15 thoughts on “Incumbentocracy”

1. “But I wonder if we are in for some instability in the next twenty years.”

   It’s already happening. To many, a recognizable prestige hierarchy is now a flashing beacon of aposematism symbolizing ‘avoid’.

2. I think we have rule by the famous and unfortunately people get famous for some silly reasons. Trump for his fathers money, Biden for being in congress a long time, Bush for his father, Elizabeth Warren partly for he claim to native American, Bernie Sanders and AOC for radical rhetoric.

   • “unfortunately people get famous for some silly reasons. Trump for his fathers money”

     Huh?

3. At least in part, this could be the result of increasing lifespans.

4. Consider some recent major political leaders (yes, there’s a risk of cherry-picking here. Regrettably, I don’t have time or grant money to publish a thorough and comprehensive investigation of tenure length and average age of individual and institutional A-listers over all domains.)

   1. Germany: Angela Merkel. It’s true that Germany has some famously stable, long tenured chancellors in the post-war era, but Merkel is only 5 more months away from surpassing even Helmut Kohl’s record of over 16 years. She has been chancellor, leader of the CDU or opposition for about 21 years.

   2. Japan: Shinzo Abe was the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, and probably would have kept going for a long time had he not had to resign last year because of health issues.

   3. Israel: Netanyahu was Prime Minister for 15 years in the past 27 in which he was otherwise almost always the leader of the opposition.

   4. Russia: Putin has been effectively in charge for 21 years. Yes, it’s … Russia. Not exactly a fair contest. Nevertheless, that’s still longer than any leader of the Soviet Union except Stalin (29 years). If Putin gets to 30 in 2030 (and would you bet against him?) his ‘reign’ will be longer than anyone since Catherine the Great!

   5. United States: Analysis of the Presidency and other positions is complicated by term limits – it’s plausible for example that Obama might well still be POTUS without them. Also, at some point the incumbents last so long it’s a gerontocracy run by many octogenarians.

   But consider that Biden has been a Senator, VP, or POTUS for 45 years. Schumer has been a highly influential member of Congress for 40 years. Pelosi has been in officer for 34 years, and speaker or minority leader or whip for nearly 20 of those. McConnell has been a senator for 36 years, and a top Republican leader for 14 years. This is remarkably little churn in a big country with a gigantic population.

   I can tell you from my own experience in government that turnover in top slots held by lifetime civil servants is shockingly low. At many places one can look back decades and the same set of names pops up. Many of these people got the jobs relatively young in their careers, but few if any young people could do the same since, because the incumbents never left. Fauci of course is the ne plus ultra of this phenomenon at 36 years in the same job – longer than most whole careers. Andrew ‘Yoda’ Marshall was director of the office of net assessment for 42 years. Hyman Rickover had 64 years of service, almost 30 as some rank of Admiral!

   6. France: A good counter data point, at least lately. Only five Presidents over nearly 50 years until Chirac declined to run again (probably because of bad health impacts from a stroke). After that, it’s been short termers, and we’ll see how long Macron lasts.

   7. Turkey: Not exactly sure where to place it on the ‘fair contest’ spectrum, but Erdogan has been in charge for over 18 years now.

   8. Hungary, Orban, last 11 years and 3 more about a decade prior to that.

   Now, like Russia, there are a lot of ‘democratic’ countries that are not exactly fair contests, but regardless, still leave the club of world leaders very stable over the years. For example:

   9. Belarus, Lukashenko, 27 years
   10. Nicaragua, Ortega, the last 14 years, and 24 out of the last 40 years
   11. Grenada, Mitchell, 21 years
   12. Bangladesh, Hasina, 17 years
   13. Eritrea, Afwerki, 28 years
   14. Rwanda, Kagame, 21 years

   15. Canada: Justin Trudeau has been Prime Minister or party leader for 8 years, which is pretty good, but I’m not sure how to count members of what are clearly family dynasties, with wives and children often carrying on the original incumbent’s legacy in much the same ways. Justin’s father Pierre was PM or leader for another 16 years.

   Also, just like looking at POTUS is complicated by term limits, lots of head of state positions around the world also have term limits, in which case, it might be better to look at whether the same party stays in charge for long periods (like the PRI did in Mexico), and also whether candidates of the same party sometimes pass the baton back and forth if consecutive terms are prohibited, e.g., the Virginia gubernatorial election.

