One reason that the British were so successful for so long in their colonial project was that they implicitly understood the importance of keeping spheres of politics separate, allowing the colonized people a political space within which traditional ideas of hierarchy and legitimacy could be practiced. The technique was to leave intact existing local sys- tems as long as such systems were not seen as threatening, adding a layer of administration at the top while leaving a broad political space for the local headmen, chiefs, rajahs, princes, or sheiks. Colonizers— such as Belgium or Spain, which attempted a more total domination— found themselves fighting endless wars and paying the exorbitant cost of power by force alone.
This is not a strategy open to the masters alone; local peoples have often found that they could create a separate sphere of power for them- selves with or without the approval of the official government. When the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 required U.S. tribes to adopt consti- tutions and democratic governments at odds with the elder-based con- sensus politics of tradition, many tribes created such formal governments merely as window dressing, voting in people with no leadership abilities or political followings, while at the same time maintaining informal gov-
ernments that actually exercised power. While traveling with Sandinista political organizers in the peasant highlands of Nicaragua in 1981, I noticed that at democratic meetings the real leaders were observing from the back row, subtly passing signals about who was to be nominated for each official position; it was clear that they would continue their informal leadership once the organizers had left. This ability of people to stake out spheres of limited control within broader formal structures of power has been undertheorized by political anthropologists.
Parallel Politics in Micronesia
The politics of the island of Ponape in Micronesia, as described by Glenn Petersen (1989), reveals how two noncompetitive political systems can exist side by side, and how the assertion of traditional values can moderate colonial influences. Ponape, like the other islands of Micro- nesia, experienced a long history of foreign rule. After a half-century of off-and-on contact, the island became a colony of Spain in 1886, fol- lowed by various degrees of subjugation by the Germans, Japanese, and finally Americans. During World War II, the islands were occupied by the United States and after the war became part of the U.S. Trust Ter- ritory of the Pacific Islands. Micronesia remained a trusteeship of the United States from 1947 until 1986, when it assumed free-association status with the United States.
During the long period of external rule, the official political structure imposed on Ponape represented centuries of historical development in Europe and the United States, and bore little relation to the indigenous political culture of the island. Although U.S. rule was not particularly heavy-handed, it did tend to be autocratic because it was based on the absolute authority of the state and on a hierarchy of power similar to the hierarchy of municipal/state/federal authority in the United States. The imposed government of Micronesia consisted of a wide array of ap- pointed and elected individuals and groups—governor, executives, a state legislature with elected representatives, legislative committees, courts, departments, agencies—each with its arena of power and each under the control of a higher officialdom. In addition there was a constitution, charters, and legal codes, all based on abstract principles of government and law.
The traditional Ponapean chieftainship system also recognized hier- archy, but only in close conjunction with a contrary trend toward indi- vidual autonomy. Chiefs, who assumed their positions through ranked
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lineages, could not rest on their inherited statuses, but had to continually maintain their positions through a ceaseless round of feasting in which great quantities of food were redistributed to the community. At a feast, a chief was seated on a raised platform. He presented gifts to other chiefs according to their rank, which they in turn distributed among kin, friends, and followers. Because the yams, kava, pigs, and community service that bestowed status were not in scarce supply, authority did not inhere in the control of such resources but rather in the ability to produce and distribute them. Chieftainship was earned and maintained through social skills, resourcefulness, and hard work.
The ritual predominance of the chiefs did not translate into a predom- inance of power. The five paramount chiefs, representing the five mu- nicipalities, supposedly ruled through the section chiefs, but in reality there was little ruling to be done. Most aspects of life were thoroughly routinized. Special projects were organized by section chiefs, who could demand community participation, but if the project was too onerous, the section chief would simply be ignored. Most chiefly decision making revolved around organizing and supplying rituals and celebrations, but even then the threat of ostracism or ridicule by the community was a stronger sanction than was chiefly commands. A generous chief could expect cooperation, but only within limits. Although social and political hierarchy was firmly embedded in the culture, it was hierarchy without coercive power. In a sense, the locus of authority was the community itself.
How was this traditional system maintained in a colonial situation, when the colonial concept of hierarchy and power was so totally differ- ent? The traditional system survived mainly because it was confined to the sphere of community decision making, ritual, ceremony, and status, with which the imposed electoral/bureaucratic system did not involve itself. The chiefs did not make decisions or try to enforce compliance with regard to modernization: schools, roads, public health, and export agriculture. In other words, there were two spheres of politics, each with its own hierarchy: a traditional sphere of face-to-face politics based in personal relations, and a colonial sphere of impersonal, legalistic politics based on abstract principles.
The two spheres were not entirely distinct. Many Ponapean natives achieved office within the bureaucracy and identified with the imported values. Although they might consider the old ways illogical and ineffi- cient, they remained a part of that culture. Similarly, the people them- selves had no trouble functioning within the European political culture when that was practical.