¹ Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (Oxford 1940), 181Google Scholar; idem, “The Nuer of the Southern Sudan,” in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., eds., African Political Systems (London 1940), 293.Google Scholar

² Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 162, 169. Cf. Barton, R. F., “Ifugao Law,” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, XV (February 1995). 15.Google Scholar

³ E.g., Morgenthau, Hans, Politics Among Nations (1st edn., New York 1953), 221Google Scholar; Modelski, George, “Agraria and Industrial Two Models of the International System,” in Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney, eds., The International System (Princeton 1961), 125–26Google Scholar; and Easton, David, “Political Anthropology,” in Siegel, Bernard J., ed., Biennial Review of Anthropology 1959 (Stanford 1959), 235–36.Google Scholar At least one anthropologist was aware of the analogy: see Barton, R. F., The Half-Way Sun (New York 1930), 109–10Google Scholar; idem, The Kalingas (Chicago 1949), 101Google Scholar; and idem, “Ifugao Law,” 100, 103. In his introduction to The Kalingas, E. A. Hoebel wrote: “International law is primitive law on a world scale” (p. 5). Cf. Hoebel's, The Law of Primitive Man (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 125–26Google Scholar, 318, 321, 330–33.

⁴ Since this study was undertaken, an article has been published that marks a first step in this direction. See Alger, Chadwick F., “Comparison of Intranational and International Politics,” American Political Science Review, LVII (June 1963), 414–19.Google Scholar

⁵ In 1940, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown said: “The comparative study of political institutions, with special reference to the simpler societies, is an important branch of social anthropology which has not yet received the attention it deserves” (Preface, in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, eds., African Political Systems, XI). More recently, David Easton has written: “Such a subfield [as political anthropology] does not yet exist” (“Political Anthropology,” 210).

⁶ E.g., Montaigne, Essays, I, xxiii (“Of Custom, and that We Should Not Easily Change a Law Received”), and I, xxxi (“Of Cannibals”); Rousseau, Second Discourse, esp. First Part and notes c-q; and Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, esp. chaps. 2 and 3.

⁷ Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems, 4. See also Henry Sumner Maine's sharp criticism of Rousseau's conception of the “state of nature” in Ancient Law (New York 1874), 84–88, 299.Google Scholar

⁸ On the relations between the concept of a “state of nature” and the prevailing theory of politics among sovereign states, see Waltz, Kenneth N., Man, the State, and War (New York 1959)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 6–8; and Cox, Richard H., Locke on War and Peace (Oxford 1960)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 4.

⁸ Cf. Waltz, Kenneth N., “Political Philosophy and the Study of International Relarions,” in Fox, William T. R., ed., Theoretical Aspects of International Relations (Notre Dame, Ind., 1959), 51–68Google Scholar; and Wolfers, Arnold, “Political Theory and International Relations,” in Wolfers, Arnold and Martin, Laurence W., eds., The AngloAmerican Tradition in Foreign Affairs (New Haven 1956), esp. xi-xiii.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Numelin, Ragnar, The Beginnings of Diplomacy (New York 1950), 125Google Scholaret passim.

¹¹ See Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems, 11; and Barton, “Ifugao Law,” 92–94, no. Carl Landé, in a stimulating unpublished paper entitled “Kinship and Politics in Pre-Modern and Non-Western Societies,” has emphasized the different effects of these two types of kinship groups.

¹² Maine, Ancient Law, 99 (original italics).

