À l'intersection de la chefferie et du gouvernement constitutionnel : quelques comparaisons de Micronésie

Abstract

Indigenous Micronesian political forms closely parallel those of eastern Melanesian and Polynesian societies. Chieftainship integrates aspects of land tenure, kin groupings, status hierarchy, and ideologies of the supernatural. Because so many aspects of social and political economy meet in these institutions, chiefly politics have traditionally been responsive to popular pressures; there is in fact, if not necessarily in myth, very little that is autocratic about them. The primary debate in the Federated States of Micronesia has not been about the importance of chieftainship, but whether the people are better served by including chiefs within their constitutional government or keeping them outside it, where it is believed they can more effectively exercise the checks and balances the people wish to maintain.