Fat dynasty

Political dynasties were defined in Level 1 as families holding elected office across time. The research distinguishes two shapes, and the difference is not cosmetic.

A thin dynasty passes one seat down a line. Father to son, one office at a time. It is a succession.

A fat dynasty runs several relatives in different offices simultaneously. The mayor is the governor’s son, the vice mayor is his wife, the district representative is his brother. That is not a succession, it is a local monopoly, and its distinguishing feature is that there is nobody left to file a complaint with.

The share of fat dynasties has been rising. An Ateneo School of Government study covering 1988 to 2019 found it went from 19 percent to 29 percent. Later work links both the presence of fat dynasties and politicians’ ownership of local businesses to poverty incidence, and counts more than 60 dynasties with construction-sector links.

Read that alongside the honesty point in Lesson 2.3: the best identification supports poverty entrenching dynasties more firmly than dynasties worsening poverty. The fat-dynasty findings sit on the business channel, which is a narrower and better-supported claim than the general one.

Source: Ronald U. Mendoza and colleagues at the Ateneo School of Government, with Edsel Beja Jr., Victor Venida, David Yap and Jurel Yap. The thin and fat distinction and the 1988 to 2019 trend come from the School’s dynasty research programme, reported via Inquirer Business. The business channel is Mendoza, Yap et al. (2022), “Political dynasties, business, and poverty in the Philippines,” World Development Perspectives, open access.

First used in: 2.3 · Why a decent person sells a vote