Authority and forms of political organization

Authority and political scale

Max Weber distinguished traditional, charismatic and legal-rational authority. Anthropologists add that legitimacy may rest in kinship, ritual knowledge, age, generosity or control of coercion.

• Band: small, mobile and egalitarian; leadership is situational and persuasive. Among Ju/'hoansi foragers, skilled persons influence but cannot routinely compel. Richard Lee's “insulting the meat” shows levelling against boastful hunters.
• Tribe or segmentary system: dispersed communities coordinate through kin groups, councils, age sets and ritual offices. In E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Nuer, balanced lineage opposition supplies order without a central sovereign; the leopard-skin chief mediates rather than rules.
• Chiefdom: hereditary rank and an office of chief integrate several communities through redistribution, tribute and ritual. Polynesian chiefdoms illustrate ranked descent and mana, though Elman Service's evolutionary sequence should not be treated as inevitable.
• State: central government claims territory, taxation, law and specialised coercion. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard contrasted centralised African kingdoms such as the Zulu with stateless lineage systems.

Indian examples range from village councils and Naga customary institutions to the constitutionally sovereign state. Colonial indirect rule often hardened fluid chiefs into offices. Gender, class and dissent also reveal that proclaimed legitimacy never eliminates contested power.