available sources (Wright, 2006, p. 1). Nevertheless, enough has been translated and discovered that examples can be provided to substantiate the claims made previously.
tribe, where tribes settle, and where at some point such a settlement becomes a city. Some of these cities may start to dominate their immediate surrounding areas and become city-states, at least for a while. Such a city-state may lose its authority to another. Especially up to the early modern age, it is quite common that city-states wax and wane, hence the “wavy” line. City-states and city-state cultures can evolve into full-fledged macrostates, the last
“bump” in (b), and there are several examples of these. The situation pictured as (c) represents the unbroken development from a small political community to empire, which represents the traditional linear theory of state development. Sometimes these empires fragment into states almost immedi- ately (think of the Carolingian Empire) or after a while (think of the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union). Equally common is the situation of evolution toward a state or an empire and fragmentation of these into states or city-states, which is pictured as (d). Other trajectories are conceivable.
This graphic representation only visualizes political development; it is not and cannot be an explanation. Perhaps the use of linear models prompted the search for prime movers of social, cultural, and political development. However, as stated previously, social evolution is a function of human agency in response to environmental circumstances and change, so that descriptions of social evolution can only be multilevel, interactive, and configurational. Looking at a periodization of the past that takes the interplay between local and upper-local levels of government and govern- ance into consideration, there really are only three phases in the develop- ment of government and the state:
1. Pre-8000 BCE: the hunter-gatherer phase with nomadic, small bands.
This is the period that Scott (2009, p. 324) called the stateless era.
2. From 8000 BCE to 1800 common era (CE):the experimental phasewith associational arrangements at the local level oscillating between and/or mixing special-purpose associations and general-purpose organizations, and with varying relations between local associations and governments on the one hand, and with varying relations between local associations and government with upper-local levels of governance on the other hand. These horizontal and vertical types of relations and interactions varied over time in terms of intensity and extent. Scott (2009) distin- guishes two periods: One represents an era of small-scale states encircled by vast and easily reached stateless peripheries, and the second is one where the localities and peripheries are permanently encroached upon by the expansion of state power. The latter happened
earlier in Western Europe than anywhere else, and the process whereby virtually the entire territory was securely enveloped by and embedded in the territorial and bureaucratic framework of the state was not com- pleted in parts of Southeast Asia and central Africa until after the Second World War.
3. Since 1800 CE: thecentralized governance phasewhere general-purpose subnational governments and national, regional, and local single- purpose associations are closely intertwined within a jurisdiction that is circumscribed by the central level. Scott (2009) notes that this is the period when almost the entire globe is“administered space”and where the periphery is reduced to being a folkloric remnant. Perhaps we should consider a fourth phase because since the Second World War decentralization of tasks and services has been widespread, while at the same time governments and societal associations increasingly rely on international organizations (e.g., United Nations [UN], International Monetary Fund [IMF], European Union [EU], North American Free Trade Association [NAFTA], North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], and so forth) for specific services.
Mapping the role and position of the government and associations of local communities in the history of associational life in their interaction with and relation to upper-local political and associational arrangements is very ambitious and may never be complete. Intuitively, human societies are, on the one hand, multivaried in their functioning and in their relation to the physical and sociocultural environment but, on the other hand, quite basic and simple in how they are structured in terms of demarcations of labor/
office, of territory, and of single respectively compound functions (see for this Chapter 3).12
We can only find examples of the rudimentary theory presented previously when we step away from the notion that the development of government has to be characterized as a process that (a) was linear, (b) involved continued centralization, and (c) required continued refine- ment/elaboration of organizational and societal hierarchy. In the light of history all three assumptions are wrong.
12A systematic case-study approach that builds upon examples of local associational and government development from all continents is likely to substantiate the thesis that the associations and governments of local communities are the backbone for and default of upper-local/regional and supraregional political regimes.
The existence of the centralized state is, as Yuwa Wong observed (1994, p. 5), neither “natural” nor easily explained. That is, the dominance of centralized states in the world today, including loosely coupled federations, is hard to understand when considering the inherent desire of people for some degree of autonomy and certainly for belonging to a face-to-face community. People need self-government (see de Tocqueville, 2000; Mill, 1984), polycentricity (V. Ostrom, 1991), and autogestion (Lefebvre; see Brenner and Elden, 2009) at the grassroots level. Sustained centralization has generally been a feature of the past two centuries, and the loosely coupled empires of old have disappeared. However, there have been centralized systems in the ancient world such as during various periods and dynasties of ancient Egypt (Blanton, 1998, p. 147) (with regard to Egypt: think of the intermediate periods during 2150–1980, 1630–1520, 1070–715 BCE) and for most of China’s history. Totalitarian regimes are hypercentralized as well, but even there the intensity of centralization waxed and waned during the time of their existence.
