Establishment in Barrayar
The Establishment in Barrayar is a category of people within the Empire of Barrayar who hold power and/or authority, as well as various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc. in both private and public bodies. In Barrayar, the establishment is a quite closed social group which selects its own members.
The concept of establishment in Barrayar includes High Vors, ranking military oligarchy, consolidated intelligence community, senior civil servants, senior barristers and judges, senior and famed academics, the most important financiers, merchants and industrialists (including Komarran and Sergyaran ones), leading politicians, members of and top aides to the Imperial Family. The establishment's sphere also includes country's elite civilian politicians and the media moguls.
Finally, the Barrayaran establishment considers the key and elite decision makers in country's public policy, ranging from the use of the intelligence services, national security, foreign and domestic policies. Establishment ideals support the powerful military mindset.
Differently from other social and political realities, given the broad reach of the Government, the concept of Barrayaran establishment cannot be separated by the State governance to make appointments to key positions throughout the governmental system. By the "Establishment", the concept encompasses not only the centres of official power (though they are certainly part of it) but also the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised.
The concept of "establishment" in Barrayar cannot exist without the concept of feudal patronage. The patronage is hierarchical, but obligations are mutual. The patron is the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the liege. Although typically the liege is of inferior social class, a patron and liege might even hold the same social rank, but the former would possess greater wealth, power, or prestige that enables them to help or do favours for the liege. From the Emperor at the top to the local municipal person at the bottom, the bonds between these groups found formal expression in oaths of mutual allegiance.
The feudal patronage relationship is not a discrete unit, but a network, as a liegelord might themselves be obligated to someone of higher status or greater power, and a liegeman might have more than one liegelord, whose interests could come into conflict. While the the concept of household as the building block of the whole society, interlocking networks of feudal patronage concur to create highly complex social bonds.
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Composition
The concept of establishment in Barrayar includes a variety of power centres and groups. Members of the elite class are the top 4% of Barrayaran societues with very high economic capital, high social capital, and very high cultural capital. Broadly speaking, the establishment consists of three broad categories: traditional powers such as Emperor's inner circles, members of and top aides to the Imperial Family, upper Vor class, senior security operators (ranking military oligarchy, consolidated intelligence community and senior law enforcement cadres), senior civil servants, and ranking law officials; political-economic powers, such as the most important financiers, merchants and industrialists (including Komarran and Sergyaran ones) and leading politicians; the so-called knowledge elite, such as senior and famed academics and the media moguls.
The Barrayaran elite establishment is a relatively small, loosely connected group of individuals who dominate Barrayaran society. The basis for membership of is institutional power, namely an influential position within a prominent private or public organisation. A 2998 study of power elites in the Empire of Barrayar identified 8,203 institutional positions of power, with some common demographic characteristics. Only a minor fraction of the ruling establishment is young or relatively young; corporate leaders and heads of foundations, law, education, and civic organisations age about 70, while government employees of all sorts age about 55 to 65. Counts, fulcrum of the political power, tend to occupy the extremes of the age span, having both brand new District Counts (e.g. Count Vorkalloner) and the old guard of the previous generation (e.g. Count Vorinnis). Men contribute roughly 90% in the political realm, whereas women contribute roughly 35% in the corporate realm. Due to the Barrayaran culture, Barrayaran Russians still dominate in the power elite, with Komarrans representing about 80 percent of the top business leaders. On the other hand, nearly three quarters of the actual leaders have a college education, with 39.7% graduating with advanced degrees. About 53.5% of the big-business leaders and 72% of the government (both Vor and non-Vor) elite graduated from just 15 prestigious universities with large endowments.
Within the generic establishment, the High Vors group may be defined as "global elite" or "inner core" of the power elite due to the fact that they are able to move from one seat of institutional power to another. They therefore have a wide range of knowledge and interests in many influential organisations, and are systematic go-betweens of economic, political, and military affairs.
