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Politics and Leadership Structure

Bands are small, nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers without formal leadership. Tribes are larger groups that practice some agriculture and herding, but also lack formal leadership. Chiefdoms have a chief as formal leader who inherits the position and redistributes goods, gaining legitimacy through claims of supernatural power. Legitimacy can also come from traditional customs, an individual's charisma, or rational-legal authority as defined by established laws and rules.

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Claud Liwanag
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191 views

Politics and Leadership Structure

Bands are small, nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers without formal leadership. Tribes are larger groups that practice some agriculture and herding, but also lack formal leadership. Chiefdoms have a chief as formal leader who inherits the position and redistributes goods, gaining legitimacy through claims of supernatural power. Legitimacy can also come from traditional customs, an individual's charisma, or rational-legal authority as defined by established laws and rules.

Uploaded by

Claud Liwanag
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Politics and

Leadership Structure
Bands
Usually being the smallest of the four,
bands are where we'll start. A band is
usually a very small, oftentimes nomadic
group that is connected by family ties and
is politically independent.
With nomadic meaning moving from
place to place, usually in search of food,
bands are most often made up of hunter-
gatherers.
Due to their small size and their
tendency to move around,
bands usually have little to no
formal leadership.
In other words, when to move
and when to stay is usually based
on group consensus rather than
one governing official calling the
shots.
With this, bands are usually referred to
as being egalitarian societies,
societies in which all persons of the
same age and gender are seen as
equals. Now notice, this doesn't mean
that men and women are always
equal, it more means that men are
equal to men and women are equal
to women.
Tribes

With this, we sort of move up the


non-industrialized political ladder to
tribes. Speaking technically, a tribe is
a combination of smaller kin or non-
kin groups, linked by a common
culture, that usually act as one.
Sort of multi-grouped and usually bigger
than bands, tribes tend to contain
communities that are a bit larger.

Many social scientists assert that this is


because rather than just being hunter-
gatherers, tribes often dabble in
agriculture and herding, making it easier
to support a larger yet still rather small
population.
However, similar to bands, and very
unlike the old cowboy movies that
show a bunch of warriors surrounding
a chief, most tribes have no formal
leadership. Instead, they, too, are
egalitarian in nature.
Chiefdom

 A chiefdom is a political unit headed by a


chief, who holds power over more than
one community group. With more than
one community involved, chiefdoms are
usually more densely populated. Also, as
the name chief implies, chiefdoms are not
egalitarian but instead have social rank,
with the chief and his family holding
power.
Since chiefs are usually chosen by
heredity, this usually gives his family
and their inner circle the reigns to
power. In fact, many chiefdoms
practice redistribution, in which
goods are accumulated by one
central person or power, who then
decides how to allocate them
among the people.
Adding to this, many chiefdoms
believe their chiefs are endowed
with mana, a supernatural power that
gives the right to rule. However,
despite this powerful force,
chiefdoms usually have NO FORM OF
BUREAUCRACY or WRITTEN LAWS that
help support the chief.
Authority and
Legitimacy
Authority Is a person or
organization having power or
control in a particular, typically
political or administrative sphere.
Max Weber

According to
Max Weber
there are three
types of
legitimate rule (
Authorities )
Traditional Authority

Derives from long-established


customs, habits and social structures.
When power passes from one
generation to another, then it is
known as traditional authority, the
legitimacy of the authority comes
from tradition.
specific weakness or problem

traditional authority poses its particular


difficulty insofar as it is based on some kind
of a dominant power. For Weber, all
authority exhibits some form of
domination. A traditional leader may rely
on or even exploit prevailing practices.
Traditional authority may suffer from a lack
of moral regularity in the creation of legal
standards.
Charismatic authority
The charisma of the individual or the
leader plays an important role.
Charismatic authority which is derived
when the leader claims that his authority is
derived from a “higher power “ or
“inspiration”, that is superior to both the
validity of traditional and rational-legal
authority and followers accept this and
are willing to follow this higher or inspired
authority, in the place of the authority that
they have hitherto been following.
specific weakness or problem
charismatic leadership can be problematic
because it is somehow based on some form
of a messianic promise of overhauling an
unjust system. It is not impossible, however, to
find such type of a leader, as history would
show. Consider Mahatma Gandhi, Martin
Luther King Jr., or Nelson Mandela. A
charismatic leader holds the mission to unite
his people amid adversity and differences in
order to attain an almost insurmountable
goal.
Rational Authority

It is that form of authority which


depends for its legitimacy on formal
rules and established laws of the
state, which are usually written down
and are often very complex. The
power of the rational legal authority is
mentioned in the constitution.
specific weakness or problem

legal-rational authority makes manifest the


power of the bureaucracy over the individual. In
the exercise of authority, the administration of
power, laws and rules, including institutional
duties and protocols, have control over
individuals. While order and systematization are
desirable, the bureaucracy may not be able to
fully address the problems and concerns of
everyone, as what the development of nation-
states today suggests
Forms of Legitimizing
Government
Output Legitimacy

The effectiveness of policy


outcomes for people
According to Scharpf legitimacy on
the output side exists to the extent
government performance is
effective, that is, the extent to which
the system satisfies the basic
functions of government
Input Legitimacy

the responsiveness to citizen


concerns as a result of participation
by the people
Legitimacy on the input side
depends on mechanisms that
translate the ‘will of the people’ into
political decisions. If those
mechanisms are judged by the
people as ‘democratic’ or ‘good’,
then there is input legitimacy
Interrelatedness of Output legitimacy
and Input Legitimacy???
Interrelatedness of Output legitimacy
and Input Legitimacy
Output legitimacy derives from the
effectiveness of government policy.
However, effectiveness has only a
meaning in relation to the preferences of
citizens. In order to create effective
outcomes procedures or mechanisms are
therefore needed to track down these
preferences and to translate them into
political decisions.
Forms of legitimate
government
Democracy

 In a democracy, government legitimacy


derives from the popular perception that
the elected government abides by
democratic principles in governing, and
thus is legally accountable to its people
Communism
The legitimacy of a Communist state derives
from having won a civil war, a revolution, or from
having won an election; thus, the actions of the
Communist government are legitimate,
authorized by the people. In the early twentieth
century, Communist parties based the
arguments supporting the legitimacy of their rule
and government upon the scientific nature
of Marxism
Constitutionalism
The modern political concept of constitutionalism
establishes the law as supreme over the private will,
by integrating nationalism, democracy, and limited
government. The political legitimacy of
constitutionalism derives from popular belief and
acceptance that the actions of the government
are legitimate because they abide by the law
codified in the political constitution.
Monarchy
In a monarchy, the divine right of
kings establishes the political legitimacy of the
rule of the monarch (king or queen); legitimacy
also derives from the popular perception
(tradition and custom) and acceptance of the
monarch as the rightful ruler of nation and
country.

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