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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet
This is beginning to remind me of the Elven government/culture thread. As is typical in Tolkien's Legendarium, Patriarchal hereditary leadership is the modus operandum for societal dynamics. This is probably more so in Dwarven culture. As goes Thorin, so go the others, even Balin. Not one of the Dwarves in Erebor gain-said their leader. In the part of The Hobbit I am speaking of, Tolkien was writing pretty seriously; no more of the pratfalls and silliness with Trolls and Spiders ... so this I think can be construed as typical societal dynamic for Dwarves.
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As a citizen from a quasi-patriachal state, I can tell you that concerns or rather, fears of the patriarch going rogue is of the uptmost concerns of both the citizens and government. As such there are measures adopted to prevent absolute power from falling totally into the hands of one man. Hence Singapore has two deputy Prime Ministers and three Ministers for Defence.
That stated I wonder if the dwarven houses had such fail safe mechanisms in place. What would happen if a leader of a great house turned rogue and perhaps "evil" as we have more or less defined in this thread? Could the other dwarves of the same house have stopped this leader from committing undersirable acts? Or would a possible culture of respect to elders, strict social hierarchy, apolitical lifestyles and strong centralized rule dissuade such a self-righting course?
Magna Carta anyone?