¹³ The foregoing comparison may appear to come strikingly close to the formulations of Maine (ibid., 124–25) and Morgan, Lewis H. (Ancient Society [New York 1877], 6–7)Google Scholar—formulations which have been criticized in recent years by anthropologists. See Schapera, I., Government and Politics in Tribal Societies (London 1956), 2–5.Google Scholar Despite the inadequacies of the conceptions of Maine and Morgan, especially with reference to their presumption of progress in human development, some distinction between primitive or traditional society, in which kinship and personal “status” play a predominant role, and modern territorial states, based on citizenship and contract, is today accepted by many social scientists. Indeed, it is paradoxical that while anthropologists have been attacking the Maine-Morgan dichotomy (by showing that all societies have a territorial element), sociologists and political scientists have been adopting the distinction from the works of Tönnies, Weber, Parsons, or Levy. E.g., see Riggs, Fred W., “Agraria and Industria—Toward a Typology of Comparative Administration,” in Siffin, William J., ed., Toward the Comparative Study of Public Administration (Bloomington 1959), 28–30, III.Google Scholar

¹⁴ E.g., according to Evans-Pritchard, “We do not therefore say that a man is acting politically or otherwise, but that between local groups there are relations of a structural order that can be called political” (The Nuer, 264–65).

¹⁵ See Parsons, Talcott, The Social System (Glencoe, Ill., 1951), 65–67.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Fred W. Riggs, “International Relations as a Prismatic System,” in Knorr and Verba, eds., The International System, 149. Cf. Modelski, “Agraria and Industria,” in ibid., for a stimulating adaptation of Riggs's concepts.

¹⁷ To be sure, it is easier to specify what actions are “political” in the twentiethcentury world than it was for Evans-Pritchard among the Nuer. Nonetheless, as Karl Deutsch has remarked, the nation-state is itself “functionally diffuse,” performing an extraordinary range of economic, social, and political functions. See “Towards Western European Integration: An Interim Assessment,” Journal of International Affairs, XVI (1962), 95–96.Google Scholar Cf. Almond, Gabriel A., “Introduction,” in Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960), II, 63.Google Scholar

¹⁸ It is simply incorrect to assert that nonliterate peoples, however traditionally minded, were incapable of developing “functionally specific roles,” “achievement norms of recruitment,” or the “state” as a formal organization; each of these attributes, so readily described as “modern,” can be found in societies which must be described as “primitive.” For an example, see Nadel, S. F., A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of the Nupe in Nigeria (London 1942).Google Scholar Cf. Riggs, “Agraria and Industria,” 28. While some anthropologists would argue that primitive bands, such as those of the Australian aborigines and African bushmen, are an exception, others would suggest that there are some “functionally specific” roles even in these societies.

¹⁹ See Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems, 5–23; Middleton, John and Tait, David, eds., Tribes Without Riders (London 1958), 1–3Google Scholar; Mair, Lucy, Primitive Government (Baltimore 1962)Google Scholar, Part 1; Schapera, Government and Politics, 63–64, 208–14; and Lowie, Robert, Social Organization (New York 1948), chap. 14.Google Scholar For a critique of the categories used by anthropologists, see Easton, “Political Anthropology,” 210–26.

²⁰ It must be emphasized that the retaliation is legal, being sanctioned by customary law (or, in Weber's terms, “traditional legitimacy”). Cf. Mair, Primitive Government, 16–19; and Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., Structure and Function in Primitive Society (Glencoe, Ill., 1952)Google Scholar, chap. 12.

²¹ See Barton, The Kalingas, 231. Note the parallel tendency in world politics: “One state's aggression is always another state's ‘legitimate use of force to defend vital national interests’” (Claude, Inis L. Jr., “United Nations Use of Military Force,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, VII [June 1963], 119Google Scholar).

²² Cf. Barton, The Half-Way Sun, chaps. 5 and 6. In some situations, however, a group may refrain from counterretaliation, either because the kinsman who was punished was offensive to his own kin or because the group lacks the power to react. As Carl Landé has pointed out to me, the principles of “an eye for an eye” and “might makes right” may, and often do, conflict in the operation of both primitive and international political systems.

