Three political institutions came into being successively in Southeast Asia and co-existed for several centuries: stranger-kingship, cosmopolitan law and bureaucratic rationality. Each was based on a different set of practices, and each served to estrange political authorities from their subjects. Firstly, cosmological rituals placed the stranger-king above the factional loyalties of his subjects. Secondly, cosmopolitan legal codes and mystical practices derived from Islamic scriptures placed the ulama and shaikh above the elders who enforced local customs - and, in times of crisis, even above the local king. Thirdly, impersonal bureaucratic procedures and access to an archive of documents placed the officers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and of the colonial state above the 'natives'. This paper argues that all three institutions be seen as a symbolic expression of a general requirement for the existence of ordered social life, namely the need for institutions that can rise above the conflicts and factionalism generated by everyday events. It traces the process by which the traditional authority of stranger-kings in south Sulawesi was complemented and contradicted after 1605 by the charismatic authority of Islamic shaikhs, and by the bureaucratic authority of Dutch officials.
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