Question

What kinds of economic systems are associated with bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states? Why? How is the economic system in your culture affected by its political organization?

Answer 1

Bands are very small group of people who keep moving from place to place, without any designated leader. While tribes are little bigger than bands and have permanent settlement. They both run economy on the resources they collect, so they would have traditional economic system which is based on tradition and mostly barter.

Chiefdoms have a leader who control the society and economy, it is the leader who decides the trade and resource distribution in the society. So, it is a command economy. States are very large and run by elected officials. There are proper laws and regulations in place and the economy is run either by market interactions or mixture of market and authority. So it will have market economic system or mixed economy.

So, it can be seen that there is a direct relationship of leadership or political structure on the economy. Bands and tribes where the political organization is decentralized has traditional market system and the groups with centralized political structure, command or market economy or mix of both is present.