Abstract
This paper explores how chiefdom and early state social structures resolve collective action problems. Solutions to problems of collective action are twofold; incentive systems discourage free-riding and encourage individuals to act and organization combines individuals’ acts. Broadly stated, we argue that influence and power, once organized into the hands of one or a small subgroup of individuals, can be used to administer incentive systems that motivate others in the community to act. Those incentive systems, in turn, shape collective activities such as warfare and defense. Drawing on experimentally grounded theory in sociology, we model forms of social organization and discuss the relation of each to collective action. In particular, we argue that simple chiefdoms solve problems of collective action through the well-ordered influence relations in their status-lineage structures, while coercive chiefdoms, to the same purpose, exercise power through threat of force. As in coercive chiefdoms, early states solve collective action problems through coercive relations but, where chiefs coerce only directly, heads of territorial states use bureaucratic systems of administration to exercise coercive power over vast geographic and social distances.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Influence and power are distinct phenomena and are distinguished in the following way. For Mokken and Stokman, “The exercise of influence takes place mainly by means of persuasion, information and advice” (1976: 37). For power , “force, coercion and sanctions are sufficient” (1976: 35). Zelditch agrees, “What distinguishes power is that it involves external sanctions. Influence , on the other hand, persuades B that X is right according to B’s own interests” (1992: 995). In structures, influence is produced by status differences. Coercive relations and structures produce power differences between positions.
- 3.
As professors know, however, administrators such as deans establish routines that create work above and beyond teaching and research.
- 4.
Moreover, in southern Arizona, recent archaeological finds indicate that canal irrigation for crop production dates back to at least 1000 BC. Furthermore, additional excavations in the American Southwest have uncovered similar indications of crop irrigation in small communities. Thus, it is now certain that water-control technology preceded the development of large permanent villages (Damp et al. 2002; Milner 2005).
- 5.
For example, the Roman and Inka states organized extensive road systems used for military purposes.
- 6.
The most important civil activity of early states was the collection of taxes (Trigger 2003).
- 7.
As in Olson (1965), ‘costs’ are subtracted which is odd because costs are negative. Subtracting a negative only makes sense if Olson is subtracting the absolute value of the cost. Olson’s usage is followed here. Therefore, the statement C i > 0, means that the absolute value of the cost is larger than zero.
- 8.
Strategic rationality is the default assumption of game theory. In fact, von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944) introduced game theory with the strategic—parametric distinction. But more than 25 years earlier, Weber distinguished the two types of rationality and used the distinction to differentiate economics with its parametric rationality from sociology with its strategic rationality ([1918] 1968: 22–23).
- 9.
Whereas, when played only once, defection is the dominant strategy, when played many times no best strategy can be deduced. Inductive approaches that play strategies against each other in “round robin” tournaments have shown that reciprocity strategies like tit-for-tat offer the opportunity to gain joint cooperative payoffs while guarding against other’s defection. Tit-for-tat cooperates in the first game and then subsequently plays the other’s choice of the previous iteration (Axelrod 1984). While the 2-person P/D game illustrates how strategic decision making is distinct from parametric, it does not generalize to the incentive structure of n > 2 collective action for a number of reasons. Here is one. When the 2 person P/D game is played more than once, either player can “punish” the other by defecting. But when N-persons play, with some defecting and some cooperating, a response of defection by any player serves no purpose because it punishes both defectors and cooperators.
- 10.
For the mathematics of this solution see Willer et al. (2002). Like collective action theory, the analysis thus far does not consider opposition to the coalition from individuals or groups outside the collectivity. Though it is obvious that coalitions routinely fail because they are opposed by outsiders, as when strikers are shot by police, because that opposition finds no place in collective action theory, it is ignored here.
- 11.
It has long been known that locally isolated people cannot organize to pursue their interests. Marx ([1869] 1963) commenting on the peasants of France noted that they have no manifold relations. They are like potatoes in a sack of potatoes. In our terms, the peasants were a collectivity that could not organize because they were locally isolated. As Marx put it, they could not represent themselves, they had to be represented—presumably by one or the other Napoleon ([1869] 1963: 123).
- 12.
While that insight may apply today, contemporary oligarchical structures are outside the scope of this chapter.
- 13.
For more on ‘big man’ societies see Chacon and Hayward’s chapter in this volume.
- 14.
“A lineage is a descent group whose members can usually trace or remember genealogical ties” (Bates and Fratkin 2003: 188).
- 15.
Terms used to designate status-lineages (Goldman 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960) include: conical clans (Kirchhoff [1955] 1959), gens (Fustel de Coulanges [1864] 1980), ramage (Firth 1936), Gumsa (Leach 1954), and chiefdom (Oberg 1955; Sahlins 1968). In this work, we only use the term ‘status-lineage ’ (Hage 2003; Johnson and Earle 2000; Sahlins 1963).
- 16.
Service (1985: 124) points out that “Several British social anthropologists working in Africa have described hierarchical political systems and even focused on the aristocratic rankings within the clan.”.
- 17.
- 18.
See also Chacon and Hayward in this volume for documentation of how incipient status differentials facilitate collective action in egalitarian settings.
- 19.
Athens, which was egalitarian insofar as citizens were concerned, certainly did solve its collective action problems. See below.
- 20.
