Political Strategies for Maintaining Power: Exclusionary versus Corporate, Hierarchy versus Heterarchy, and Council Institutions

Until recently, most political anthropologists and political archaeologists perceived political centralization as the core process or strategy through which one or a few “aggrandizers” pursued more power in human societies. Blanton and Feinman and their colleagues have criticized this unitary view of the “political” and, in line with the processual-action paradigm, have encouraged researchers to “abandon. . . static ideal-type stages and instead investigate the varying strategies used by political actors to construct and maintain polities” (Blanton et al. 1996, 1; Blanton 1998; Feinman 1995, 2001). Feinman (2001) also warns that “recent postprocessual and selectionist emphases on individual strategies have further promoted the presumption that highly centralized and personalized leadership, control, and aggrandizement underlie most if not all hierarchical political organizations” (154-55). Instead, these scholars propose two types of strategies political elites use to advance their agendas: the exclusionary (or network) strategy and the corporate strategy (Blanton et al. 1996; Feinman 2001).7

In the exclusionary strategy, “political actors aim at the development of a political system built around their monopoly of sources of power” (Blanton et al. 1996, 2). This strategy is characterized by “the development and maintenance of individual-centered exchange relations established primarily outside one’s local group” (ibid.). In contrast, in the corporate strategy, “power is shared across different groups and sectors of society in such a way as to inhibit exclusionary strategies.” Monopoly “control of sources of power is precluded by restrictions on the political behavior of those vested with power or aspirants to power” (ibid., 4). The corporate strategy is founded on “a cognitive code that emphasizes a corporate solidarity of society as an integrated whole” (6). The pharaonic state of ancient Egypt and the Classic Maya civilization represent the exclusionary political strategy, while the Classic-period Greek poleis, the Indus civilization of South Asia, and Teotihuacan in Central America exemplify the corporate power strategy (Small 2009; Parkinson and Galaty 2007; Blanton et al. 1996; Blanton 1998; Feinman 2001; Stein 2001; Rothman 2004, 90-91).

Blanton et al. (1996) argue that these two strategies are coupled with distinct forms of legitimation, production, and finance. The exclusionary strategy correlates with ruler cults recorded in writing and art, a well-developed economy of prestige goods, and wealth finance (a tribute-tax system based on prestige goods). In contrast, the corporate strategy is associated with a corporate cognitive code that leaves leaders anonymous, a well-developed internal system of intensive agricultural production, and staple finance (a tribute-tax system based on agricultural goods, as originally defined by D’Altroy and Earle 1985; see also Earle 2001). Following a similar line of reasoning, P. Rice (2009) connects the exclusionary strategy with political centralization and the corporate strategy with decentralization. However, Blanton et al. (1996) argue that the corporate strategy is found

In “large powerful states, such as Teotihuacan” and empires such as the Mexica of Late Postclassic central Mexico (5).

These distinctions between network and corporate power strategies fail in more detailed examinations. Small (2009) presents evidence that exclusionary and corporate strategies coexisted in ancient Greek poleis in different spheres. Kolb (1996, 59), D’Altroy (1996, 55), and Gilman (1996, 57) concur with Demarest (1996c) who affirms that these two strategies should be conceived as “different aspects of large states rather than the predominant mode in any given state” (56). The distinction between the two power strategies draws heavily from the art of such societies. But instead of providing a record of the full political arena, this art represents the ideology of one powerful group that is promoting their vision of “what should be” (Miller and Tilley 1984; Smith 2000). Finally, the Classic Maya evidence calls into question the association of exclusionary polities with wealth finance and of corporate polities with staple finance. As we will see in Chapter 5, tribute-tax at Motul de San Jose involved both food and exotic goods. This is also applicable to the tributary system of the Mexica (Aztec) Empire, which combined both wealth and staple finance.

These critiques do not deny that the distinction between exclusionary and corporate strategies has provided critical insights into the process of power dynamics. Blanton and his colleagues overcome the division between materialist and ideational power by showing the interconnections between ideology, legitimation, and economics in corporate or network societies. Distinguishing between these two different strategies has also allowed anthropologists and archaeologists to see that ancient political leaders had at their disposition and pursued a range of strategies to maintain their polities. Blanton et al. (1996) admit that “elements of both [strategies] may coexist” in the same society, although “either the corporate or the exclusionary strategy may dominate the political process. . . at any given time” (5-6). Instead of identifying a society as either network or corporate, I find it more useful to inquire if, when, and why each of these strategies was used by leaders, factions, or institutions as they pursued their political goals (see Chapter 6). Furthermore, other political strategies were used in the past beyond these two (Clark 1996, 52), and my interest is to explore the various mechanisms the Maya used to gain power.

This envisioning of alternative power strategies has also enabled scholars to consider shared power, collective action (“power to”) and council institutions in ancient state societies (Blanton and Fargher 2008; see also Chapter 6). Elite councils, non-elite assemblies, and limits on the ruler’s behavior in premodern societies are often dismissed as unimportant, but they are more common than we suspect. In their cross-cultural survey of premodern, noncapitalist states, Blanton and Fargher have found many examples of societies with collective institutions that they call “collective polities”: “a complex society in which the government (we’ll call this ‘rulers’ for now) provides services (‘public goods’) in exchange for the revenues (including labor) provided by compliant taxpayers” (13). These authors suggest that collective polities develop when significant bargaining occurs between rulers and taxpayers: “Taxpayers are endowed with resources placing them in a position to make demands on rulers to the degree that rulers depend on them to achieve their revenue goals” (14). When rulers depend significantly on internal revenues controlled by the taxpayers, the latter tend to be able to bargain, make demands, and have a voice in the government of the polity. Councils are thus important institutions in such polities. When rulers depend mostly on external revenue (income not controlled by taxpayers), such as revenue from state-controlled land, external warfare or trade, taxation of international trade, or state-owned labor (slaves, serfs, etc.), they are less inclined to bargain with the taxpayers, who then have less voice in the government (112-16). In these polities, councils and assemblies will be lacking. In Chapter 6, I will apply Blanton and Fargher’s argument to Classic Maya states to ask whether they could have been collective polities.

