: From the info we have, it seems like they certainly had a level of autonomy
: that would allow Regret, for instance, to lead a military op to the Rubble
: (and for Truth to run the low-level smuggling operation to find humanity's
: colonies, or to build up the Hierophant fleet) but it seems like Truth was
: the only one who was doing major dealings of that nature. I suppose a lot
: of their derived power might be from what Ministers and Vice Ministers
: they have under their personal sway; Regret before he was a Hierarch was
: able to command crews to do his bidding as Vice Minister of Tranquility,
: for example. Maybe it was a matter of having certain Prophets and
: Sangheili at his personal command and basically having them say on paper
: they were doing other duties to make a ship or a fleet
: "disappear" off the books, as it were.

Considering the power one personally held only went so far as their ministry position and the vote they had in the council, it would make sense that how many people you had under your influence directly correlated to your political power, with more councilors and ministries giving you more votes in the council and more command over different covenant operations. Reminds me of the Asian board-game Go where the goal was to hold more territory than your opponent. Ambitious San'Shyuum had the goal of occurring dirt on and favors from a large number of other ministers and councilors to extend their reach and give themselves the needed political favor to get what they want, while less ambitious ones would hope to aim for a stronger and more important role as a minister or councilor to increase their own value and make the price to buy them out to these power-players higher. It sounds like an interesting system considering that the Covenant has a quasi-socialist society so the currency is political influence.