It could be hypothesized that humans develop status-lineage structures in order to solve concrete problems such as war and group hunting that are collective action problems. Certainly humans make adaptive choices; nevertheless, it is difficult to see how such a hypotheses could be tested. What can be said is that, in any competing system, compared to simpler structures, status-lineage structures are advantaged and will be selected for.
- 21.
Transitions across chiefdom types and from chiefdom to state are more fully discussed in our “From Chiefdom to State: The Contribution of Social Structural Dynamics” forthcoming in Social Evolution and History.
- 22.
Butzer (1976), Liu et al. (2004) and Pollok (1999) assert that (respectively) the Nile, Yilou, and Tigris-Euphrates river valleys were not overpopulated even after the rise of the states. See also Wright and Johnson (1975). Thus, it is very doubtful that they were overpopulated when the coercive chiefdoms rose that preceded the state.
- 23.
As a warrior ethos develops, theft through raiding and war can come to be seen as honorable in contrast to manual labor that comes to be seen as dishonorable and contrary to warrior’s lifestyle (see Weber [1918] 1968 for the concept of status group, its ethos and lifestyle). Crow Indian warriors could win glory by stealing horses from an enemy camp (Garbarino 1976). See also Trimborn (1949).
- 24.
The term ‘caste’ is sometimes used to designate a status group closed to outsiders. That is not the meaning here. The warrior caste includes warriors from lower status positions whose courage has been recognized by the chief.
- 25.
- 26.
See Feil (1987) for a situation in Papua New Guinea where warfare had become so intense that, in order to survive, egalitarian tribesmen allowed despotic political warrior leaders to rule over them. These leaders ran roughshod over the people they led for more than two decades but were generally exempt from any sort of public retaliation. Skilled military leadership was a vital necessity for survival therefore, their fellow tribesmen tolerated abuse. See also Watson (1971).
- 27.
We use the term ‘coercive’ exploitation to distinguish it from the exploitation of workers in capitalism discussed by Marx ([1867] 1967). As explained by Marx exploitation in capitalism occurs though exchange relations, not through coercive relations as in chiefdoms and states.
- 28.
Conflict relations can form a competitive and selective system that leads toward monopoly of the means of violence. We suggest that they will form such a system when the conflict is circumscribed. For example, in the third century BCE, China’s period of Warring States began with nine major states in intense war-based competition (Hui 2005: 66). By the conclusion of the process a single state had absorbed the others and came to dominate the area once ruled by the nine.
- 29.
Power at a distance is explained in the section on the state just below.
- 30.
This instability is much like that of feudalism. In feudalism, though the king is more powerful than any one of his nobles, together the nobles are more powerful than the king.
- 31.
Chiefdoms faced the same two conditions but, with flatter social structures than early states, were somewhat less constrained.
- 32.
Since no state has ever monopolized the means of violence in a given geographical area, as that reading interprets, the definition applies to no known state.
- 33.
According to van der Vliet, “Carneiro gives no definition of the state” (2012: 110). As just seen, however, Carneiro does define the state, a definition that is not difficult to find for it occurs in the first paragraph of his 1970 “A Theory of the Origin of the State”.
- 34.
Nevertheless, Spanish ethnohistorical sources indicate that the powerful Guaca chiefdom of Colombia’s Cauca Valley had a large and well-organized army (Cieza de León 1984 [1553]; Villamarín and Villamarín 1999). The Cauca Valley was also home to the Popayán chiefdom which controlled more than a dozen formerly independent chiefdoms . Clearly these sophisticated societies might well have been proto-states (Trimborn 1949).
- 35.
Modern bureaucracies often have two components, line and staff. Power at a distance is exercised through the line where there is little division of mental labor. Staff organizations are flatter, have extensive divisions of mental labor and provide technical advice to the line.
- 36.
Sociological theory has not recognized the extension of power at a distance because power beyond the dyad was undefined. For example, according to Dahl , “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do (1957: 202–3) and according to Lukes (1974), A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s interests. (1974: 34). Other formulations explicitly restrict power exercise to the dyad. According to Zelditch, “‘Power over’ always implies a relation between two actors” (1992: 994). Nagel notes that, “a ‘connection’ between A and B is a ‘necessary condition’ for a power relation” (1968: 132). Similarly, for French, the basis of interpersonal power is “the more or less enduring relationship between A and B which gives rise to the power ” (1956: 183). By contrast, organizational theorists have long recognized that power exercise extends through hierarchies (Pfiffner and Sherwood 1960: 65; Simon 1976: 22; Thompson 1961: 104). Nevertheless, none has explained how it is extended through hierarchies or why the effectiveness of that extension might vary across organizations.
- 37.
This mobility in chiefdoms is a foreshadowing of later hierarchy-mobility structures “growing in the womb of the old society”.
- 38.
- 39.
We have no original sources on many city-states because both sources and cities were destroyed (Finley 1983). For example Thebes was utterly destroyed by Alexander with all of the population either killed or sold into slavery. Though Xenophon’s “Constitution of the Lacedaemonians” ([4th Century BCE] 1968) is a good source for Sparta that, like Athens, was democratic, space limits our discussion to Athens.
- 40.
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Willer, D., Emanuelson, P., Chacon, Y., Chacon, R.J. (2017). How Chiefdom and Early State Social Structures Resolve Collective Action Problems. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) Feast, Famine or Fighting?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_15
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