The Art of Government: Approaches to the Notion of Legitimacy in Inca Society

Abstract

Inca society is one of the most important links in the development of Andean societies; therefore, it constitutes a key piece to understand part of the social problems that the mentioned region is going through in the XXI century. Of the wide spectrum of problems that can be located, the idea of a system that does not feel legitimate by society is of particular interest. In this paper, we study the way in which the Inca power structure was configured and the repercussion that this configuration could have on the perception of the dominated class towards the ruling class, and use this perception in turn to arrive at an approximate idea on how valid those who lived under its yoke could come to consider this system of domination. This task also seeks to clarify the experiences of legitimacy of a past society to help understand the same issue in the Latin American society of the XXI century.