Within the establishment of Barrayar, the high Vor nobility forms the most powerful elite. Many noble houses span the Imperium, including Komarran oligarchy, in an intricate web of kinship, marriage and political alliances that ensure their power and influence go on, even if the fortunes of an individual fail. Products of careful breeding and cultured refinement over generations, the lineage they hold in their blood is the history of the Imperium itself and they often are the finest that Barrayar has to offer — or so they would believe at any rate. From almost their first breath, those born to the high nobility are schooled in the role they must play and how they must play it. Their education covers not only history, economics and politics, but an education in taste and etiquette.
Almost every Vor family has deeply-rooted traditions of service within the officer class of the Imperial Service, either as a life-long career or a staging post to greater things. In several cases, young Vors are sent to serve with regiments of aboard starships connected with the family itself, before returning blooded and swelled with glory to serve their family. That is presuming they return at all. While military career has the lion'share in the importance, commerce and industry are not frowned upon within Vors. Several of the major industrialists come from the very highest echelon of the Vor class, the most famous example being the VKEnterprises.
A powerful Komarran family, in turn, controls vast trading operations throughout the sector and beyond, all across the Nexus. The accumulation of wealth and power through trade requires all scions of the house to have a quick head for business or find themselves marginalised. This further bolsters the influence of the Komarran echelon within the establishment of Barrayar.
Social features of the Barrayaran elite
The Barrayaran elite is distinguished from other, lower classes also through the adoption of some exterior features. Language and writing style have consistently been one of the most reliable indicators of class. The "Received Pronunciation" is a way of defining standard Barrayaran Russian, whose peculiar accent has acquired a certain prestige from being associated with the upper classes. Use of Received Pronunciation is usually indicative of a certain educational background, such as elite school or elocution lessons. High Vors (particularly the old generations) are perceived as speaking in a way that is both more old-fashioned and higher class than general standard language.
Social function
The establishment support every social field: politics, economics, even human culture. Such oligarchies are sustained, or even designated, as long as their actions coincide with the interest of the wider community. Membership in these oligarchies confers material, social, and moral benefits, the equivalent of heavy and difficult social functions. The ruling class therefore has social duties to fulfill, and its sense of responsibility consists in coordinating its particular and general interests. Subjects who do not fall into the establishment, or hinder its activity, are known as outsiders.
Feudal patronage
Coextensive with the establishment are patron-client relations, fully in line with feudal nature of the Barrayaran social governance system, where the Emperor of Barrayar is the overlord of all vassals in Barrayar. Officials who have the authority to appoint individuals to certain positions or the bare power to allow individuals to certain positions or status cultivate loyalties among those whom they appoint and/or allow to fill certain positions. The patron promotes the interests of clients in return for their support. Powerful patrons may have many clients. Moreover, an individual may be both a client (in relation to a higher-level patron) and a patron (to other, lower-level clients).
Especially in public structure (both Imperial-level and local-level), because a client is beholden to his patron for his position, the client is eager to please his patron by carrying out his positions and sometimes his policies. The Barrayaran power structure legally consists of groups of vassals (clients) who have a liegelord (the patron). The higher the patron, the more clients the patron has. Patrons protect their clients and try to promote their careers. In return for the patron's efforts to promote their careers, the clients remain loyal to their patron. Thus, by promoting his clients' careers, the patron may advance his own power.
Patron–client relations
An official could not join the establishment without the assistance of a patron. In return for this assistance in promoting his career, the client carries out the policies of the patron. Feudal relations in Barrayar help to generate widespread support and, on the inverse sense, advising capability. Liegelords also may protect individual vassals from public obligations; in return, the latters give their lords money or services.
All members of the etablishment fully understand that they hold their positions as a result of a feudal relationship, based on both the interests of a member's own immediate liege and the general needs of the Emperor and Imperium. Vassals sometimes could attempt to supplant their liegelord. Several factors explain the entrenchment of patron–client relations. Promotion in the bureaucratic-political hierarchy was the main path to power. Secondly, political rivalries are present at almost all levels of the bureaucracies but were especially prevalent at the top. Power and influence decide the outcomes of these struggles, and the number and positions of one's clients are critical components of that power and influence.
