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Flashmag! Issue 177 October 2026
Several studies of ENA graduating classes have shown that an overwhelming proportion of those admitted came from families in which a parent had held a high-level government position, a senior executive role, or a prestigious professional position. People often gain admission because they already knew the unwritten rules, because a parent or relative had walked those same halls, or because they instinctively knew— without even thinking about it— how to conduct themselves before an admissions panel. In Canada, Justin Trudeau, son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, grew up with a head start that few citizens can claim: that of having already seen, from the inside, how power works, and of having encountered as a child the figures he would later rub shoulders with as peers. In India, the Congress Party was led for decades by the same Nehru-Gandhi family. In Japan, more than a quarter of the members of the Diet are“ second- or third-generation politicians”— a phenomenon so common that it has its own name, seshu giin.
This is not to say that these individuals lacked competence. Many were truly brilliant, hardworking, and capable. It suggests something else, something more subtle: that competence alone would probably never have taken them where they ended up— or at least not as quickly, not as high. What was needed, from the outset, was a door left ajar— and that door is rarely opened by anyone from the outside.
In Business: Capital Attracts Capital
The business world is no exception to this rule— it may even be the most striking example of it. A study frequently cited by economists shows that a significant portion of the world’ s great fortunes are inherited rather than created from scratch. Bernard Arnault, now head of LVMH and long ranked among the world’ s richest men, began his career at his father’ s construction company, Ferret-Savinel. His own children now hold key positions within the group, having been trained from a young age in the inner workings of an empire they will inherit almost as a matter of course.
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