Basic Trope: A country where the leader is ostensibly elected from among the citizenry, but where elected leaders keep coming from the same family.
- Straight: In the Republic of Troperia, the elected heads of state all seem to come from the same family.
- Exaggerated: In the Republic of Troperia, every President is a direct descendant of the previous one and they're all named Bob Bobson.
- Downplayed: The majority of presidents in the Republic of Troperia come from a handful of political families, but they're all freely elected and sometimes outsiders become President.
- Justified:
- The Bobson family mastered the art of Troperian politics and as a result knows exactly how to win bids for reelection.
- Troperia is a microstate with less than 1,000 people, so one family makes up 10% of the citizenry.
- Troperia's government elects its leader based on the system of Tanistry. This means only members of the ruling family are eligible to rule the country, though all citizens can vote on which member wins.
- Inverted:
- Whenever a Troperian President is elected, they are formally adopted by the outgoing President.
- The Kingdom of Troperia is a ostenstibly a monarchy, but the monarch does select the next in line, and none have been related by blood.
- Subverted: A foreign visitor observes that the majority of Troperia's Presidents were named Smith, but a citizen points out it's just a common surname in the country and that it doesn't mean they're actually related.
- Double Subverted: But in this case they actually are all closely related.
- Parodied: The Republic is literally named Bobson, in honor of the family that keeps getting elected.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: None of the Presidents of Troperia in the story are related.
- Enforced: Only the actor for Troperia's current-day president was available for the role of his predecessors during the Time Travel Episodes and the writers explained the similarities as Identical Grandson.
- Lampshaded: "We kind of turned the Presidency into a family business."
- Invoked: When Bob becomes President, he manipulates the system to guarantee his adult son is elected after his term ends.
- Exploited:
- Implied: The royal family is noted for already having ruled the kingdom of Troperia for five generations before it became the monarchy it is today, but it doesn't say if this was in consecutive sessions.
- Defied: A law is passed in Troperia forbidding someone from running for President if their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were previously president.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
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