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Trump's children may benefit politically for decades to come from the family brand, as have other children of personalist rulers who later established personalist rule themselves.
At the beginning of the 2017 film The Death of Stalin, the Soviet dictator is found unconscious on his bedroom floor after suffering a stroke. His subordinates Khrushchev and Malenkov, as well as the head of the secret police Beria, look terrified even at the moment when the tyrant is dying.
They argue for a few minutes about the need to notify a doctor. Malenkov hesitates: " As acting General Secretary, I think that the Central Committee should decide on this ". Meanwhile, Khrushchev objected: " But our General Secretary is indecently spilling his urine!" I think that even in his current state he is saying: Bring me a doctor urgently !".
But Malenkov does not withdraw from his: " Well, I think we should wait until we have a quorum ". "Quorum?!" Khrushchev asks. " Yes, not everyone is aware of the situation" . Thus, no competent doctor was notified in time, and Stalin died at the age of 74.
A real, albeit less funny, version of this scene may play out in the coming years in some of the world's most populous countries. One of the problems of our time is the rise of the "personalist regime", led by an individual whose will is more important than any kind of ideology.
Now, these types of leaders are getting old. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were born between 1950-1954. This means they are approaching the age when Stalin died. The future president of Indonesia, Praboëo Subianto, born in 1951, is a leader with a personalized power.
Donald Trump, the potential next president of the USA, with a personalistic leadership style (“Only I can solve the problems!”) is even older. As these leaders approach death, the likelihood of chaos, unpredictability, but also hope for something better is increasing.
From the time of Stalin's death in 1953 until 1990, personalist regimes were rare. In post-Stalinist communist states, it rarely mattered who the leader was. Boring Political Bureaus ruled. When the General Secretary died, it was the turn of the next apparatchik.
But after the collapse of communism, regimes based on collegial leadership declined. The Communist Party of Cuba and the regime of the Mullahs in Iran are the two rare cases of survival. Today, "sultanist" regimes are more common, led by all-powerful presidents with a lifetime mandate.
This includes Putinism in Russia, but to some extent also China, which until recently was ruled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, but where Xi now holds the main weight.
But what happens when the "sultan" approaches death?
First, his time horizon narrows. An aging leader must act quickly to ensure his legacy. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Putin invaded Ukraine, as he reportedly began frequenting oncologists. Xi Jinping's latest biographer, Michael Sheridan, believes that China's president has given himself a five-year deadline to restore China's control over Taiwan.
Things take an even more dangerous course when the judgment of the man who makes the major decisions alone begins to degrade with age, as is happening with the apparent decline in the cognitive abilities of Donald Trump. Some leaders who could no longer find a job even as simple accountants still have access to buttons that launch nuclear weapons.
Their political fixations are usually created centuries ago. So Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet Union, while the nightmare that dictates Xi's course was the chaotic Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. These two men are less influenced by other aspects, such as climate change or developments in Artificial Intelligence.
Adding to the unpredictability is the fact that they have no heir apparent to follow. Only in young and weak states like North Korea or Turkmenistan can a personalist ruler establish a de facto hereditary family monarchy.
In Russia or Turkey, various contenders are claiming to take the baton. In personalist dictatorships, writes Sarah Hummel of Harvard University in the US, "coup attempts and chaotic departures from power are more likely as leaders age and their death becomes inevitable."
Some of these regimes can collapse when the leader dies, as happened with the regime of Spanish General Francisco Franco after his death in 1975. Analyzing "a global sample of dictatorships from 1946 to 2008," Anne Meng of the University of Virginia, The USA revealed that "most parties in power are unable to survive the death or departure of the founding leader".
Even when leaders were supposed to run "one-party regimes," parties were often simply tools in the function of one person, the leader. Regimes that have the best chance of survival rely on large political organizations, says Ora John Reuter of the University of Wisconsin, USA.
Naredra Modi's BJP party, Erdogan's AKP or Xi Jinping's Communist Party fulfill this criterion. But Putin and Trump do not have a broadly organized party behind them, which means that the Putin regime and the Trump movement could disappear along with their leaders.
One thing to keep in mind, though: Trump's children may benefit politically for decades to come from the family brand, as have other children of personalist rulers who later established personalist rule themselves.
Such is the case of the Philippine president Bongbong Marcos, or that of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, recently ousted from power. Sometimes, when a personalist regime falls, so does the state, as happened in Venezuela after the death of Hugo Chavez. But there is reason to be hopeful. As with Stalin, what comes next is often at least somewhat less horrific./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Financial Times"
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