Abstract
Smith addresses a fascinating and timely topic of politics and marshals an impressive amount of data, both from Japan and from other countries, to help us understand the potentially disturbing phenomenon of hereditary rule in well-functioning democracies. Why in US presidential elections have the voters been vexed with the unsatisfying choice of candidates from the Bush and Clinton families? Is the young and telegenic Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, actually the most well-suited politician for this important job? Smith appropriately frames his analysis as a question of democratic governance, and questions why in some countries and political parties hereditary politicians play a greater role in politics than we might expect, especially given democratic norms.
I have long waited for an analysis of this puzzling phenomenon, and Smith analyzes the problem both comprehensively and persuasively. He is comprehensive in his consideration of the possible explanations of why there might be more hereditary politicians in some settings and not in other settings. He describes supply and demand side theories, institutional (electoral system and candidate selection methods) arguments, and voter attitudes as possible explanations for the frequency of hereditary politicians. His analysis, however, isn’t limited to only explanations for the frequency of their occurrence. He also analyzes the results of having more hereditary politicians, gender effects, candidates and candidate selection methods, elected MPs, and the composition of the political leadership class. Repeatedly, I found myself reading a chapter thinking “but what about this?” only to find my questions answered in the very next chapter of the book.
Anyone with any questions about hereditary politicians and the implications of this phenomenon for democracy and politics would be well served to study this book. Not only is the list of questions addressed comprehensive, Smith also comes at every question with a wealth of data, not just data about Japanese elections and politicians (around which much of the book is based), but also data about comparable countries that have high frequencies of hereditary politicians. For example, earlier in the book Smith explains why explanations of hereditary politicians based on voters’ attitudes or cultural norms are unsatisfying as a major explanation of this phenomenon. I was less than satisfied with Smith’s initial discussion of this explanation, but then later in the book he introduced survey and experimental data to buttress his conclusions. Similarly, I read Smith’s extensive discussion about candidates and candidate selection in Japan hoping to also find out more about those who were actually elected, and then Smith introduced his extensive analysis of heredity in both MPs and cabinet ministers.
The quality of an excellent book is often shown by the number of questions that the book itself raises in the minds of the readers, and Smith’s book succeeds fantastically in this area. While reading the book, many questions came to my mind, and typically Smith answered those questions. The interest in this topic created by Smith’s analysis also left me with a list of additional questions. For example, Smith explains that in Japan hereditary politicians lead to more women politicians, similarities in the policy manifestoes of their relatives, and more speeches given in parliament, but, as Smith acknowledges in his chapter, we need to know more about policy innovation, or the lack thereof, and corruption among hereditary politicians. Smith also raised the curious anomaly of Iceland with its high numbers of hereditary politicians, but his only explanation for this anomaly is Iceland’s small population. He also compares hereditary politicians to people who follow in the occupational footsteps of other relatives, such as children of doctors becoming doctors, but he doesn’t address the occurrence of heredity in highly selective, highly desirable professions. I have little interest in whether the child of a schoolteacher also becomes a schoolteacher. I am extremely interested in whether the children of a sports superstars, media celebrities, CEOs, or actors are disproportionately represented in these highly selective, highly desirable professions.
Finally, Smith concludes that institutional factors play a large role in the frequency of hereditary politicians—that candidate-oriented electoral systems and decentralized and relatively closed candidate selection mechanisms increase this same frequency. He supports this conclusion with strong evidence showing that among the new people nominated as candidates in Japan’s most recent elections, the numbers of hereditary candidates has declined to the average levels seen in other democracies. I take no issue with this conclusion: that institutional changes in Japan have reduced the frequency of hereditary politicians. What I found puzzling, though, was that Smith de-emphasized his own data that partially contradicts this conclusion. For example, Smith shows that even though the number of hereditary candidates has declined dramatically, the number of hereditary MPs and hereditary politicians serving in cabinet positions have declined only moderately.
Perhaps the more appropriate story to tell about hereditary politicians in Japan is the puzzling persistence of their occurrence despite strong institutional changes that are hostile to their occurrence. Smith points out that much of this persistence is likely the result of older politicians continuing in their practices developed under the previous institutions. He also gives ample theoretical reasons and indirect evidence that, for example, personal support groups of politicians (which are connected to the rise of hereditary politicians) have fallen out of favor with the newly elected generation of politicians. What is missing, though, is direct evidence that newly elected politicians don’t use personal support groups or that newly elected MPs (in contrast to candidates) do not come from the cohort of hereditary politicians. This emphasis of the data supporting Smith’s institutional explanations over other explanations, however, does not detract in any way from the usefulness of Smith’s excellent analysis of the interesting questions of both the frequency and the consequences of hereditary politicians.