Gerontocracy
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A gerontocracy is a form of
In many political structures, power within the ruling class accumulates with age, making the oldest individuals the holders of the most power. Those holding the most power may not be in formal leadership positions, but often dominate those who are. In a simplified definition, a gerontocracy is a society where leadership is reserved for elders.[1]
Background
Although the idea of the elderly holding power exists in many cultures, the gerontocracy has its western roots in ancient Greece. Plato stated that "it is for the elder man to rule and for the younger to submit".[2] An example of the ancient Greek gerontocracy can be seen in the city-state of Sparta, which was ruled by a Gerousia, a council made up of members who were at least 60 years old and who served for life.[3]
In political systems
China
Between 1982 and 1992, the Central Advisory Commission's power and authority often surpassed the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was quipped, "the 80-year-olds are calling meetings of 70-year-olds to decide which 60-year-olds should retire".,[4] as CMC chairman Deng Xiaoping did not retire until the age of 85.[citation needed]
Soviet Union
In the
In 1980, the average
Communist states
Other
- Albania (First Secretary Enver Hoxhawas 76 at death)
- Bulgaria (General Secretary Todor Zhivkov was 78 at resignation)
- Czechoslovakia (President Gustáv Husákwas 76 at resignation)
- East Germany (General Secretary and head of state Erich Honecker was 77 when forced out)
- Hungary (General Secretary János Kádárwas 75 when forced out)
- Laos (President Kaysone Phomvihane was 71 at death)
- North Korea (Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung was 82 at death)
- Nicolae Ceauşescuwas 71 when executed)
- Vietnam (General Secretary Lê Duẩn was 79 at death)
- Yugoslavia (President and Marshal Josip Broz Tito was 87 at death)
On the sub-national level, Georgia's party head, Vasil Mzhavanadze, was 70 when forced out and his Lithuanian counterpart, Antanas Sniečkus, was 71 at death. Nowadays, Cuba has been characterized as a gerontocracy: "Although the population is now mainly black or mulatto and young, its rulers form a mainly white gerontocracy", The Economist wrote in 2008.[12] Cuba's Fidel Castro had de facto ruled the country for nearly 50 years, effectively retiring in 2008 at the age of 82, although he remained the leader of the Communist Party of Cuba until 2011. He was replaced by his brother, Raúl Castro, who was 89 years old at the time of his own retirement.[citation needed]
United States
The observation of gerontocracy in the United States has been connected to broader themes of American decline.[13]
Presidency
Under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the U.S. government has been described as a gerontocracy.[14][15] At 70, Trump was the oldest person ever to be inaugurated president, until the inauguration of Biden. Many senior officials in Trump's administration, such as attorneys general Jeff Sessions and William Barr, secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue, and secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross, have been 70 or older.[citation needed]
In the 2020 presidential election, Biden prevailed against Trump, setting a new age record.[16] Biden was 78 when he was sworn in on January 20, 2021, making him the oldest person to be inaugurated president. After turning 80 on November 20, 2022, Biden also became the first president to reach the milestone while in office.[17] If he wins his reelection campaign in 2024 and survives his second term, he will be 86 when leaving office in 2029.
Congress
In 2021, the average age of a senator was 64,[23] and positions of power within the legislatures — such as chairmanships of various committees — are usually bestowed upon the more experienced, that is, older, members of the legislature. Strom Thurmond, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, left office at age 100 after almost half a century in the body, while Robert Byrd of West Virginia was born in 1917 and served in the Senate from 1959 to his death in 2010 at age 92. Both Thurmond and Byrd had served as president pro tempore of the Senate, a position that is third in the presidential line of succession.
Theocracy
Gerontocracy is common in
Stateless societies
In Kenya, Samburu society is said to be a gerontocracy. The power of elders is linked to the belief in their curse, underpinning their monopoly over arranging marriages and taking on further wives. This is at the expense of unmarried younger men, whose development up to the age of thirty is in a state of social suspension, prolonging their adolescent status. The paradox of Samburu gerontocracy is that popular attention focuses on the glamour and deviant activities of these footloose bachelors, which extend to a form of gang warfare, widespread suspicions of adultery with the wives of older men, and theft of their stock.[25]
African societies such as this are known for their gerontocratic hierarchies. The
Other countries
The Roman Republic was originally an example; the word senate is related to the Latin word senex, meaning "old man". Cicero wrote: "They wouldn't make use of running or jumping or spears from afar or swords up close, but rather wisdom, reasoning, and thought, which, if they weren't in old men, our ancestors wouldn't have called the highest council the senate."[26]
In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the government headed by 87-year-old state chief minister M. Karunanidhi was another example of gerontocracy. In another Indian state, West Bengal, Jyoti Basu was 86 years old when he stepped down from the office of chief minister of the state, but he continued to remain a member of the Polit Bureau until a few months before his death in 2010 and was consulted on all matters related to governance by the chief minister and his cabinet as well as his other party colleagues.[citation needed]
Present-day Italy is often considered a gerontocracy,[27] even in the internal Italian debate.[28][29] The Monti government had the highest average age in the western world at 64 years, with its youngest members being 57. Former Italian prime minister Mario Monti was 70 when he left office. His immediate predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, was 75 at the time of resignation in 2011. The previous head of the government Romano Prodi was nearly 69 when he stepped down in 2008. Italian president Sergio Mattarella is 82, while his predecessors Giorgio Napolitano and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi were 89 and 85 respectively when they left office. This trend has been disrupted in recent years, with Matteo Renzi becoming prime minister at age 39 in 2014, and Giorgia Meloni assuming the office at age 45 in 2022. As of 2014, the average age of Italian university professors is 63, of bank directors and chief executive officers 67, of members of parliament 56, and of labor union representatives 59.[27][28][29][30]
Modern
In
Organizational examples
Outside the political sphere, gerontocracy may be observed in other institutional hierarchies of various kinds. Generally the mark of a gerontocracy is the presence of a substantial number of
Gerontocracy generally occurs as a phase in the development of an entity, rather than being part of it throughout its existence. Opposition to gerontocracy may cause weakening or elimination of this characteristic by instituting things like term limits or
Judges of the United States courts, for example, serve for life, but a system of incentives to retire at full pay after a given age and disqualification from leadership has been instituted. The International Olympic Committee instituted a mandatory retirement age in 1965, and Pope Paul VI removed the right of cardinals to vote for a new pope once they reached the age of 80, which was to limit the number of cardinals that would vote for the new Pope, due to the proliferation of cardinals that was occurring at the time and is continuing to occur.
