Kinship Systems and the Structure of Political Succession: Evidence on the Relative Association of Descent and Residence

Abstract

Kinship systems are widely recognized as central institutional structures shaping social and political organization, yet it remains unclear which dimensions of kinship are most closely associated with the institutionalized succession to political office, and in particular with the extent to which that succession is gendered. This study examines whether variation in political succession is more consistently associated with descent systems or marital residence patterns using cross-cultural data from the Ethnographic Atlas. Political succession is conceptualized as a four-category outcome distinguishing absence of office, nonhereditary authority, patrilineal inheritance, and matrilineal inheritance. Multinomial logistic regression models are estimated on a sample of 915 societies, with fully specified models based on 682 observations. Results indicate that descent systems are more consistently associated with variation in the institutional form of political succession than residence patterns. In particular, matrilineal inheritance of political office, which need not imply that the officeholder is female, is concentrated in matrilineal descent systems, whereas residence shows less consistent associations across outcome categories. Model comparison results further show that specifications including descent provide better model fit than those including residence alone. Findings suggest that variation in political succession is more closely linked to lineage-based institutional structures than to post-marital residence arrangements, offering a more precise empirical framework for analyzing kinship and the gendered structure of political succession.