The concept of feudalism has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years but remains largely undeveloped and undertheorized. For us, the termsfeudal, feudalism, and thefeudal modelrefer to an ideal type of social organization—that is, a theoretical construct that generally corresponds to the essential features of concrete reality but never replicates them precisely. Such a model, as Weber (1949, 93) wrote, is a “limiting concept with which the real situation or action is compared and surveyed for the explication of certain of its significant components.” Following Weber, we suggest that feudalism can be found in...

The segmented approach outlined in chapter 1 assumes that most types of social organization that exist today can also be found in the past. The number of these is actually quite small. The most important forms of political organization are the authoritarian, feudal, and liberal capitalist models, which roughly overlap with the famous Aristotelian typology: the rule of one (authoritarian), the few (oligarchic or feudal), and the many (liberal).

The liberal capitalist model supposes a division of power, political freedoms, free elections, perfect market competition, and a state that has the power to enforce the rule of law. The authoritarian...

Feudal elements tend to emerge when the state is unable or unwilling to maintain order in society. This inability may stem from a lack of resources or from problems associated with corruption. One such tendency occurs when social actors, from individuals to large organizations, use their private resources to extract privileges from the state in a way that is incompatible with the public goals advanced by the central administration or electorate. More generally, a monopoly on any scarce resource—a typical feudal phenomenon—generates corruption and creates a basis for collecting extra “rent” through modes of behavior that violate hierarchical,...

In chapter 3, we applied the feudal model to an examination of interorganizational relations. We discussed, in particular, how corporations and governments collude and conflict with each other, resulting in various “feudal” elements, such as the purchase of political influence and the use of money in election campaigns. In this chapter, we pursue a similar approach, but apply the feudal model to the study of social relations between individuals, departments, and other units inside organizations.

To begin with a classic definition, an organization can be understood as a group of individuals who work together toward a common interest or goal....

One of the key functions of any society is to provide its members with safety and security. While the methods of carrying out this task vary greatly between societies and across time, the given approach represents one of society’s defining characteristics. Increasingly in the United States, private firms are performing the task of protecting individuals, groups, and assets. The safety and security of many Americans now depend in part on a range of private agents and organizations, from security guards, bodyguards, private investigators, and home security companies to commercial surveillance firms, massive in-house corporate security departments, private military companies, and...

One of the most obvious elements of feudalism in contemporary society is the role of personal relations in politics, the economy, and other spheres of social life. There are two types of personal relations. One type is based on the interaction between independent actors who attempt to achieve their goals through mutual cooperation. The other type is based on the clientele principle, or suzerain-vassal relations, which suppose a hierarchy in the relations between people. The second type serves as the main subject of this chapter (Godbout 2000).

A feudal form of personal relations is seen when people use their scarce...

The country’s social, political, and economic ills are recurrent and widespread, but they cannot be explained by some fatal flaw in the essence of liberal democracy. As discussed throughout the book, many of these problems are generated by the liberal segment’s coexistence with other types of social organization, feudalism in particular. The feudal model attempts to recast a number of “temporary deviations” from the liberal model as stable social patterns.

The model emphasizes certain aspects of corporations, particularly their persistent use of financial resources to acquire additional (often illegal) revenue, which they do not deserve according to the principles of...