Gerontocracy may emerge in an institution not initially known for it.
See also
References
- ^ Maddox, G. L. (1987). The Encyclopedia of Aging (p. 284). New York: Springer.
- ^ Bytheway, B. (1995). Ageism (p. 45). Buckingham: Open University Press.
- ^ Palmore, E. B. (1999). Ageism: negative and positive (2nd ed., p. 39). New York: Springer.
- ^ "Read TIME's 1989 cover story about the Tiananmen Square massacre". TIME. 4 June 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
- ^ The Coming Change of Generations in the Kremlin, The New York Times, 6 July 1970
- ISBN 0-87332-496-X.
- ISBN 0-415-02142-1.
- ISBN 0-8014-4169-2.
- ISBN 0-7656-1454-5.
- ^ Post, p. 97.
- ^ Dowd, Maureen (18 November 1990). "Where's the Rest of Him?". The New York Times. p. 7:1. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
- ^ "The Cuban revolution at 50 - Heroic myth and prosaic failure". The Economist. 30 December 2008.
- ^ "America's Unhealthy Gerontocracy". American Affairs. 25 June 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ "America, the Gerontocracy". Politico. 3 September 2019. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ "Why Do Such Elderly People Run America?". The Atlantic. 5 March 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ "Biden wins Pennsylvania, becoming the 46th president of the United States". CNN. 7 November 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
- ^ Vazquez, Maegan (20 November 2022). "Joe Biden celebrates his 80th birthday". CNN. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
- ^ Boehm, Eric (18 November 2022). "Nancy Pelosi Embodied America's Gerontocracy Problem". reason.com. Reason. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
- ^ "Nancy Pelosi due to be America's oldest House speaker". Washington Examiner. 14 December 2018. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ Mayer, Jane. "Dianne Feinstein's Missteps Raise a Painful Age Question Among Senate Democrats". The New Yorker. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
- ^ "U.S. Senate: Senators Who Have Died in Office". www.senate.gov. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
- ^ Manning, Jennifer. "Membership of the 117th Congress: A Profile". Congressional Research Service. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
- ^ Yamani, Mai. "Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older". www.aljazeera.com.
- ISBN 978-0-415-31725-2
- De Senectute, I.16
- ^ a b Gunilla von Hall (28 February 2012). "Ung ilska mot Italiens politiska dinosaurier | Utrikes | SvD". Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). Svd.se. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ a b "Il Parlamento italiano? Maschio e di mezza età" (in Italian). Espresso.repubblica.it. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ a b "La Stampa - Abbiamo i potenti più vecchi d'EuropaPolitici e manager sfiorano i 60 anni" (in Italian). Lastampa.it. 17 May 2012. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ "Distribuzione dei Senatori per fasce di età e per sesso" (in Italian). senato.it. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ "JAPAN'S SILVER DEMOCRACY". Asian Century Institute. 5 October 2015. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
Further reading
- political power; spending on politics soared." (p. 22.) "[N]o democracy can function well if people are unwilling to lose power – if a generation of leaders... becomes so entrenched that it ages into gerontocracy; if one of two major parties denies the arithmetic of elections; if a cohort of the ruling class loses status that it once enjoyed and sets out to salvage it." (p. 23.)
- O'Toole, Fintan, "Eldest Statesmen", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXI, no. 1 (18 January 2024), pp. 17–19. "[Joe] Biden's signature achievements as president [are] securing large-scale investment in infrastructure and in the transition to a carbon-free economy... [But t]here has been a relentless decline in absolute [economic] mobility from one generation to the next..." (p. 18.) "With the promised bridge to a new generation as yet unbuilt, time is not on Biden's side, or on the side of American democracy." (p. 19.)