Cousin Marriage v. Democracy

Here's the opening of an interesting new paper that will be presented at this year's Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting at Cal State Fullerton from May 27-31. "Consanguinity" means cousin marriage (typically, second cousins or closer relations):

Consanguinity as a major predictor of levels of democratization in a study of 55 countries.

Michael A. Woodley

Institution: School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Abstract: This
study reports the existence of a significant and robust correlation at
the national data scale between consanguinity (as measured by the
coefficient of inbreeding), and levels of democratization (as measured
by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index) for a sample of
55 countries (r=-.77, P<.05). Comparative correlative analysis found
that democracy exhibits a higher magnitude correlation with
consanguinity than with measures of nine other factors believed to
influence levels of democracy (economic freedom; education; GDP per
capita; history of foreign occupation in last 100 years; human
development; inequality; IQ; media age; and percentage exports in
non-renewable resources). Multiple regression analysis further revealed
that consanguinity was the strongest predictor of differences in levels
of democracy, although three factors (history of foreign occupation in
last 100 years; inequality; and percentage exports in non-renewable
resources) also produced statistically significant β coefficients.
These results are interpreted in light of the theory that democracy
only seems to be an optimal political system for countries in which
consanguinity has not allowed for the extensive perpetuation of
genetically closed kinship groupings (clans or tribes), as these will
tend to maximize both their collective utility and inclusive fitness
through securing resources at the expense of other kinship groupings.

It
has been speculated that high levels of consanguinity within countries
(mating between second cousins or closer, F<0.0156), prevents
democratic nation building. High degrees of consanguinity within ethnic
kinship groupings (traditional tribal groups and clans) are thought to
generate mistrust between those groups through the reinforcement of
endogamous social and biological arrangements, with non-democratic
regimes emerging as a consequence of individuals turning to reliable
kinship groupings for support rather than the market or the state
(Kurtz, 2002; Sailer, 2004).