Kakistocratic Propensity and Elite Reproduction: Rethinking Political Selection and Accountability in the Arab Middle East

Abstract

This article examines the institutional conditions under which political systems reproduce elites whose continued political survival becomes increasingly detached from competence, performance, and effective accountability. It develops the concept of kakistocratic propensity as an institutional tendency that emerges when mechanisms of political selection and political survival become systematically decoupled from competence, performance, and accountability. Drawing on scholarship on authoritarianism, informal institutions, clientelism, political selection, and elite reproduction, the article identifies four mutually reinforcing mechanisms: distorted political selection, weak accountability, elite recycling, and the decoupling of political survival from performance. The concept is explored comparatively through the cases of Syria and Sudan, which illuminate different dimensions of elite reproduction amid political transition and fragmented authority. The article argues that constitutionalism matters in this context not because constitutional rules can guarantee the selection of competent leaders, but because institutionalized constraints can make political failure visible, consequential, and correctable. The concept therefore shifts analytical attention from the moral evaluation of rulers to the institutional conditions that allow political failure to coexist with continued access to political authority.