Inca Government

The Tawantinsuyu ( "four parts together"; fig. "land of the four quarters") or Inca Empire was a centralized bureaucracy. It drew upon the administrative forms and practices of previous Andean civilizations such as the Wari Empire and Tiwanaku, and had in common certain practices with its contemporary rivals, notably the Chimor. These institutions and practices were understood, articulated, and elaborated through Andean cosmology and thought. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, certain aspects of these institutions and practices were continued.

Inca ideology was founded on Andean cosmology. This cosmology was hierarchical and dualistic, with a variety of opposing forces jostling in position through on-going action. Their worldview was animistic, and their amautakuna (teachers or sages) taught that the world was suffused with qamaq, meaning "breath" or "life-force". Change was understood as occurring through asymmetries in power between those forces, while pacha, an equilibrium or balance, was struck through ayni, a process of reciprocal exchange. The essential beliefs and divinities of the Inca pantheon were widely established in the Andes by the time the empire arose. Conrad and Demerest argue that these pre-established beliefs were key to the ideological effectiveness of later Inca reforms. While a belief in any number of "high gods", those preeminent aspects of a given pantheon, were common before the Inca, the elevation of the god Inti to a preeminent position was therefore nothing radical. Likewise, cults of the dead were very ancient in the Andes, and so the worship of deceased, mummified Incas attended to by their descendant panaqa groups was not revolutionary. However, as Conrad and Demerest argue, the "simplification" of these beliefs and rituals, "stressing the solar aspects of the ancient divine complex" in the form of Inti as a patron deity of the empire during the reign of Pachacuti. Furthermore, the inclusion of mummified rulers not just into rituals but festivals and state councils elaborated upon the preexisting Andean practice. "Pachacuti" is an appellation created from pacha, equilibrium, and kuti, an act of overturning; Pachacuti was, therefore, someone whose dynamism and power changed the balance in the world.

...
Wikipedia