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 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.
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.
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.