   People with better knowledge of the top figures in other countries are welcome to chime in as regards churn, turnover, or longevity.

   • Point 5, perhaps better named a gerontocracy. Joe Biden apart, we also have Dianne Feinstein as a recent example of dementia. Quite possibly others.

5. My only question would be increased relative to what, and to when? This seems like a difficult topic to measure.

   The reign of kings and queens of long ago such Louis XIV, George III, Victoria, and Frederick the Great was often very long. Of course, these are hereditary roles. But the five longest serving UK Prime Ministers all took office in the 18th and 19th centuries. Bismarck served for quite a while too. Advanced medical care likely also extends the reigns of modern politicians (and others) vis-a-vis ones that lived as far back as the 19th century or earlier. Perhaps there are not a few people who were only around for 10-15 years and died in the their fifties due to a now treatable medical problem, and with our medical care might have lasted another 20 years.

   I don’t have a strong view on this, I’m mostly just wondering how one can come to a strong view empirically, and what the implications are of an ‘incumbentocracy’.

   • I think one has to distinguish between roles that, on the one hand, by the very nature of the position come with something akin to lifelong tenure – e.g., monarchs, federal judges, full professors, maybe owners of closely-held family business, etc. – and, on the other hand, jobs help by people who could, at least in theory, be replaced at any moment or at regular intervals if the selection group finds a more preferable alternative.

     It’s not just politicians at all, but because of news coverage and interest in politics, that is a kind of A-list the names on which tend to be widely known and, at least in competitive democracies, one might naively expect a certain amount of churn as conditions and levels of satisfaction change over time.

     In addition to implications, it would be interesting to figure out causal mechanisms and explanations. Which factors and barriers to entry play the greatest roles in providing institutional and individual incumbents with advantages vs the folks hoping to replace them, and also, on the individual level, what are the attractions that encourage many of them choose to remain in the same positions for so long even after they could retire or move on?

     Here is one possible story, though this is only based on my own anecdotal experiences and observations. In the modern workplace, there seems to be an increased need for secrecy and a constant terror about potential leaks causing major problems. An increasingly “intangible economy” means protecting and controlling information takes top priority. Often times there is simply no good alternative to having a genuinely private conversation (not digitally recorded) than by dealing with someone you already know you can trust, and meeting face to face.

     And it just takes a long time of direct experience to establish that trust and comfort level with a person. What happens when you work in the “circle of trust” level of an organization is that you need to be able to share *some* of what you do, and have some kind of help and assistance. So most of the top people have deputies who are something like a protege / ‘mini-me’ and when it comes times to replace the primacy, the mini-me with whom the rest of the high-trust inner-circle is already familiar (and who knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak) is the only viable candidate for the position, regardless of performance, talent, etc.

     So, you have the official, formal hierarchy, organization chart, and system of rank and seniority and a procedural claim of open, fair competition, but those “how it is *supposed* to work” flowcharts are all abstract constructs that don’t line up with reality. But then you have the real human social network where the lines connecting people have incredibly different weights in terms of comfort, trust, length of working relationship, reputation, mutual friends, and other aspects of personal relationship.

     Now, all of this has always been true, but my point is, if the need for secrets and trust and reputation and pre-existing, long-standing working relationships has been increasing, you would expect that this would function like a barrier to entry and it would be nearly impossible for people to break into these management cliques regardless of performance, talent, track-record, etc. *unless* they got a lucky break at one point and happened to get the opportunity to establish a key personal connection (e.g., as one of those mini-me protege deputies).

     One thing you would predict from this is that management cliques would come and go as groups. And indeed, when a bigwig senior leaves for another job these days, he or she often takes at least one, and often several of “their people” along with them. This is not just because of the usual excuse of “knowing my style, knowing what I like, knowing how to work together as a team”. That stuff is useful, but not of critical importance. The important thing is that one’s value and productivity is a function of *being part of a team with an established circle of trust*.

     Yes, there are superstar talents who will be eagerly grabbed one at a time, but for most ordinary elites, they aren’t worth much on their own except as just another generic executive, but most of their special premium value is strictly a function of already having such a team at their disposal, and of their network of existing strong relationships which can be leveraged.

     I think all of this is getting more important and more common, and, given the way human organizations work, it necessarily means fewer opportunities to break into established insider cliques, which thus enjoy longer tenure. This is especially true when the insiders come to *understand* the nature of the basis of their premium compensation and tenure, and so take active measures to protect it against outsiders by whatever means feasible.

