Although throughout my career I have greatly profited from my MA thesis work, I never refined it for another dedicated publication. This festschrift allows me to return to the numerous half-finished drafts and data-stuffed folders that have languished on a succession of computers. I have long wanted to sum up what it is that I did learn from him, illustrated by way of other commentators who found their reading of Bailey less profitable.

Simultaneously, when (pace Easton [1959]) political anthropology, or rather – specifically – the anthropology of politics came into its own, ‘the politics of …’ became an overly common term as everything came to be seen as political. Thomassen suggested that this ‘politics of’-format in effect

Politics in the arena have other aspects as well. There are the allies, followers, opponents, and there is, especially, an audience: ‘Everybody involved in politics, myself included, speaks with an eye to an audience, to persuade, rather than always and only to convey the truth’ (Bailey 1998, 7). Getting things done is much facilitated by either direct support or tacit acceptance. Bailey’s classification of the audience to dyadic struggles into four types shows the abstract transcultural potential of the model (compare Avruch, this volume). The tertius numen is the ‘sublime third party’ who is the final adjudicator, but cannot compete over resources themselves (like a classical referee, or God). Tertius luctans is the ‘fighting third’ who involves themselves in the conflict dyad rather than remaining outside the fray, and somewhat related, tertius gaudens, the ‘laughing third’, profits from others’ struggles. This ascription can switch, as when a judge becomes partial, so the diagnosis is again not abstract, but a concern of the actors and as such an aspect of the debate, that is, intrinsic to politics. The fourth and final audience is the tertius dolens, the ‘suffering third’, who sees themselves maligned as a self-interested luctans, when in fact this party aspires to be seen as neutral numen. This attention to the ‘figure of the third’ signifies that Bailey’s approach is fundamentally performative: political actions are not simply practical tasks, they are social in that they are enacted with an audience in mind. Or, put differently: an audience will often seek the intent (or meaning) behind actions, taking them as enacted in the service of somebody’s interests.

Beyond the audience, for something to qualify as political, there must be a shared communicative idiom, and there must be some rules, some limits, some constraints to what the contestants can do to each other; Bailey rather clearly exempts anomic brawls from the realm of politics. Initially, he identified two basic kinds of rules. Normative rules, which are public in that people would agree that they should be obeyed, set broad ethical limits to possible actions, and are thus reproducible guides to conduct. They are largely used to justify actions to a broader public. Pragmatic rules are more private and normatively neutral; they help in winning a political debate even without what would publicly be condemned as cheating, or by cheating without getting caught. Pragmatic rules are adaptive, and should not be understood to determine the behaviour of people. There are usually multiple rules, even contradictory rules available within one arena, and Bailey emphasizes dynamic aspects of pragmatic rules becoming normative rules over time (or even quickly). Actors are rule-aware, but retain their agency and can manipulate rules. A shared rule-set is central to the notion of the arena, and especially normative rules lead an active social life in the form of claims.

This differentiated understanding of rules echoes a saying I was taught as an undergraduate: ‘We should study what people say they do, what they say they should do, and what they actually do’ – viz, seek to make sense of actions and the different ways people explain, rationalize, justify, and in general make them intelligible.

In Treasons, Stratagems, and Spoils, a departure from the early model – a departure that already can be gleaned from other in-between publications – is made explicit: while Bailey still speaks of ‘normative’ and ‘strategic’ rules (the latter a subset of ‘pragmatic’ rules), he collapses the distinction for methodological reasons. Now, rules for him are relevant as actors’ interpretations of what is going on, and not in how they inform decisions – the shift is fundamental: