The writer is director of the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House
When 38-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra was sworn in as Thailand’s new Prime Minister last Sunday her accession marked three milestones.
First, she became the youngest-ever prime minister of this important Southeast Asian nation. Second, she brought the Shinawatra family back to power for the first time in a decade, after her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra was forced out by a judicial ruling in 2014 and her father Thaksin Shinawatra, a tycoon who used to own Manchester City, was removed in a 2006 coup. Third, her appointment means six of south-east Asia’s 10 nations will be ruled by family dynasties.
While patronage networks and nepotism are common in politics around the world, what is striking in south-east Asia is how political families are making a resurgence in both democratic and non-democratic systems. You can find them from the Philippines and Indonesia, where elections are keenly contested, to partial democracies like Thailand and one-party states like Laos and Cambodia.
With over 670mn people and a combined economy that is the fifth largest in the world, south-east Asia has become a crucible of geopolitical competition between the US and China. Foreign diplomats and business executives who want to gain influence and profit here need to understand these family dynamics if they want to succeed.
Alongside Paetongtarn, four other south-east Asian nations are led by the children of former rulers: Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines, Hun Manet in Cambodia, Sonexay Siphandone in Laos and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah in Brunei. Indonesia will join the club when Prabowo Subianto is sworn in as president in October. The former son-in-law of long-running authoritarian leader Suharto and the son and grandson of leading Indonesian politicians, Prabowo will also have Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the son of outgoing president Joko Widodo, as his vice-president. In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of founding father Aung San, was the elected leader until she was removed in a 2021 military coup.
The dominance of political families is mirrored in the business sector and local politics. It reflects a broader failure to build robust and effective institutions that distribute power and public goods and ensure accountable and transparent governance.
In competitive democracies like Indonesia and the Philippines, the high cost of campaigning in elections and the absence of institutionalised political parties provides an opening to scions of political families who benefit from instant name recognition and large support networks.
In authoritarian systems, powerful families can manipulate the political system to their own advantage in more direct ways.
Paetongtarn, for example, would likely not have become prime minister without the successful efforts of the Thai elite to squelch the democratic opposition by undermining and then banning the progressive and popular Move Forward party.
As nepo babies everywhere argue, their parentage should not preclude them from any particular career. Nor does it mean they cannot be good at their jobs. Family-run conglomerates in south-east Asia have proved remarkably resilient through the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis and Covid-19.
However, their success has often come at the cost of more competitive local and international rivals, landing south-east Asian consumers with higher prices for their goods and services. Similarly, in the political sphere, the predominance of such families stifles future competition.
It is important to acknowledge that, at least in the Philippines and Indonesia, citizens chose dynastic politicians in broadly free and fair contests. Voters seemed to be attracted to the perceived stability of known names at a time when south-east Asia’s economic and geopolitical position is under renewed pressure.
The trend is also easier to understand in the context of the modern history of south-east Asia, which had no independent nation-states apart from Thailand before 1945. For better and for worse, political families have been essential to the construction and development of these young countries.
They should, however, take nothing for granted. Dynastic legacies might help to secure power. But citizens will judge their leaders by their performance, not their parents. That is what the people of Bangladesh, next door to south-east Asia, have shown. Earlier this month they ousted unpopular prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed — daughter of the country’s founding leader.
