Frederick George Bailey (24 February 1924 – 8 July 2020), who published professionally as F. G. Bailey, was a British social anthropologist who spent the second half of his career in the United States at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Manchester University, working under Max Gluckman, and is closely associated with the Manchester School of social anthropology. A prolific writer of some sixteen books in anthropology, he is probably best known for his studies of local and organizational politics. He conducted fieldwork in Bisipāra, Orissa, India, and has also written on political functions, particularly the ways that social structure arises out of and is used by the interactions of individuals.

In 1956, Bailey joined the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) as a lecturer and then a reader. In 1964 he moved to the new anthropology department at the University of Sussex.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976 At the time he was a professor at the University of Sussex. He moved to San Diego, California in 1971 as part of the core faculty of the newly established department of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, where he taught until retiring in 1997.

Bailey continued to write and publish anthropological books for another decade after his official retirement. He died in July 2020 at the age of 96.