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It doesn't make any fethin' sense. The Imperium largely consists of fairly ordinary humans. People like you and me. The Inquisition too, except that some of them can be extremely stubborn.

Any organisation with a power of the Inquisition's magnitude must have some form of strict hierarchy. Just look at any IRL Inquisition-like organisation, past and present.

Such organisations can still abuse their power, but they can never do without some chain of command. In 40k, there are conclaves, but on whose authority are they called?

No organisation similar to the Inquisition and run by humans like you and me can function with such a loose power structure.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

How is it possible for everyone to have authority over everyone else?

 Grey Templar wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

How is it possible for everyone to have authority over everyone else?

It means every Inquisitor is on an equal footing with each other. Its a check on each individual Inquisitor's power to prevent abuse.

Now, like any organization, the Inquisition has a huge amount of inner political conflicts which translates into a loose hierarchy of who has the most political sway.

That said, there are ranks which convey some positional influence in the Inquisition itself. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Inquisitor#Ranks These ranks do not give an Inquisitor any more power, their power is already absolute, but it is an indicator of respect and admiration among his peers. An Inquisitor Lord is more of an honorific term than anything that has a defined indicator of outranking another.

If there is internal conflict between Inquisitors, the conflict is usually resolved by which side has more support from other Inquisitors and/or personal forces.

one can imagine the sheer amount of chaos that would emerge from this loose organisation.

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
If a Guardsman falls, you've lost 1 man to Chaos. If a Sergeant falls, you've got 10 men taking commands from the Warp. If a Colonel falls, you've got 10,000 men under influence.

That's why the Inquisition has no strict chain of command. Inquisitors train and command a retinue, and an Inquisitor does report to a Lord Inquisitor if neccessary. But the Inquisition polices the Imperium and itself. Anyone can point the finger at anyone else in the Inquisition and rally some friends against them. The Inquisition is about connections, not heirarchy.

But each Inquisitor has nigh-unlimited power, and they can invite others almost freely. Surely this would lead to cronyism and allow corruption to spread?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:
It doesn't make any fethin' sense. The Imperium largely consists of fairly ordinary humans. People like you and me. The Inquisition too, except that some of them can be extremely stubborn.

Any organisation with a power of the Inquisition's magnitude must have some form of strict hierarchy. Just look at any IRL Inquisition-like organisation, past and present.

Such organisations can still abuse their power, but they can never do without some chain of command. In 40k, there are conclaves, but on whose authority are they called?

No organisation similar to the Inquisition and run by humans like you and me can function with such a loose power structure.

The Inquisition was created, in part, in response to the Horus Heresy, in which corruption at the top of a strict chain of command let a few individuals get major portions of the Imperial military on their side. If there were a strict chain of command Chaos getting at a single Inquisitor could easily yoink a big chunk of the organization with him.

It might be easier to draw parallels between the Inquisition and real life insurgent movements rather than secret police; the organization is designed so that the loss of a single component harms the whole as little as possible, not so that it will operate efficiently with a single unified will.

Speaking of corruption, all it takes is a Xanthite to become corrupted, to corrupt the rest of his Xanthites, and to keep inviting more and more corrupted acolytes until you have a huge, large group of corrupted Inquisitors.

Sure, you don't have top-down corruption, but you may have unsupervised rampant corruption instead. It just takes 3 fellas to give another fella tremendous power on paper and they don't even need to seek higher authority or approval.


Also, note that before Horus became Warmaster, he didn't have paper authority over his brother primarchs. Any organisational hierarchy also has many peers at the same level, of the same rank, equal on paper and not beholden to each other. It also has superiors.

You can still have an organisation and have superiors or peers to keep each other in check. A bad guy may push his inferiors. but in a hierarchy, he has peers and superiors to answer to, which may be even more of a roadblock.