Chiefdom is a form of social and political organization of society. The tribe or a union of tribes is ruled by a tribal or military top headed by hereditary chiefs. The chiefdom theory is the most fruitful for understanding the ways of statehood emergence. The chain of forms of political organization of people can be represented as band – tribe – chiefdom – state.
An important place in this chain is occupied by chiefdom, which is an intermediate stage between the sociopolitical organization of an egalitarian society with the idea of creating a society with equal social and civil rights for all members of that society and the early statehood. The emergence of chiefdoms can be compared with such significant leaps in human history as the urban and industrial revolutions, and the process can be labeled the managerial revolution.
Example of a Chiefdom government system
Chiefdoms are known in many ethnographic populations of the world. For example, in Africa, among Bantu, Tswana, and Benin, in Asia among the Kachins of Myanmar, among many Eurasian nomads of Afghanistan, North African Mongols, and Oceania – in Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, etc.
