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factors, and correspondingly also parties’ recruitment patterns. Consequences of the 1994 electoral system reform on dynastic persistence were starkest for firsttime candidates. The immediate consequences for the overall share of legacies in parliament remained limited. Dynasties were only slightly further reduced after internal party organizations adapted to the changed incentives by introducing open recruitment. Smith explains that if demand for legacy candidates had decreased, supply remained largely unaffected. The impact of electoral system change is therefore hard to see until party turnover. Experienced dynastic candidates continued to be successful, relying on an inter-personal incumbency advantage. Being a relative and inheriting a jiban pays electorally and is strongly correlated with the total tenure length of one’s predecessor. Yet self-selection can account for these results. Moreover, surveying voters learns that they do not value dynastic ties as such. Dynastic MPs could be more likely to be promoted because they survive more elections and build up more experience. Smith recognizes the challenges to estimating the effect of one’s family when analyzing promotions. However, he shows that ever since the electoral reform, legacy MPs from cabinet dynasties are more likely to enter the cabinet, even controlling for their tenure length. Finally, the book explores some of the consequences of dynastic politics: Dynastic politicians are less likely to be male since the 1980s, and the representational styles of members of the same family tended to be similar in Japan, until the electoral reform changed the messages that candidates wanted to send to constituents. However, legacy and non-legacy legislators differ little in terms of legislative activity. Many of this book’s findings on the influence of institutions on dynasties in Japan beg the question whether they hold equally well over time, in different countries, at different levels of democratic experience. A well-known problem with assessing institutional consequences is the fact that politicians chose these institutions. Further testing could help to disentangle cause and effect. Research employing methods of causal identification, which includes some of Smith’s other recent work, shows that longer tenure is not always associated with dynastic persistence. Further theory should aim to pull apart certain complex demand and supply-side explanations. Why should parties prefer more legacy candidates precisely in candidate-centered contexts? There, such characteristics should be particularly valuable to individual candidates. We also need more empirical verification beyond Japan, and ideally in as much fine-grained detail. Clearly, this book is important not only for those with an interest in East Asia, but for everyone seeking to understand political dynasties in the world. This book offers a wealth of hypotheses and information for scholars interested in explaining the continued success of dynastic politicians to take to the test in their country of interest. It opens up a wide research agenda for future empirical and theoretical work on understanding dynastic prevalence.