>But normal clan members have little impact on what the Ring Members decide.
>They can corner the Ernalda Member and try to persuade her to put one point
>of view across, but they themselves have no say in the matter at all. In a
>Tribal Ring it is worse as the Ring Members will probably not know them at
>all, so wouldn't particularly listen to what they want to say.
>
>It is different for important clan members as they have more influence. But
>normal people have very little.
You're thinking on the wrong scale; clans are a few hundred, maybe a thousand strong and that includes children. That means everyone knows the members of the clan ring and if the ring member doesn't know you they will know your brother or your uncle's wife. Those sort of personal connections are the core of Sartarite politics and on that scale it works very well with the clan ring members balancing the different views presented to them which will determine both the policies they push for and the extent to which they compromise.
At a tribal level the ordinary clan member goes through the clan representatives - if they're willing they will argue the case with tribal ring members as the clan's case. Representative democracy working rather better when one person represents a few hundred individuals with a shared identity than it does in modern society where one person represents tens of thousands with nothing in common other than a geographical area.
It's when clans and tribes get bigger that this system breaks down which is reflected in Tarsh where Tribal Chief's have much more authority and an overall king exists. At least as described in "Tarsh in Flames" which may not be canon.
I'm not suggesting this is a perfect democracy but the ordinary Heortling will have more influence over the issues that affect them than the citizen of a modern democracy does.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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