1. North et al. 2009 differentiate between two archetypes of social orders, viz. the `open' and the `limited access' order, the latter also termed `natural state'. The first type of social order is a recent phenomenon that had its beginnings around ca. 1800 or slightly earlier, whereas the second was a universal constant in world history and is still playing an important role today for a considerable part of humankind. It resembles Weber's concept of patrimonial authority in so far as social relationships are strongly personalized, rather than governed by stable bureaucratic, i. e., impersonal procedures (North et al. 2009: 12). Of course, it is not implied that before the emergence of the modern western state, human organisation was static and uniform. Just as the Weberian ideal-types have been modified better to account for the broad variety of social organisation in historical experience,6 North et al. allow for graduations in their framework. For example, they distinguish between `fragile', `basic' and `mature' natural states (eidem;In,2009