The belief, with associated practices, that one owes a special loyalty to one's descent group at the expense of any broader social entity.
Comment:A "patrimony" is an inheritance or endowment, and the adjective "patrimonial," most narrowly understood, refers to that or the institution of family-line inheritance.
But the term "patrimonialism" has been extended to designate narrowly focused loyalty one's own group (defined by kinship, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or whatever) specifically at the expense of the wider commonweal.
Some writers see the evolution of universalistic modernity as essentially the struggle against narrowly parochial patrimonialism. In that perspective a term such as "Fatherland" is anti-modern (as are ideologies such as nationalism), while a project such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the International Court of Justice are inherently modern.
Modern thinking tends to condemn patrimonialism as inherently immoral or at least inefficient. Consider the following comment from The Economist (Dec. 5, 2015, p. 49):
The underlying problem is politics. Under Lebanon's system, seats in parliament and posts in government are shared out by sect rather than competence. This has, undersurprisingly, produced incompetent government.In contexts of varying scale, patrimonialism covers such terms as "nepotism," "tribal loyalty," "populism," "nationalism," and even "patriotism." (French president Charles de Gaulle is reputed to have made an important distinction: "Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate of people other than your own comes first." But love or hate, patrimonialism is, for analytical purposes, patrimonialism.)
Because the term "patrimonialism" normally refers to arrangements larger than a family, it exceeds its range of convenience when referring to filial piety.
Definition Revised: 2018-11-04
Script Last Modified: 2025-02-04
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