Dynasties

The Role of Dynasties in Global Politics and Economics

Almost all contemporary monarchies are based on what can be called the dynastic principle: The rule is handed over from one member of the ruling family to another, mostly from the father to the son. Yet, two qualifications have to be taken into account. First, nonaristocratic dynasties, such as the Rockefellers or Kennedys, have played a role in global politics and economics. Second, not all dynasties that nominally head a state exert real political power. For instance, the British royal family no longer holds much influence or authority.

Nonaristocratic dynasties play only a limited role in global politics, although in the United States, some dynasties such as the Kennedys have indeed exerted political influence over the course of generations. The Bush family managed to send two descendants to the White House. Yet, in general, nonaristocratic dynasties play a much bigger role in economics than in politics because capitalism encourages the intergenerational transfer of material values, whereas in politics the republican principle promotes nonfamilial patterns of elite recruitment. Thus, while running a state like a family enterprise has become the exception in modern politics, despite the trend to stock corporations, dynasties are still common in economic systems dominated by private actors.

Nonaristocratic dynasties often owe their eminence not only to their wealth but also to their donations and sometimes their lifestyle. Many of the most prominent, globally renowned dynasties are among the richest in the present day; at the same time, many of them, such as the Rothschilds (and, to a lesser degree, the Rockefellers), have undergone a process of rapid rise and relative fall [Page 436]whose pronounced historical model appears to have also been the fate of the Fuggers, who rose from a small tanner family in 14th-century Swabia to one of the first global merchant dynasties in the 15th and 16th centuries. Although to date the Fuggers play an economic role in their headquarters in the German city of Augsburg and surrounding regions, their impact on the global economy has been insignificant for centuries.

In politics, aristocratic dynasties exist on most continents: in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. However, it is striking that the Arab world hosts comparatively more dynastic rules than other regions. Indeed, 8 of the 21 members of the Arab League—the membership of Libya was suspended in February 2011—are ruled on the basis of the dynastic principle. Moreover, Arab dynasties are also set apart by the facts that all of them, in essence, control internal politics, and some of them, such as Saudi Arabia, exert much higher influence on global politics than most monarchies in other parts of the world, such as Tonga.

Most dynastic rules became extinguished in the 20th century; others survived as toothless tigers in the form of constitutional monarchies. Dynastical rules could not keep up with the expectations of enlightened citizens in terms of participation rights and services to be provided by the state. Thus, they were replaced by republics whose recruitment pattern of political elites is much more inclusive. One of the interesting questions for global politics is why some dynastic regimes survived and others did not.

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