1Reviews and everything / Born to Rule - Rendering
.docAlex Kvartalny @ flamedragon27.blogspot.com
Group 501
Born to Rule Rendering
The article is entitled Born to Rule. Neither the source, nor the date of the publication is known. As far as who it is authored by, this information is not given in the publication either.
The theme of the article is politics within families. The author tries to understand why politicians' children follow in their parents' steps and concludes that both “nature and nurture” play a part in the fact that “political dynasties” carry on.
The author starts off by suggesting that, on the one hand, the way a child is brought up must play a significant role in their becoming a politician. He proves this point with examples and demonstrates that some kids share the professional curiosity of their parents and adds that in other families the desire to go into politics may also be a matter of defending the family name.
The author goes on to imply that if nurture is a useful start to a political career, so can a well-known name be because illustrious names may catch the eye. However, history shows that a famous name is not a certain passport to success but it's a good start.
Other points, according to the author, illustrate the politics-in-the-family issue: the fact that husbands and wives have sat together in the British Parliament, that at least one father, David Lloyd George, has “passed on the family baton” to both a son and a daughter. Sisters, unlike brothers, are uncommon in parliament but there have been a couple of cases. Such examples are widespread in many countries: the US, Japan, Italy, Mexico and others.
Another thing the author points out is that the habit of “drafting a widow” has existed for a long time. The statistics given are the: some 37 women have followed their deceased husbands into the House of Representatives, at the same time one should bear in mind that all have got there by election. In much of Asia at the same time dynastic politics takes the form of a male-to-female transfer, following the American pattern of widows stepping into their dead husband’s shoes. In Asia, though, a coup or an assassination or both, often serves to hurry the succession along.
Elsewhere daughters, the author indicates, not widows, like Benazir Bhutto, for example, have been the main beneficiaries of male politicians’ turbulent departures. It is too soon to say how many of these Asian successions mark the beginnings of real political dynasties: some of the characters are related only by marriage, not blood, and only the Gandhis have spanned more than two generations.
But the author wants to find out if political skill could really be handed down from one generation to the next, either in Asia or anywhere else, looks at dynasties in professions and realises that some métiers (like medicine, law, the natural sciences) require some objective qualifications that do not come with a birth certificate, which suggests that heredity may indeed play a part in any continuing family success. A 19th century British scientist Sir Francis Galton would agree with such a suggestion.
The author concludes the article by saying that in politics, it seems, as in so many other human activities, nurture and nature both play a part.
As for my opinion, I could not help noticing that there are so many families of politicians, presidents who bequeath top jobs to their wives, sons and daughters filling their deposed parents' shoes and others born into “great families”. I am not an expert in genetics and certainly even the best geneticists nowadays cannot be 100% sure that the character of one's genius is hereditary. But I really doubt that defending the family name, though serving as a powerful motivator, is the sole criterion for relatives to overcome social hindrances. Thus I tend to agree with the author that political accomplishments probably have to do with both nature and nurture.