Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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influences immediately the particular states’ nature. Given this, those
anthropologists argue, the coercive concept of contemporary state cannot claim
for universal applicability; at best it may be relevant for cases from a limited
part of the world (see Nustad 2002). Thus, the crucial point is with whom the
monopoly of the legitimate use of force rests and how it is legitimized. In my
opinion, the specifics of monopoly of the legitimate violence in a state society
is precisely that it is exercised through and by bureaucrats who operate within
bureaucratic institutions.
So, as Jonathan Haas (1995: 18) writes, the presence of “institutional
bureaucracies” is among “basic characteristics… standing at the heart of the
state form of organization” which is shared by all societies eligible for being
labeled as states, including the earliest, “prestine” ones (see also Johnson, A.
W. and Earle 2000: 35). In the meantime, even most complex among all
complex chiefdoms, like the Olmecs (e.g., Earle 1990; Grove 1997), Cahokia
(e.g., Pauketat 1994; Milner 1998), the Powhatan paramountcy (e.g., Potter, S.
R. 1993; Rountree and Turner III 1998), or Hawai’i (e.g., Earle 1978; 1997;
2000; Johnson, A. W. and Earle 2000: 281–294) notwithstanding their political
sophistication, 19 could not boast of having professional administrators at all.
The existence of specialized administration was also improbable in Benin of the
First (Ogisos) dynasty time – in the 10 th – mid-12 th centuries (see Bondarenko
2001: 108–117), characterized by me in detail as a complex chiefdom
elsewhere (Bondarenko 2000b: 102–103; 2001: 133–135; 2004a: 340).