²³ Numelin argues that organized, continuous warfare of the type known to civilized man is practically unknown among primitive peoples (The Beginnings of Diplomacy, chap. 2). Cf. Schapera, Government and Politics, 215, 219; and Herskovits, Melville J., Cultural Anthropology (New York 1955), 207–8.Google Scholar

²⁴ “Introduction,” Tribes Without Rulers, 20–22. Cf. Radcliffe-Brown, African Political Systems, XX. A similar though not identical distinction is made by Barton, “Ifugao Law,” 77–78. Kinds of violence in primitive society could also be distinguished in terms of the extent to which groups act as corporate units and the degree to which violence is continuous. In this sense, a true “war” would consist of more or less continuous hostilities between corporate groups, whereas “feuds,” in the purest case, would be intermittent conflicts between individuals (albeit with the support of kinship groups). Although such an approach would take into consideration the fundamental issue raised by Rousseau's criticism of Hobbes's concept of a “state of war” (see L'État de guerre, in Vaughan, C. E., ed., The Political Writings of Rousseau [2 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1915], 1, 293–307Google Scholar), it raises theoretical questions which require a more exhaustive analysis than is here possible. For the present, therefore, it is useful to accept provisionally the distinction between feud and war as elaborated by anthropologists.

²⁵ Tait and Middleton, Tribes Without Rulers, 19–20. See Barton, “Ifugao Law,” 14–15, and the example, 120–21.

²⁶ Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 152–54.

²⁷ Barton, The Half-Way Sun, 109–10, and the example described on 70ff.

²⁸ The Nuer, 155. Cf. Barton, “Ifugao Law,” 75: “Once started, a blood feud was well-nigh eternal (unless ended by a fusion of the families by means of marriage).”

²⁹ See the example in Barton, The Half-Way Sun, 115.

³⁰ “The jural community … is the widest grouping within which there are a moral obligation and a means ultimately to settle disputes peaceably” (Tribes Without Rulers, 9).

³¹ Cf. the rarity of the emergence of what has been called a “security community” in international politics. Deutsch, Karl, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton 1957)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

³² Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 121–22. Cf. Morgan, Lewis H., League of the Iroquois (Rochester 1851), 73.Google Scholar

³³ The conquest of physical space by modern technology has altered the character of “social distance” without destroying it. Today differences in the kind of political regime tend to have effects similar to those of geographical distance between primitive tribes; because of their political principles, Communist regimes are those farthest from the United States even when they are close to us in miles. Cf. the concepts of “structural distance” (Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 113ff.) and “social distance” (Bogardus, Emory S., Sociology [4th edn., New York 1954], 535–36).Google Scholar

³⁴ See the similar diagrams in Barton, The Half-Way Sun, 114, and Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 114. Note that Barton distinguishes a “neutral zone” between the “home region” and the zone of feuding.

³⁵ See Mair, Primitive Government, 46–48, 104–6.

³⁶ The problem of units and levels of analysis has had surprisingly little attention in recent theorizing on international politics. For exceptions, see Deutsch, Karl, Political Community at the International Level (Garden City, N.Y., 1954)Google Scholar; Waltz, Man, the State, and War; and J. David Singer, “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,” in Knorr and Verba, eds., The International System, 77–92. Of particular importance is the relationship between a cultural community or “people” and organized “political communities.” Cf. Almond, Gabriel A., “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, XVIII (August 1956), 393–408.Google Scholar

³⁷ Barton, “Ifugao Law,” 6. Barton calculated the annual death rate from headhunting at 2 per iooo during a period of “abnormally high” activity (The Half-Way Sun, 200). In the United States, accidental deaths from all causes during 1963 were at the rate of 5.3 per 1000.

³⁸ E.g., Brown, A. R., The Andaman Islanders (Cambridge, Eng., 1922), 48–52, 84–87.Google Scholar

³⁹ On the characteristics of self-help and retaliation among the Ifugao, see Barton, The Half-Way Sun, chaps. 3, 5, and 6; and “Ifugao Law,” 75–87, 92–95, 99–109.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 95. Compare the Cuban crisis of October 1962.

