Dynastic Asia

Securing popular legitimacy requires equal dexterity, which has played an important role in preventing North African leaders and family members from openly admitting their preparations for dynastic successions.

The imperative to cooperate is an inevitable outgrowth of globalization. As Kissinger emphasized, the Middle Kingdom of China s dynastic era knew nothing of the Roman Empire, and vice versa.

Keeping everyone in suspense helps prevent the emergence of organized opposition to a dynastic succession. Moreover, they may worry that heirs apparent will seek to force them out of office prematurely.

Each belonged to a special class of women whose husbands or fathers were their country s recognized founding father or longstanding political leader. But, while their dynastic links brought them to power, they were not the sole factor keeping them there.

Where in the world can you find a more isolated, regimented and militarized dynastic mutation of a communist totalitarian system than in North Korea? Where on earth can you see a nuclear armed, missile shooting panhandler such as Kim Jong il?

Zheng s expeditions involved the use of military force in present day Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and India to install friendly rulers and control strategic chokepoints across the Indian Ocean. He intervened in the dynastic politics of Sri Lanka and Indonesia, abducting and executing local rulers.

More fundamentally, no one should think that North Korea s totalitarian communist system can be changed overnight. No one inside or outside can remove its anachronistic dynastic communist regime, and no outsider can hope to modify quickly the policy behavior of its fossilized military, party, and administrative bureaucrats.

That solution is becoming pretty commonplace, from the Aliyevs of Azerbaijan to the Kims of North Korea to the Assads in Syria. Dynastic succession safeguards the immediate and frequently extensive interests of the ruling family as well as those of the wider political and business elite.

Congress, at its core, pursues a form of dynastic democracy with the characteristics of a Sultanistic regime a regime with no purpose or function apart from maintaining the leader s personal authority. But, though such leaders perhaps have more personal authority than even medieval monarchs, their authority is brittle.

Meanwhile, the succession is still being argued. Sultan s death is the first time that the burial of a Saudi royal has been delayed to give the ruling family time to decide on the next in line a sign of internal discord (and concord on the continuation of dynastic rule).

If the 2011 uprisings had not occurred, we would now be witnessing another year of autocracy, with more talk of dynastic successions. That would mean further humiliation for ordinary people, who bear the brunt of corruption, as government officials and their crony capitalists continued to siphon off public funds.

LONDON The role played by Libyan ruler Muammar al Qaddafi s son, Saif al Islam, in gaining the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al Megrahi, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak s state visit to Washington accompanied by his son, Gamal, suggest that dynastic successions are underway in both countries.

Moreover, like Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, dynastic politics in Azerbaijan reflects the dominance of clans whose members success is determined by proximity to the president. While such systems may appear stable, they are inherently fragile, for they are synonymous with lawlessness, injustice, and abject poverty for the majority of the population.

SINGAPORE To the extent that culture matters in politics, the recent spate of leadership changes in Northeast Asia suggests that Asian societies are more tolerant if not supportive of dynastic succession. South Korea s recently elected president, Park Geun hye, is the daughter of Park Chung Hee, who ruled the country from 1961 to 1979.

The problem of succession in the Arab secular republics highlights their predicament in the transition to a post revolutionary phase, for succession in regimes that fail to build strong institutions always risks triggering a systemic crisis. While the decision by some in favor of dynastic succession may be lacking in democracy, it is not entirely devoid of merit.

In short, Asia s pattern of dynastic leadership does not render it immune from the challenges that the rest of the world faces. As Asia creates the world s largest middle class projected to grow more than three fold, from 500 million to 1.75 billion, by 2020 it will also have to cope with demands for more competent and more accountable governments.

While dictators associated with military juntas were challenged overnight, the Arab Spring never came to the region s conservative monarchies. The dynastic rulers of Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states (with the exception of Bahrain) remain more or less firmly in the saddle, even though Saudi Arabia s regime, at least, is in many respects far more oppressive than were the former Egyptian and Tunisian regimes.