With respect to organizational structure, when confronted with a growing workforce, organizations have to differentiate horizontally (in terms of number of units) and vertically (in terms of tiers of hierarchy) to lower the span-of-control while maintaining a clear line of authority with unity of command (Raadschelders, 1997). In the past 150 years or so people are inclined to think in terms of fairly clearly delineated job functions where overlap is avoided. Before the 1800s collegial organization was quite normal in most general-purpose governments from the middle manage- ment level up, and job functions were not clearly demarcated. Nowadays, any collegial type of organization in formal governments, i.e., a body of people fulfilling one function together, has been limited to the top level (i.e., that of elected officeholders in the legislatures and executives). In many local associations, though, management is likely to be organized on a collegial rather than a hierarchical basis.
The linear thinking visible in the notion that bands were superseded by tribes, tribes by chiefdoms, and chiefdoms by states is, as mentioned earlier, not supported by facts. As it is, bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states can and have coexisted (see previous examples). Another example of“hierarchical”
thinking is Walter Christaller’s central place theory (1966) that identifies a hierarchy of hamlets, villages, towns, and cities based on their economic catchment area, that is, their zonal influence (how much are they a motor for the regional economy?) and their nodal influence (how attractive are they to the surrounding area?). However, such a presentation inhibits the recognition that settlements may have very different functions, and that
one town/city may be a second-tier political center but afirst-tier religious center, while another is afirst-tier craft production center but only a fourth- tier political center (Marcus and Feinman, 1998, p. 11). In addition to this, Mogens Hansen observed that the urban studies literature suffers from lack of attention to the political aspect of urbanization (2000b, p. 606). Perhaps contemporary societies and their governments can be conceptualized as hierarchies in themselves (local, regional, national) and in relation to each other (first, second, third world), but up to the premodern world (say, around the 1500s in a European biased chronology) a combination of hierarchy and heterarchy captures reality far better (Crumley, 1995, p. 3).
Now we can turn to the question, what happened with local associations when the upper-local political regime collapsed in which they were embedded? First, this question can be answered by pointing out that it only rarely happens that a local community vanishes without leaving a trace of what contributed to their demise and to where they went. The fate of the Maya city-states can only be guessed, and it is rare that subsequent civilizations have no memory of what happened. We know what happened to Carthage, but complete destruction of a local community is fairly rare as well. More common is that local communities and their associations continue to survive, or relocate when under threat. When the people of Aquileia in northern Italy felt threatened by the Lombard invasion in 568 CE, theyfled south and settled on Torcello, a low-lying offshore island in the northern Adriatic. In time, it would become the independent and very powerful city-state of Venice. The city of Lagash in ancient Mesopotomia was sometimes an independent city- state, while at other times it was subordinate to other city-states (e.g., Kish, Akkad, Ur) (Flannery, 1998, p. 20). Indeed, the history of local governments and their associations, such as the lowland Maya, the central Mexican states, the Andean states, the Mesopotamian (city-) states, and the ancient Aegean polities, has been described as a repetitive cycle of consolidation, expansion, and dissolution (Marcus, 1998, pp. 60, 62, 68, 73, 75, 80, 88, and 90). Speci- fically with regard to city-states, Hansen (2000b, p. 611; 2002, p. 8) pointed to three different patterns:
1. city-state cultures that emerge only once in history, such as Hellas (750–550 BCE), northern China (780–480 BCE), Nigeria (fifteenth to nineteenth century CE), and Nepal (1482–1768/9 CE);
2. in some regions city-states disappeared and reappeared with a “dark ages”in-between, such as the Syrian city-state cultures (3500–500 BCE), the Palestinian city-state cultures (2900–1200 BCE), and the Hittite city- state culture (1200–700 BCE);
3. in some other regions two periods of city-state culture were separated by the formation of a macrostate. The Sumerian city-states (3500–2300 BCE) were followed by the Old Babylonian Kingdom (1800–1600 BCE) and the Kassite monarchy (1600–1200 BCE). When the latter disinte- grated, the Neo-Babylonian city-states reemerged (1200–800 BCE); the Etruscan/Italian city-states (ninth to fourth century BCE) were envel- oped in the Roman Republic and Empire (fourth century BCE to fourth century CE), which disintegrated under the threat of the German migrations. Another example is that of the Maya city-states separated by the Mayapan state 1150–1450 CE).
The latter two scenarios are especially interesting because they indicate sufficient local community vitality, and thus invite exploration of the sources of this vitality.
In a dynamic model of political development, the demise of one particular regime does not necessarily coincide with the decline of a culture.
Consider that the notion of“the rise and fall of the Roman empire”implies that political dissolution and cultural dissolution were concomitant. How- ever, that Rome lost control over most of its territories did not mean that all of its accomplishments went down with its political control. The best illustration is that the Roman church, whose Christianity became the state religion upon Emperor Constantine’s decision in 312 CE, used the existing Roman municipal and provincial jurisdictions to define the boundaries of its parishes and bishoprics (Raadschelders, 2002, p. 10), and they also took over the provision of services such as health care (the Roman military hospitals) and water supply (aqueducts). Both the areas of Mesopotamia and of Christendom are excellent examples of the fact that political boundaries do not always, and certainly not before the premodern period, coincide with cultural or even economic boundaries.