⁴¹ Sophisticated students of strategy have never assumed, of course, that rivals can deter each other only if their calculations are formulated in terms of game theory. Cf. Schelling's, Thomas analogy of deterring a child, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 11.Google Scholar Nonetheless, popular analyses often assert that deterrence implies—and requires—rational calculation on both sides. E.g., Melman, Seymour, The Peace Race (New York 1961), 22.Google Scholar

⁴² For the distinction between latent and manifest functions which is here implied, see Levy, Marion J. Jr., The Structure of Society (Princeton 1952), 83–85.Google Scholar Cf. Barton, The Half-Way Sun, 196–97.

⁴³ lbid. Barton also notes that headhunting served the latent function of providing “relief from the monotony of daily life.”

⁴⁴ Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.1130^b30–1134^a15.

⁴⁵ Aidan W. Southall, Alur Society (Cambridge, Eng., n.d.), 144. See also 122–36, 160–65.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 144–46, 234, 237–39.

⁴⁷ E.g., Stanley Hoffmann, “International Systems and International Law,” in Knorr and Verba, eds., The International System, 205.

⁴⁸ The second of these characteristics is concerned, speaking crudely, with the relationship between what Almond has called the “political functions” of rule-making, rule application, and interest articulation, while the first corresponds roughly to his functions of interest aggregation and rule adjudication. The last of these functions, in a stateless system, should really be spoken of as rule enforcement, for obvious reasons. Cf. “Introduction,” in Almond and Coleman, eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas, 17; and see note 82 below.

⁴⁹ Cf. Waltz, Man, the State, and War, chaps. 6 and 7. While the present essay is in complete agreement with Waltz's major theme (i.e., that war is a necessary consequence of the state system, since “in anarchy there is no automatic harmony”), his emphasis on the problem of war tends to understate the elements of legality and order in world politics.

⁵⁰ E.g., Hoffmann, “International Systems and International Law,” 206–7.

⁵¹ lbid., 212.

⁵² Although the “satisfaction” with defeat in war may be of short duration, this is not a necessary consequence of military defeat (as the pro-Western attitude of West Germany and Japan after World War II indicates). The limited durability of “satisfactory” settlements will be discussed below.

⁵³ Since World War II there have been numerous international incidents which, under prenuclear conditions, would probably have resulted in open warfare. Cf. Herman Kahn, “The Arms Race and Some of Its Hazards,” in Brennan, Donald G., ed., Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security (New York 1961), 93ff.Google Scholar On the security offered by the “impermeable” nation-state before the development of nuclear weapons, see Herz, John H., International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York 1959)Google Scholar, Part 1.

⁵⁴ Most notably, of course, in peace conferences terminating major wars.

⁵⁵ On the Concert of Europe, see Rosecrance, Richard N., Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston 1963)Google Scholar, chap. 4, and the references there cited. Compare the specialized, intermittent political agencies in many stateless primitive societies: Lowie, Robert H., “Some Aspects of Political Organization Among American Aborigines,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, LXXVII (1948), 17–18Google Scholar; and Radcliffe-Brown, African Political Systems, xix.

⁵⁶ Note the similarity between the Iroquois Confederacy, which could act as a unit only if a decision was unanimous, and the UN Security Council. See Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 111–14; and Claude, Inis L. Jr., Swords into Plowshares (2nd edn., New York 1959)Google Scholar, chap. 8.

⁵⁷ Cf. the limited but continuous role of the pangats and “pact-holders” among the Kalinga, which Barton contrasts with the intermittent action of the Ifugao “gobetweens” and “trading partners” (The Kalingas, 144–46). On the question of the “continuity” or “contingency” of political structures, see Easton, “Political Anthropology,” 235–38, 245–46.

⁵⁸ Maine, Henry S., International Law (New York 1888), 174–75.Google Scholar Primitive peoples do not always exact strict retaliation, however; the institution of a “weregild” or payment in lieu of retaliation is paralleled in international politics by reparations and other penalties exacted in the negotiation of peace treaties. Also, compare Kaplan, Morton A., “The Strategy of Limited Retaliation,” Policy Memorandum No. 19 (Princeton, Center of International Studies, 1959)Google Scholar, and, more generally, recent strategic discussions of “graduated deterrence”—e.g., Kissinger, Henry A., The Necessity for Choice (New York 1961), 65–70.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Cf. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, chap. 8.

⁶⁰ On the character of international law and its sources, see Brierly, James L., The Law of Nations (4th edn., London 1949), 1–91Google Scholar, 229–36; Corbett, Percy E., Law and Society in the Relations of States (New York 1951), 3–52Google Scholar; and Kaplan, Morton A. and Katzenbach, Nicholas de B., The Political Foundations of International Law (New York 1961)Google Scholar, chap. 9. Some observers of international relations, following John Austin's legal theory, have doubted that a system without a single sovereign authority could have “true” law. For a criticism of this application of Austin's view, see Maine, International Law, 47–51.

⁶¹ William Foltz has pointed out to me that there is also a parallel “reverse double standard” in both primitive and international systems; weak and unimportant groups are often permitted actions which major groups would not commit (or which would be strongly criticized if committed). Many primitive systems allow inferior lineages or castes wider latitude in many forms of conduct (dishonesty, petty thievery, public defamation, etc.) than is permitted major lineages or castes. As long as the stability of the system or the vital interests of a major group are not threatened, such behavior may be a useful safety valve. The behavior of so-called “nonaligned” states in the UN General Assembly offers an obvious parallel.

⁶² From the point of view of a systematic analysis, law need not be a “good.” Indeed, law need not produce peaceful “order,” though as civilized men we infer from our political experience that this should be so. Hence authorities on international law often feel compelled to go beyond mere restatements of accepted legal principles; the international law texts, long an important method of codifying customary international law, are frequendy animated by a desire for reform. Cf. Maine, International Law, Lectures 1, xn, et passim. Unlike the sphere of domestic politics, in which relativism sometimes seems tenable to scholars, international law and politics are difficult to treat in a wholly positivist fashion without thereby accepting as justifiable a condition of legal self-help and war which civilized men tend to reject as barbarous, if not unjust Hence world politics is perhaps the area in which it is most evident that satisfactory political theory cannot divorce objectivity (and especially freedom from partisanship) from die quest for standards of justice.

⁶³ But note that, even in domestic politics, the legitimacy of governmental decisions may be challenged by those who are willing to be “bellicose.” Cf. de Jouvenel, Bertrand, The Pure Theory of Politics (New Haven 1963), 180ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ For the prerequisites for these rare cases, see the study cited in note 31. Note the function of “marriage” (between representatives of rival kinship groups in primitive societies and between ruling families in the earlier period of the modern state system) as a means of formalizing such a settlement.

⁶⁵ Cf. the “principle of political primacy” emphasized by Osgood, Robert E., Limited War (Chicago 1957), 13–15.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ “Blocs” and regional systems are, of course, ready examples. On the relationship between the global system and regional systems in international politics, see Iiska, George, Nations in Alliance (Baltimore 1962), 19–20, 22–24, 259–62.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See Schapera, Government and Politics, 124–25; and Mair, Primitive Government, chap. 5.

⁶⁸ Cf. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems, 9–10.

⁶⁹ Hence there may be disputes concerning the power and influence of opposed groups, but these conflicts are rarely ideological in character.

⁷⁰ See Almond, “Comparative Political Systems,” 400–2. Cf. the importance of the nationality problem in the USSR.

⁷¹ Note, however, that many primitive societies are not as stable and unchanging as is often believed. E.g., see Southall, Alur Society, 224–27, 236, et passim; and Barnes, J. A., Politics in a Changing Society (London 1954)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

⁷² On the distinction between “stable” and “revolutionary” international systems, see Hoffmann, “International Systems and International Law,” 208–11. Hoffmann suggests that three variables determine the stability or instability of an international system: (1) “the basic structure of the world,” (2) “the technology of conflict,” and (3) “the units' purposes” (ibid., 207–8). In the present essay, emphasis is placed on the first of these variables—see below, section VII.

