A Positive Effect of Political Dynasties:
Dynastic politicians, defined specifically as politicians who are related by blood to other individuals
formerly holding political office (Dal Bó et al., 2009; Geys and Smith, 2017), have long been suspected to
undermine the representative nature of democracies (Pareto, 1901; Michels, 1911). As a group, they are
on average less educated (Geys, 2017), conduct poorer public policies (Braganca et al., 2015), put lower
effort in politics (Rossi, 2017, Geys and Smith, 2017), and rely on clientelism (Cruz et al., 2017). Those
results are obtained by pooling all dynastic politicians together. But should one really consider political
dynasties as a monolithic group? or could extreme circumstances lead members of different political
dynasties to vote in opposite fashion? In other words: is there ground to expect that political dynasties
may be heterogeneous, prompting their members to act in different ways? We argue that politicians
belonging to a democratic dynasty are more likely than their non-dynastic peers to stand-up for
democracy, should the necessity arise. A politician is considered as belonging to a democratic dynasty if
he.she fulfills two criteria. First, the politician must belong to a dynasty. He.she should therefore be related
by blood to other individuals formerly holding political office. Second, his.her dynasty has to qualify as
democratic. We consider that a dynasty is democratic if its founder showed explicit support for democracy
by either (1) supporting democratic reforms under autocracy or (2) by belonging to a party supporting
democracy as political system in a democracy. More specifically, the founders of democratic dynasties
must have opposed former autocratic regimes, supported the democratic regime in which they started
their political career, or both. Conversely, the following dynastic politicians are considered as nondemocratic: descendants of supporters of former autocratic regimes; descendants of politicians opposing
the democracy they started their political career in; descendants of politicians showing no explicit support
to democratic norms. The conjecture, that politicians belonging to a democratic dynasty are more likely
than their non-dynastic peers to stand-up for democracy, rests on a series of non-mutually exclusive
reasons. Firstly, democratic political dynasties have a vested interest in democracy, because they survive
thanks to the transmission of an electoral advantage (Camp, 1982, Dal Bó et al., 2009, Fiva and Smith,
2018). That advantage would disappear after an autocratic reversal. Secondly, democratic dynasties may
cultivate and transmit a democratic culture resulting in a stronger attachment to democracy (Bisin and
Verdier, 2001). Thirdly, democratic dynastic politicians evolve in a pro-democracy environment that may
shape their preferences and serve as a commitment device lengthening their horizon (Calvó-Armengol and
Jackson, 2009, Olson, 1993, and Besley and Reynal-Querol, 2017).