Hard Reign

Thursday was the 83rd birthday of Fidel Castro, Cuba's comandante en jefe, who, upon "retiring" as the country's leader last year, passed control of the government on to his brother. In that way he remains the godfather of Cuban politics. Like Castro, plenty of other leaders—despite old age, term limits, or even death—continue through their successors to shape their country's politics after they've left office, subverting the democratic process. Here is an unscientific roundup of some who ensured the survival of their policies by hand-picking their successors.

The leader: Fidel Castro
The successor: Raúl Castro
The country: Cuba
Raúl Castro had been one of Fidel's deputies since the revolution, including a turn recently as vice president. So when el presidente took ill and stepped down in July 2006, provisional rule fell to his brother. In February 2008 Cuba's legislature made it official, elevating Raúl to the presidency.

So far, Raúl has mostly followed his brother's policies. Although he has pushed for economic reform and his government has adopted some more modern management practices, he shows little sign of straying from the longstanding communist model. Earlier this month, responding to an olive branch from Washington, he insisted that Cuba's system would not change. He even said that Cuba will remain a socialist country after the death of its revolutionary leaders. "I was elected to defend, maintain, and continue perfecting socialism, not to destroy it," he told the Cuban National Assembly.

The leader: Vladimir Putin
The successor: Dmitry Medvedev
The country: Russia
As Vladimir Putin's second term as president drew to a close in early 2008, rumors circulated that he might try to change Russia's Constitution, allowing him to run again. Instead, he plucked a top aide from inside his Kremlin bureaucracy and offered him to voters as the next president (he won 70 percent of the vote), the theory being, presumably, that anyone who owed so much to his patron would be loyal, even pliable. Sure enough, when Medvedev was elected in 2008, he asked Putin to become prime minister—a position he had held once before.

The team has thus far bewildered diplomats worldwide trying to figure out who is in control of Russia. In his first year of presidency, Medvedev has taken a more liberal tone on domestic policies but an even fiercer one on foreign policy. Still, his overall politics greatly resemble Putin's. During his first months in office he doled out threats countering American plans for missile defense and seemed enthusiastic about alliances with anti-American governments like Venezuela and Cuba. He also unveiled plans to change the Constitution, proposing to lengthen the presidential term as well as granting more power to Parliament in overseeing the government, stating that Parliament and the Kremlin needed more time to carry out complicated plans. None of these ideas, however, is new. In fact, they are quite similar to plans that Putin contemplated toward the end of his presidency.

The leader: Néstor Kirchner
The successor: Cristina Kirchner
The country: Argentina
In December 2007, Cristina Kirchner rose to power as president of Argentina in what seemed like more of a coronation than an election. "Queen Cristina," as she was sometimes called, won a landslide victory following the abdication of her popular husband, Néstor, who chose not to seek reelection after overseeing an economic recovery that had restored Argentina's optimism after its 2001 economic collapse.

Although both Kirchners are allied with the Peronist Justicialist Party, their politics don't always coincide with those of traditional Peronism. They do, however, coincide with each other's. The term Kirchnerismo has become common in political debates related to Argentina. Cristina worked closely with her husband during his presidency, becoming an itinerant ambassador for his government and recalling the style of Eva Perón. During her presidency, the inverse has also proved to be true—not to mention that she originally held onto seven of Néstor's 12 cabinet members. More recently (because her party suffered at the polls last month), Cristina replaced her cabinet chief and finance minister, but she left in place two powerful posts—planning and commerce—tied most closely to Néstor's strategy.

Cristina has done little different from Néstor, but her popularity has quickly fallen. For one thing, signs that Néstor is meddling behind the scenes have annoyed voters. But she has also faced charges that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez made clandestine donations to her campaign (a briefcase with $800,000 was bound for her office from Caracas when it was intercepted at an airport). And, more broadly, she is not credited with the same managerial talents her husband had: the country's finances are in terrible shape, with debt rising to 56 percent of GDP and poverty levels climbing. She also botched the handling of a political revolt from farmers incensed by a new taxation system for agricultural exports; her refusal to review what led to the tax policy caused analysts to conclude it was her husband.