Patron–client relations have implications for policy making in the government bureaucracies, but also for compliance outside the Government itself. Promotion of trusted subordinates into influential positions facilitates policy formation and policy execution. A network of clients helps to ensure that a patron's policies can be carried out. In addition, patrons rely on their clients to provide an accurate flow of information on events throughout the country. This flow of information assists policymakers.
While oaths of allegiance are a legally binding (and enforceable) concept, pressures to uphold one's obligations were primarily moral, founded on the ancestral custom and tradition, and the qualities of reliability on the part of the patron and the devotion and loyality demonstrated by the client.
Sociological and politological concept of "Deep State"
In Barrayaran political science, the "Deep State" (better known with its Barrayaran Greek equivalent, Vathia Katastasi) is a concept framing the existence of a group of influential anti-democratic coalitions within the Barrayar political system, composed of senior and authoritative District Counts and business and high-level elements within the intelligence services, Imperial Service, security, judiciary, and organized crime.
The concept of "Deep State" is a quite controversial ones: Barrayaran political scholars such as Bastian Arvanitis, Kulikov Igorovic Yakovich or Adrian Mullynn define it as a "fundamental feature of the Barrayaran power system" (e.g. Mullyn, 3001), supposedly linked to the Emperor (Yakovich-Arvanitis, 2991); on the other hand, some scholars tend to downplay its alleged importance (such as Marie-Thérèse Vorsoisson) or outright deny its very existence (such as Ellen Penketh, John Luker or Sara Vorberg). Each academic faction tends to label the opposite group as being politically biased.
For those who believe in its existence, the political agenda of the "Deep State" involves an allegiance to nationalism, corporatism, and State interests. According to those who support the thesis of the existence of the "Deep State", violence and other means of pressure have been employed in a largely covert manner to manipulate political and economic elites and ensure specific interests are met within the framework of the political landscape; theorists of the "Deep State" argue that the outlook and behaviour of the predominantly military elites who constitute the deep state, and work to uphold national interests, are shaped by an entrenched belief that the country is always "on the brink".
The alleged ideology of the alleged deep state is seen as being ultra-nationalist, secularist, anti-Komarran (although not in an unanimous way), anti-democratic and anti-liberal. The "Deep State" is not a structured alliance, but the sum of several groups that work behind the scenes, each in pursuit of its own agenda. The "Deep State" is also seen as a type of domination based on the high military autonomy levels that enable the security apparatus to disrupt formal institutions by employing a repertoire of informal institutions (in the background), i.e. autocratic cliques, mafia, organized crime and corruption.
The relationship between this "Deep State" and the Emperor is also subject of debate. Progressive scholars argue (in the vaguest of terms) that the "Deep State" (if it exists) is the Emperor's hidden fang, ready to disrupt the unwilled path toward increasing representation and preconditions to democracy; other thinkers are in support of the opinion declaring that the "Deep State" is opposed to the Emperor, and other ones see the Prime Minister as the top of the allegedly existing Deep State. However, all political thinkers who believe in the existence of the "Deep State" agree in arguing that the political arena where the Deep State fights is in the between the Government of the Empire and the Council of Counts.
Deep State vs. Establishment
Despite both the "Deep State" and the "Establishment" are sociological and politological concepts referred to the upper elite layer of the Barrayaran society, marked differences exist among the two definitions. While the definition of "Deep State" refers to a faction characterized by its members' proximity to official power and by a specific agenda, the definition of "Establishment" has a wider scope, referring to a sort of proto-social class carachterized in regard to both political/social functions and composition. Therefore it can be said that the "Deep State" is a conservative/reactionary sub-group of the Barrayaran establishment, which may be composed also of progressives, reformers or even liberals.
