We all despise nepotism, but don’t we just love a dynasty? We are intrigued by the fatal glamour of political clans like the Kennedys and Bhuttos, the cascading wealth of Windsors and Rothschilds, the artistic talent gliding through generations of Waughs or Renoirs. Even the random trashiness of our celebrity culture cannot escape — why else did Carol Thatcher become queen of the jungle a few years ago?

The evolutionary psychologist, Steven Pinker, has compared nepotism to sex, “a powerful human motive that many people are too squeamish to examine”. One who has done so is Adam Bellow, the publisher son of the great novelist, Saul Bellow, whose book In Praise of Nepotism tried to unravel our duplicity in this area.

Modern meritocratic values tell us to deplore success tainted by family ties. Bellow suggests the biological impulse to look after one’s own can be positive. Civilisation was shaped more by dynasties than democracy — a relatively recent development. Would we have so much great renaissance art without the Medicis? Would America’s federal government have fought so passionately for civil rights if JFK had ignored his brother Bobby when appointing an attorney-general?

Bellow compares altruistic, nurturing and collective “family” values to the out-of-my-road individualism that he suggests represents true meritocracy. The individualist is driven by self-gratification. For the nepotist, it’s all about the kids. And where your moral compass lies depends on where you live. In many parts of the world, a refusal to favour friends and family is considered cold and unnatural. Indians and Italians would be suspicious of someone who preferred a total stranger to their own flesh and blood.

So perhaps some of our politicians would feel more comfortable in Naples or New Delhi, where nobody would think it odd that the deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon employs her mother Joan as a constituency assistant, or that Labour MSP Michael McMahon has an office run by his wife Margaret and staffed by his daughter Siobhan.

The Scottish parliament last week published details of the 25 members who pay close relatives from the public purse. Salary details remain confidential, though it’s more information than you could prise from secretive Westminster, where politics is as transparent as Pugin’s stained glass windows.

Granted, the ethical dilemma posed by Oxford undergraduate Bilawal Bhutto Zardari taking his assassinated mother’s mantle in the Pakistan People’s party has more global consequences than whether the member for Bellshill pays his missus to rinse out his coffee mug. But both are nepotistic. Both result in a creeping mediocrity. In naming her 19-year-old son as successor before she died, Bhutto undermined the democratic values she claimed to champion. Yes, it’s easier to appoint a family member one can trust, who knows exactly what is required. But it also excludes fresh talent and ideas, and increases the likelihood of stagnation and corruption. If an MSP was being compromised by powerful lobbyists — say a soft drinks company keen to get its product into schools — would his diary-secretary wife expose any conflict of interest?

Nepotism is strongest where democracy is weakest. Bellow is correct to identify it as an instinctual urge, written into our DNA. So is the capacity to destroy and to hurt, but that does not mean we simply go with our gut. Liberal democracies create structures that promote the best aspects of our nature — co-operation, creativity, fairness. If it feels natural to put the family first, we need laws that acknowledge and limit such human weakness.

Bellow’s argument is more subtle than simply advocating paternal patronage. He advances the idea of a “new nepotism” in which everyone uses whatever connections they inherit or acquire to develop their natural abilities. That’s fine if your dad’s a nobel laureate and as a five-year-old you broke bagels with the cream of New York’s intelligensia. It disadvantages the majority of children whose contacts are limited by class, education and geography — who know nobody capable of offering them an alternative, more ambitious vision of their the future.

New nepotism is more difficult to identify than the old, “my daughter’s my researcher” sort. Siobhan McMahon works for the Scottish secretary Jim Murphy as well as her dad. We only know that because he mentioned it last week, in a convoluted attempt to defend her position. So how many other MSPs’ offspring are employed by colleagues of parents, or any public bodies? How many political spouses sit on quangos? What about the connections between journalists and politicians and public relations agencies? Where do special advisors work after government?

Americans are pioneering ways of opening up legislators to scrutiny, using digital technology to illustrate patterns and connections among the powerful. The Sunlight Foundation uses the internet and citizen journalism to expose the interplay of “money, lobbying and influence” in Washington. They have already dealt with spouse employment on Capitol Hill. Another blog project, Party Time, uses tools like Twitter to update voters about entertainment events involving their representatives. Where Are They Now? traces the career paths of former congressional staffers. The point is not to increase cynicism but to build public trust — reaching out to a wider family of citizens, building connections beyond traditional loyalties based on kinship, county and cronyism. It is significant that such moral clarity comes from from a country that recently rejected dynastic politics.

joan.mcalpine@sunday-times.co.uk

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