The distinction between network and corporate power strategies parallels the dichotomy between hierarchy and heterarchy proposed by Crumley (1979, 1987, 1995, 2001) and her colleagues (Ehrenreich, Crumley, and Levy 1995). Hierarchy is the ordering of elements of a society “on the basis of certain factors [which] . . . are subordinate to others” (Crumley 1979, 144). Crumley (1995) defines heterarchy as “the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways” (3). The heterarchical model contributes to a better understanding of ancient power because it allows us to conceive of politics not as a monolithic whole but as different arenas in which power may be held by distinct individuals and may be founded on the basis of different sources. In this model, relations between different individuals, factions, or institutions may be hierarchical, but they could also be heterarchical, and the nature of these relationships is varied (in terms of economic, ritual, social, or political factors). In the context of ancient societies, these relations should be explored instead of assuming that they were hierarchical. For example, Wailes (1995) documents multiple distinctions of social status based on a lay-civic hierarchy, a religious hierarchy, and a professional-crafting hierarchy described in legal documents in Early Medieval Ireland. These hierarchies generally operated independently in the context of a heterarchical system (64). Nevertheless, Ireland’s heterarchical system was full of intrigue and competition, at least at the highest levels of the social scale, according to extant historical documents. Archaeologically, the heterarchical structure of Early Medieval Ireland is reflected in the existence of two main types of large sites, lay residential ringforts and Christian monasteries, each of which had a “comparable range of wealth, status, and importance” although their functions at the top of parallel civic and religious hierarchies were quite distinct (68).

The concepts of heterarchy and the corporate mode of political organization both emphasize political power that is shared by groups, factions, federations, or coalitions and is not wielded by individual rulers (Crumley 1995, 3; Crumley 2001, 32; Feinman 2001). Parkinson and Galaty (2007) make such a distinction among Bronze Age societies in the Aegean world, finding that societies with large corporate kin groups and indirect interactions with foreign stratified societies tended to develop into heterarchical, corporate systems of political organization. Just as with exclusionary and corporate strategies, hierarchy and heterarchy can coexist in the same society in different spheres or even in the same sphere at different moments (Crumley 1979; Chapman 2003; Small 2009). For example, Plog (1995) details the coexistence of an egalitarian ideology and hierarchical relations in the Pueblo societies of the American Southwest.

Both the network-corporate and the hierarchy-heterarchy dichotomies are useful constructs, but they do not go far enough. We need to consider in more detail when network or corporate (as well as other) power strategies are used and by whom. We also need to ask what the relations between different political institutions, factions, and/or agents may have been. Were they heterarchical or hierarchical, were they supportive or conflictive, and were they based on economic, social, ritual, or political power (see also Schortman, Urban, and Ausec 1996, 62-63)?

Conclusions

This chapter has explored how views of power (specifically political power) have changed in political anthropology. Power and politics are now seen as in flux rather than as constants. Instead of discussing static political structures, we need to examine political dynamics. Vincent (1990) summarizes this overarching principle when she writes that the state should be viewed not as “a political form but a process” (414).

Political power is held by all groups in human societies, albeit to different degrees. Commoners can and do contest requests by elites for labor, tribute, or military service by delaying payments, disappearing into the “wilderness,” migrating, poaching, gossiping, and so forth (Scott 1985, 1990; see also Chapter 6). We now understand power as relational, situational, and conflictive. The nature of the power both elites and commoners held needs to be understood.

Elites use different strategies to ameliorate conflict and to bolster support, including controlling particular institutions, gaining more legitimacy and authority, promoting corporate identities or exclusionary ruler cults, and inscribing the landscape with symbols of power and arenas for political rituals. Similarly, commoners and middle-rank groups may also promote their own strategies, ideologies, and identities and may build their own arenas of power (see Chapter 6). The success or failure of these different strategies is the key to the political dynamics of ancient societies.

Because political power is now seen as conflictive and situational, current anthropologists and archaeologists conceive of political rituals as the most important locus for embodying, reproducing, contesting, and changing politics. Thus, we cannot disentangle the political from the ritual. In premodern states, political reality is established through political ceremonies or rituals because other means of communication with a wide range of commoners are underdeveloped or nonexistent. Ritual is materialized archaeologically because it requires specific built arenas, material paraphernalia and symbols, and the same repeated activities.

A final point in this review of current paradigms in political anthropology is that material resources are always involved in the pursuit of political power: we cannot deny that food and labor are required to create pyramids or palatial residences for the rulers or to hold any kind of ritual. We cannot disentangle the material from the ideational in the formation of political power, and both elements must be followed if we are to understand ancient politics. In the following chapters, I will try to pursue some of these threads. What did the ancient Maya rulers choose to control economically, politically, socially, and ideologically? How did the ancient Maya rulers legitimate themselves vis-a-vis the much larger number of commoners? What were the ritual and political roles of ancient Maya rulers and aristocrats? What kind of political rituals did Maya rulers carry out? Did the commoners support or contest such attempts at political control? Did the commoners and other middle-rank groups pursue their own alternate strategies, identities, and rituals?