⁷³ Southall, Alur Society, 229–34.

⁷⁴ Ancient Law, 161.

⁷⁵ The most well-known example of this approach is, of course, Kaplan's, Morton A.System and Process in International Politics (New York 1957)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

⁷⁶ See Hoffmann, “International Systems and International Law,” 215–33; and Rosecrance, Action and Reaction in World Politics, esp. Part 11.

⁷⁷ Cf. ibid., chap. 1, and Hoffmann, Stanley, ed., Contemporary Theory in International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960), 40–50, 174–84.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ It seems, for example, that the distinction between stateless systems and fully developed states is insufficient because it ignores an intermediary type which Southall called “pyramidal” or “segmentary states.” In such systems, of which feudalism is but one example, there are a multiplicity of levels of authority, the most comprehensive of which is “paramount” without being “sovereign.” See Southall, Alur Society, 241–60; and Barnes, Politics in a Changing Society, 47–53. Further development of the conception of such pyramidal systems and its application to world politics will be attempted in subsequent publications.

⁷⁹ E.g., see Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function ..in ..Primitive Society, esp. Introduction and chap. 10.

⁸⁰ Levy, The Structure of Society, 57.

⁸¹ Ibid., 60–62.

⁸² Alger emphasizes the similarities between international politics and the internal politics of both developing nations and primitive societies ("Comparison of Intranational and International Politics,” 410–19). He suggests that the “input functions” (“political socialization and recruitment, interest articulation, interest aggregation, and political communication”) are more relevant than the “output functions” (“rulemaking, rule application, and rule adjudication”). Cf. Almond and Coleman, eds., an The Politics of the Developing Areas, 16–17; and note 48 above.

⁸³ Alger, “Comparison of Intranational and International Politics,” 412. Cf. Almond and Coleman, eds., 19.

⁸⁴ An additional critique which might be made is that the Almond functions imply a political teleology: since traditional, “diffuse” systems tend to be replaced by modern, “functionally specific” ones, analysis may be oriented toward finding those activities which favor the trend toward “modernity.” Cf. Almond and Coleman, eds., 16–17. However minor the danger of this implication in the analysis of developing nations, it would certainly be erroneous in international politics, since we have no reason to believe that present tendencies will produce a world government in which Almond's political functions have been specialized.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 16.

⁸⁶ In addition, an emphasis on structure should permit one to handle more explicitly the troublesome problem of defining the “actors” in the international system. Cf. Wolfers, Arnold, “The Actors in International Politics,” Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore 1962), 3–24.Google Scholar Alger seems to adopt the so-called “individuals-as-actors” approach, which raises some severe methodological problems; for example, he suggests (in applying Easton's work) that “international systems would tend to be distributed toward the contingent end of the continuum” which ranges from “contingent” to “continuous.” This is a questionable conclusion if one considers that not only international organizations, but specific roles within national governments (e.g., “foreign minister"), function continuously in the modern state system. Cf. Alger, “Comparison of Intranational and International Politics,” esp. 416, with the discussion above, p. 610. As Wolfers concluded: “While it would be dangerous for theorists to divert their primary attention from the nation-state and multistate systems which continue to occupy most of the stage of contemporary world politics, theory remains inadequate if it is unable to include such phenomena as overlapping authorities, split loyalties, and divided sovereignty, which were pre-eminent characteristics of medieval actors” ("Actors in International Politics,” 24). The structural approach proposed here seems best suited to satisfy the theoretical requirements suggested by Wolfers.

⁸⁷ For a sophisticated attempt to show the continuing relevance of the philosophy of Rousseau as the basis of a theory of international politics, see Hoffmann, Stanley, “Rousseau on War and Peace,” American Political Science Review, LVII (June 1963), 317–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Kenneth J. Waltz, “Kant, Liberalism, and War,” ibid., LVI (June 1962), 331–40.