What are the problems with patrimonial cultures, and how can one positively transform them? Let’s use the current US administration as a showcase and start with two insightful theses by Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic.

The Core Flaws of Patrimonial Systems

1. The 47th US president is turning his country into a patrimonial system. Not an authoritarian one.
2. Patrimonial systems fail through incompetence and corruption.

Whereas authoritarian systems rely on heavy bureaucracy (for internal intelligence, propaganda etc.), patrimonial systems fight bureaucracy because they want all power and loyalty to be with the ruler – see DOGE undoing a functional bureaucracy.

Wonderfully portrayed in The Godfather movie, patrimonial leaders see their organization (like a country) as “extended household” or “family business”, ruled by their own interests, not by rules.

Loyalty Over Competence: A Recipe for Trouble

As you would expect, the patrimonial ruler selects his personnel by loyalty, not by competence. This means trouble, because competence is kind of necessary to keep a complex modern organization going.

But trouble also looms from another quarter. People expect something in return for their loyalty to the father figure (latin patrimonium = fatherly inheritance). And so patrimonial systems breed corruption.

The Psychology of Failure: Why Followers Turn Away

And here comes the SCM model of famous social psychologist Susan Fiske: We judge people and groups based on two dimensions: warmth (“my friend or foe?”) and competence (“successful or not?”). Corruption means low warmth (“Those up there are after their own benefit, not mine”), and paired with low competence, this generates the negative emotion of disgust.

This is why incompetence and corruption are the best chance for patrimonial transformations to undo themselves – disgusted voters turn away.

Beyond Politics: A Warning for Corporate Leaders

But the issue is not confined to states – corporate leaders must avoid perceptions of incompetence or acting in their own interest. Transformation platforms like ChangeMaker are anti-patrimonial because they boost leadership’s factful competence and base everyone’s status on achievement, not loyalty.

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