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| | DragonBear History: All That: |
 | | The Althing was very public, as medieval government went: the judges were ordinary citizens, and any respected individual could speak and be heard, not just the chieftains. |
 | | And lastly, the Althing just wasn't an especially democratic institution, certainly not one along the modern, mundane American lines of "one person, one vote." The chieftains were not elected by their thingmen, nor were their votes (when they did vote) meant to represent the will of their constituents. |
 | | I like the Althing as a government model; I think that to the extent the Carolingian Great Council works, it works for the same reasons: the open meetings, where anyone may speak even though relatively few have actual votes, and the close relations between the representatives and their constituents. |
| www.dragonbear.com /althing.html (1392 words) |
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