A hierokratikus kontrollstruktúra születése. Egy rekonstrukciós hipotézis
Hierocracy: Birth of a Control Structure. A Reconstruction Hypothesis

Summary/Abstract: When James R. Beniger coined his Control Crisis–Control Revolution Model, providing context to the pre-history of Information Society, he identified the birth of bureaucratic control structure as an agent of change in the late 19th century. Even if he implied the relevance of this model to the whole World History, he has never completed the sequential description of different control structures. Following and consummating Beniger’s idea, I defined Isonomic, Hierocratic, Aristocratic, Bureaucratic and Post-Bureaucratic (Isocratic) Control Structures: we can observe paradigmatic transitions every time and everywhere, when the size and complexity of a society is jumping into a new (system) level, accelerating group formation, running into group transformation. In this way we get tools to reconceptualize the historical shift from small and isolated group societies to the early city-state (networks), zooming into the nature of post-isonomic or pre-aristocratic control structure, as a functional answer to adaptation challenges. We call this transition phase hierocratic, reinterpreting and sophisticating the meaning of ‘Hieros’, the ‘Other’, which is a key driver in social transformation. Since the early social macrostructures are multiethnic, multicultural integrations, mutually accepted rites, ideas and beliefs could lead dissimilarly developed communities into new forms of cooperation and co-habitation. In the group formation phase isonomy became hieronomy, inserting new types of actors and institutions into the social space, without radically changing its traditional interrelations. During the group transformation phase the original meanings were lost, and a new control revolution re-combined and solidified its new order: Hieros turned into Sacred, Isonomy turned to Hierarchy. Hierocratic Control was a successful answer to a social macroevolutionary challenge – and became obsolete later, in the age of early Empires.

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