Strategems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics

F. G. Bailey's political-anthropology text is reissued here with a postscript that comments critically on the book's scope, its reception, and its uses. First published in 1969, Stratagems and Spoils captured the imagination of scholars and students with a revealing examination of principles of political competition that operate alike in "exotic" and "developed" societies. In Bailey's analysis, Swat Pathan chiefs, cosa nostra gangsters, General de Gaulle, and the Untouchables in a rural Indian village (for example) are shown employing similar strategies, both effective and ineffective, to win and hold followers while eroding the support of their opponents. Provocative and insightful. Stratagems and Spoils provides a conceptual toolkit for analyzing, in any culture, the rules that regulate political contests and that determine who will win and who will lose.