     • Great comment.

       “One thing you would predict from this is that management cliques would come and go as groups. And indeed, when a bigwig senior leaves for another job these days, he or she often takes at least one, and often several of “their people” along with them.”

       That’s exactly what happened at my corporation. Our CEO took my boss (and others) along with him from another firm. Using your theory, my career has probably benefited quite a bit from being a direct report of a member of this ‘circle of trust’ for a decade. Another possibly relevant tidbit: my boss used to be quite the micromanager, but once he got to the point where he trusted me, I’ve been able to go weeks without ever hearing from him.

     • You are describing the long-decried old boys’ network and claiming it is more relevant than ever in this information economy, because keeping your competitive informational edge is more important than ever. I’m not sure the phenomena you’re attempting to explain is even happening, nor do I take part in those cliques to know what they’re up to.

       Maybe you’re seeing this in your workplace, but how would you generalize it to other places? By your own admission, nobody talks about these informal networks and how they really run things. Maybe your company or industry is unique and trust of this sort isn’t as prevalent elsewhere. How would you know it’s become more important?

       • “By your own admission, nobody talks about these informal networks and how they really run things.”

         Did I say that? That’s the opposite of true; literally everyone I work with loves to gossip constantly about these open secrets. These matters are perceived as essential to career progression at the senior levels and one would have a hard time advancing without being very aware and savvy about all this. The facts just aren’t going to be reflected in the officials rules and regulations, for the obvious legal reasons. Welcome to the jungle.

         Now, old boys clubs are still a thing of course, but ‘incumbent cliques’ (sorry, I don’t have a better term yet) are different.

         Indeed, I’d say that your typical members or new entrants of the old boys networks are kind of upset that the old rules and old way of exchanging favors aren’t working as well for them anymore. For instance, I’d say that it’s harder thus rarer to see clear nepotism in the same organization, and now an uncle might arrange for his nephew to get an internship at a different organization, which is like ‘favoritism laundering’.

         Part of this may be ‘HR imperialism’, which for legal reasons has colonized and come to dominate certain core aspects of every important, large organization. Yes, HR is there because of super-Dunbar numbers, but its character and functioning is determined by the law. And everybody hates it. And, if there weren’t ways to circumvent the purportedly hard HR rules on occasion, everything would fall apart.

         Well, part of the value of incumbent cliques is that they provide a way to do just that, though obviously the head of HR and your in-house counsel are also going to have to be in the circle of trust to rationalize some way to bless off on whatever circumvention you feel is important at the moment. All the more reason you can’t replace them and they can stay in their jobs as long as they want.

         One reason I think it is happening across many organizations is because I’ve seen management teams and incumbent cliques arrive and leave as groups to and from organizations in completely different sectors. That leads me to believe it’s a de facto ‘best practice’.

         Furthermore, my model for why this is happening is based on incentives that are inescapable features of contemporary life, and so should affect most people in most big orgs, regardless of the specific details of the enterprise. Specifically, those factors include extreme legal uncertainty, negligible costs of storing all internal digital communications forever, the discoverability and easy querying of those records, the ease and danger of leaks, other kinds of insider threats where a single disgruntled employee can cause major damage, and the impact of social media which makes it very easy for ordinary individuals with the right information to trigger a major scandal without the org even being aware of it before major damage is done.

         All of that creates mafia-like incentives to prize loyalty, secrecy, and ah, ‘moral flexibility’ above talent, performance, integrity, and character. A rockstar who might testify against you is worthless, whereas a merely adequate guy but who you know will never blab is worth his weight in gold. Indeed, to get back to the fact that everyone gossips about this, ‘mafia’ is the half-joke term lots of people use for it. So maybe ‘incumbent mafia’ is a better term. “La Cozy Nostra”.

         • To make it somewhat interesting, you may need to compare this with the tenure of Bezos, Dimon, Jobs, Page/Brin, Grove (Intel) and Zuckerberg et al.

           Is it the tenure that’s the issue or is it lack of results given that tenure?

           Or, are we really talking about the uncomfortable topic of senility? Fortunately, our current president has nothing to worry about in this regard.

