ABSTRACT
In the companion article, Dillon uses the Metá as a case study of an egalitarian society in which "ultimate coercive authority was a well-integrated part of the legal machinery". Two ethnographic studies of the Metá of western Cameroon, both by Richard G. Dillon, deal directly with fraternal interest group theory and with capital punishment. In a cross-cultural study using five measures of peacefulness/nonpeacefulness, including the presence or absence of blood feuds, Thoden van Velzen and van Wetering demonstrated that the presence of fraternal interest groups is responsible for the conflicts that occur within local groups. Confrontation theory, as set forth below, argues that imbalance may exist and that the entry of political leaders into disputes between fraternal interest groups may create further imbalance, since it is the weaker — not the stronger — fraternal interest group that may be forced to give up a member to the executioner.
