asia. They have shown they can thrive under communism as well as democracy; the one-party state and multi-party pluralism. But also, it seems, they can leverage both economic growth and economic stagnation to their advantage. So far the only great survivor of postwar Asia is the political dynasty. Studying its forms in different environments may provide the key to understanding its longevity.

— Paul French