Sonia Sodha’s article (8 February) alludes to the effect of cultural differences on the ways families are structured, how members care for each other and government policy. In 1983 the French sociologist Emmanuel Todd published La Troisième Planète, translated into English in 1985 as The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structures and Social Systems. Todd sought to explain, by considering family structures, why different areas adopt different political systems. Two key differences were: 1. Inheritance patterns: equal or unequal division of the estate (equality v inequality). 2. Offspring tending to leave young or to stay at home into adulthood under the paterfamilias (liberty v authority). He characterised countries or areas by one of the four possible combinations. England and a few other places were characterised by liberty-inequality, and had the most stable democratic systems. Germany tended to authority-inequality and had tended to rightwing authoritarian governments, in Russia there was authority-equality and so tended to leftwing authoritarian (communist) governments.
The book sometimes seems inclined not to let facts spoil an interesting idea, and events after its publication do not entirely support its thesis. But Todd’s interesting point is that family structures influence political systems.
Back to Sodha, if economics is preventing adult offspring leaving the nest, and thus changing family structures, is England moving towards an authority-inequality pattern, and will that lead to a tendency to favour more authoritarian governments?
Dr John Richer
Oxford
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
.jpg?w=600)