6. In terms of the value of keeping secrets, both for institutions and individuals:

   If one is in an economy where intangible information is essential to performance, and productivity, then the problem is not just security by *exclusivity*. A Michael Porter / Peter Thiel point would be that unless one has some way to maintain an exclusive lock on a market – and the critical information that feeds into serving it at the highest level – then competition and arbitrage will quickly drive profit margins to zero.

   Potential businesses that have no way to prevent that won’t come into existence in the first place if they mean likely loss of high fixed costs, or won’t survive long if they do if they face higher overhead / marginal costs, e.g., labor costs, regulatory costs, etc., as they do in developed countries.

   The Arnold Kling point would be “information wants to be free, but people need to get paid” and the way people get paid is by preventing the information from becoming free, i.e., that they are capable of keeping secrets and extremely serious about doing so.

   These pressures will tend to select for business or individuals who collect premiums because of secrets. Thus individuals who know and can be trusted to keep those secrets will tend to be at the top, and turnover over them will be low, in part because it takes a long time to discover, validate, develop, and integrate new incumbentocrats.

   My guess is that the role of elite college attendance and elite-religion-replacing political ideology (with features that allow for conspicuous displays and credibly signals of loyal adherence) in its function of lowering the uncertainly, cost, and time involved in this process is likely underrated. Unfortunately, the particular details of our elite religion are self destructive and generate incentives and internal tensions that undermine elite cohesion. But that only means that cohesive teams of incumbent cliques are *even more* valuable, because the bad religion makes them rarer and harder to establish.

   • In the context of our “civil rights constitution” we live under today, these management cliques become even more invincible when they have a token minority or woman as their symbolic head.

7. Answering your comment above first, you say

   “Did I say that? That’s the opposite of true; literally everyone I work with loves to gossip constantly about these open secrets.”

   You know what I meant, that they do not state publicly in their pronouncements or legal documents that that is really how they operate.

   You say that incumbent cliques are different than old boys’ networks, then say the former recruit for “elite college attendance,” which is how the old boys’ networks always worked. Sure, HR has made that harder for everyone, but it’s not clear precisely why you think the two are different. I’ve seen stories in the business press of “management teams and incumbent cliques arrive and leave as groups to and from organizations in completely different sectors” for the last century, not sure how you think that’s in any way related to current trends.

   “Furthermore, my model for why this is happening is based on incentives that are inescapable features of contemporary life, and so should affect most people in most big orgs, regardless of the specific details of the enterprise. Specifically, those factors include extreme legal uncertainty, negligible costs of storing all internal digital communications forever, the discoverability and easy querying of those records, the ease and danger of leaks, other kinds of insider threats where a single disgruntled employee can cause major damage, and the impact of social media which makes it very easy for ordinary individuals with the right information to trigger a major scandal without the org even being aware of it before major damage is done.”

   It is not clear why you think companies are so scared of most of these minor PR scandals happening, I thought you were mostly talking about leaks of essential trade secrets. Google, a company on the cutting edge of these trends, is famous for running a remarkably open culture instead, which led to the Damore incident and various other dustups lately. I don’t see much evidence that most companies are so scared of internal leaks that might lead to scandal.

   Getting back to your central observation on incumbentocracy, I mentioned that I’m not sure it’s even happening, as Justin pointed out above that there have always been longevity outliers. You’d have to build a statistical case for your basic observation about longevity, anecdotes don’t cut it. Your longevity observation feels true in certain fields, but it certainly isn’t in others.

   As for your model of why the mooted longevity may be happening, you say “the problem is not just security by *exclusivity*,” then do not suggest any other problem, simply saying “the way people get paid is by preventing the information from becoming free,” which seems to be exactly security by exclusivity.

   What is “intangible information?” Sounds like something that would be easy to keep secret.

   Your last graph is incoherent, you say the political religion helps then you say it hurts your incumbents: which is it, both?

   I thought you were making a simple argument that old boys’ networks are more important than ever to protect trade secrets in this highly networked economy where leaks of internal company info are common. You’ve muddied the waters a lot with all this talk of other factors like scandals and elite religion. Maybe those are only important at your company.

   As for the elite religion of wokeness that is currently spreading apace, let me present an alternative hypothesis: that it has nothing to do with internal company goals but is a larger cultural issue caused by our current shitty social media that is also trying to grab the corporate levers of power. In so doing, they’re not only destroying the broader culture but the underlying business bedrock that pays for everything else, but these social media zombies are fanatics who wouldn’t know the first thing about how anything works.

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