The leader: Laurent-Désiré Kabila
The successor: Joseph Kabila
The country: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Just 10 days after the murder of Laurent-Désiré Kabila in 2001, his son Joseph took over the presidency of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He had been a major-general in the Army but was unknown to most Congolese until his father's death. He waited more than five years to ratify his position with an election, but when he finally did so, he won 58 percent in the multiparty contest. His televised address after the election was prerecorded, and, in his speech, he deviated very little from his father's policies, saying that there would be negotiations with Congolese rebels only after "immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the aggressor countries."

Meet the new Kabila, same as the old. Joseph began his presidency in the midst of a devastating civil war that continues today, and yet, like his father, he did not recognize the rebels, describing the war as an invasion from outside. He has refused to hold accountable the members of his armed forces who have been accused of raping and executing civilians, a steady policy of inaction he has continued from his father's presidency. (Hillary Clinton highlighted this problem on her trip there last week, urging him to ensure prosecution of five senior officers in the Congolese military who have been accused of rape.) Kabila has also made the same promises that his father never backed with action, including vows of more political openness at home.

The leader: François Duvalier
The successor: Jean-Claude Duvalier
The country: Haiti
In January 1971, 14 years into his reign, Haitian President-for-Life François (Papa Doc) Duvalier decreed that his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude would succeed him as leader of the country. Three months later, Papa Doc was dead and the young Baby Doc, as he was quickly named, became the new Haitian president. When he promised an end to repression and an economic revolution, it seemed that Jean-Claude might depart from his father's despotic ways. In reality, Baby Doc ran Haiti almost exactly the way his father did.

Baby Doc used the Army and the secret police (Tonton Macoutes, a term for bogeymen in Creole) to brutalize the population. He also led a lavish lifestyle in the midst of incredible poverty, never forgoing yachts and sports cars even after critical shortages of foreign currency left the country almost without fuel in 1985. All that money came from the father-and-son kleptocracy, made up of misappropriated funds from the Duvalierville project (an attempt to build a utopian town as a monument to the oppressive father) and a dangerous Cold War game of patronage that had Haiti shifting allegiances for the highest bidder.

In 1985, the year of the fuel shortage, the United States, which had provided $54 million in aid to Haiti, threatened to cut Baby Doc off if he didn't improve the country's human-rights record. So he held a nationwide referendum in which trucks of illiterate Haitians were driven to polling places to vote dozens of times. In 1986, after intense pressure from the U.S. and a popular uprising within the country, Duvalier fled to France, leaving behind a ravaged country lacking any functional political institutions. Human-rights groups say that 40,000 to 60,000 political opponents were killed during the 29-year reign of the father and son. During both Duvaliers' rule, Haiti was the poorest Latin American nation, and it still is today.

The leader: Kim Il Sung
The successor: Kim Jong Il
The country: North Korea
Kim Il Sung, North Korea's "Great Leader," knew he couldn't last forever, so 20 years before his demise, he began to cultivate his eldest son, Kim Jong Il, for the succession. In the meantime, he ruled by establishing a personality cult that portrayed him like a god to the people of North Korea and gave him control of every facet of life in his country. He also introduced the philosophy of juche, or self-reliance, an attempt for North Korea to develop its economy with almost no help from any other country. In 1994, when he was 82, a sudden heart attack did him in, and Kim Jong Il, who became the "Dear Leader," inherited the Hermit Kingdom.

Kim Jong Il has never stood for popular election; instead, he is unanimously elected to the Supreme People's Assembly every five years. Although their personalities have proved to be different—the father was known for his charisma, while the son is impatient and does not take kindly to criticism—Kim Jong Il has continued to rule the country in the same secretive and isolationist fashion that his father established. Designated in North Korea's Constitution as its "Eternal President," whose birthday and day of death are public holidays in the country, Kim Il Sung and his policies have survived through his son's rule. From the looks of it, they'll continue on in the form of Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il's son and likely the next one in line for power.