Second Guessing

C Northcote Parkinson was a scholar, an officer and a gentleman. A naval officer and instructor, and then after World War II, the Raffles Professor of History at the (then) University of Malaya, he was most renowned for a slim little book of sociological observations called Parkinson's Law. I have made it a point to collect every one of his books that I can find. They are models of clarity, good humour, and acutely intelligent perception.

I recently came into possession (thank you, Herr Hierophant) of one of his older books, In-Laws & Outlaws, first published in 1962. While reading it late in the night, I came across this section and laughed out loud, whereupon the local environment gave me a dirty look with elements of slight puzzlement. Here is the offending (well, amusing and entertaining) paragraph:

[Extracted from 'Secundity', p.142]
But does every organisation have an acknowledged Number Two? No, there is a significant exception. In a political despotism or dictatorship there is no real deputy and no named successor. For the whole strength of the régime rests on the assumption that the current ruler is impossible to replace. After all, an effective deputy makes the ruler less indispensable. A known successor makes him less secure. It is part of the techniques, therefore, of dictatorship to leave the second throne unfilled. Instead of Number Two there are several people in competition, the position of each weakened by the jealousy of the rest.

I think one of the most amusing things about local education is that vice-principals are never vice in the sense that a viceroy was. The Latin vice is best translated in such contexts as 'in place of'; it denotes a secondary power with the ability and/or capacity to replace the primary authority on any and every occasion. Quite often, however, there are professional secondaries with no hope of attaining apotheosis. This is a sad fact that Parkinson also addresses later in his book.