Biden, Putin, Xi, Modi: What Keeps Old Ideas and Old Men in Power? | Kenan Malik

SStates that are in trouble or in fear aspire to the domination of older men, wrote Plutarch, the first-century Greek historian and philosopher, as he pondered whether an old man should get involved in politics.Only old men, he believed, possessed the wisdom that comes with age and the composure that comes with experience. The state that always rejects old men, he maintained, must necessarily be filled with young men who are thirsty for reputation and power, but who do not possess the spirit of a statesman.

What would Plutarch make of Joe Biden’s dismal performance in last month’s debate against Donald Trump and his insistence on remaining the Democratic candidate in November’s presidential election? Plutarch acknowledges that old people can be weakened, but the harm done by their physical weakness, he insists, is not as great as the advantage they possess in prudence and circumspection.

Whatever his thoughts on Biden, Plutarch would probably have recognized some aspects of the contemporary political world. It’s not just that the two men running for president are 81 and 78. American lawmakers are getting older, too. The median age in the House of Representatives is 58, and in the Senate it’s 65. More than a third of senators are between 81 and 78. more than 70.

And it’s not just in the United States that old people rule. Vladimir Putin is 71, as is Xi Jinping. India’s Narendra Modi is 73; his Pakistani counterpart, Shehbaz Sharif, is a year younger; and Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina is three years older. Benjamin Netanyahu is 74, while Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is 88 and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 85. The world’s oldest current leader, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, is 91, a decade older than Biden.

There are, to be sure, young leaders. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is, at 35, the youngest in the world. But perhaps not for long. After the votes are counted in France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, Jordan Bardella, 28, a member of the far-right National Rally, could be poised to become the new prime minister. Nevertheless, the tendency toward gerontocracy, the rule of the old, is a striking feature of the contemporary world.

It shouldn't have happened this way, according to the American historian and philosopher Samuel Moyn observedIn the pre-modern world, respect for the elderly was embedded in the social fabric, a means of maintaining order and social discipline. East wisdom; and length of days, understanding, as Job says in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

The advent of modernity seems to have transformed the social status of the elderly. At the birth of political modernity, Moyn argues, the French revolutionaries, by overthrowing the old regimewas explicitly aimed at the empowerment of the elderly, seeking not only to overthrow aristocrats on behalf of the people and fathers on behalf of their sons, but more broadly to tame the age-old commitment to gerontocracy for the benefit of the younger majority. Over time, however, the authority of the elders was restored and the youthful pretenders were replaced.

The paradox of contemporary societies, particularly Western ones, is that while older people have a strong hold on political power, older people are often neglected and deprived of support in our more atomized and individualized societies, the social networks that once provided them with some sustenance having seriously frayed. The paradox is also that we live in societies that celebrate youth and youth culture, while entrusting the keys to political power to aging leaders.

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These paradoxes arise because modern gerontocracy is the product of societies in which power and wealth accumulate within certain families and classes, and in which sclerotic political systems are designed to minimize disruption from outside.

In Born to leadIn their forthcoming book on the making and remaking of Britain’s elite, sociologists Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman observe that, for all the talk of elite transformation and new elites, the ruling order is reproducing itself in much the same way as it was a century ago, and that there is considerable continuity in who enters the elite and how they get there. Certainly, new social groups, particularly women and ethnic minorities, have claimed the privileges of Britain’s upper echelons. But, Reeves and Friedman point out, those born into the top 1% are just as likely to enter the elite today as they were 125 years ago. The same families, schools and institutions shape the country’s ruling classes. Inevitably, this leaves the old hands, already entrenched in wealth and power, with great advantages.

At the same time, political systems that were born to foster democratic transformation have evolved into structures that value stability and are designed to minimize political disruption. From the British majority system to first-past-the-post voting, to the use of runoff elections in French elections to maximize votes against rebel parties, to the US Senate that offers sparsely populated rural states equal representation with large, urban states, political and electoral systems create palisades to protect themselves from external threats.

Plutarch fears that turbulent youth will rush into public affairs, dragging the masses into confusion like a turbulent sea. This fear still haunts many, though the current fear is not so much that of the young as of populist leaders. Attempts to minimize disruption also allow old leaders to cling to power. The machinery that has allowed Biden to remain the Democratic presidential nominee despite concerns about his age, and the difficulties his internal detractors are having in replacing him, illustrate this process well.

In the West (but not necessarily elsewhere in the world), demographic changes, including population aging, play an important role in maintaining the power of older people. But beyond demographics, there is politics.

Gerontocracy is the cousin of plutocracy. The problems we face are not primarily old versus young, or a generational war, but ones of class and power, of the entrenchment of wealth and the attempts to marginalise outside insurgents. As Britain ends 14 years of Tory rule, and in a year when Half the globe goes to the pollswe should worry less about gerontocracy as a system, and more about the underlying reasons that keep old people, whether old people or old ideas, in power.

Kenan Malik is a columnist for the Observer

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