On Feb 18, 2018, at 8:23 PM, Jeff Zeitlin <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:

The word "Amphictyony" (alternate spelling "Amphictiony") refers to a
league of Greek city-states banded together to protect a temple.
C.J.Cherryh, in her Compact Space novels, applied it to Hani society and
extended it to cover any important common resource.

Using the extended definition, how would you classify a 'government' that
is not a unified one, but is instead a bunch of overlapping amphictyonies,
each one securing a particular important common resource that all of its
members draw on? Any particular member may - probably is - a member of
several separate amphictyonies, and not all of the members of _this_
amphictyony for resource A are members of _that_ amphictyony for resource B
(of a different type). There _might_ be a single world-wide amphictyony for
a resource that is solitary and important to everyone, but there is no
absolute necessity that such a resource exist, nor is that amphictyony
necessarily any more important than any of the others.

Depending on how controlling each member-state is of it’s citizens it could be anything from anarcho-syndicalist to a confederacy to plain old Balkanization with a web of treaties and agreements among the members.


-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs