04-12-2024, 03:15 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-12-2024, 03:39 AM by Spode.
Edit Reason: typo
)
Howdy! Thank you for posting this, it made me thonk.
It bears mentioning that the fourth and current Constitution of the Republic has been modified.
I think this record of change shows that the Constitution has been allowed to be a living document that has adapted to the situation the Republic finds itself in.
I think it’s worth recalling why and how we got to an unelected executive in the first place. Turning back the clock to early February 2018, voters during the opinion polling for the presidential election had a frankly dismal pool of candidates to select from. There was Quebec and Lyoa, and then two other candidates who did not even have Vice President picks and had basically no chance at winning, voter turnout to opinion polling in this very noncompetitive race was at a catastrophically low <13% of residents. This followed an election in which Nexus was elected with no competition following their opposition agreeing to withdraw from the race. The population wasn’t engaged with democracy, the elections were uncompetitive and stagnant, and the region was quite obviously suffering as a result.
And how democratic was the presidential system anyhow? Even with the people’s mandate (and in retrospect, there was fraud in a some of those presidential elections, which somewhat undermines the legitimacy of that people’s mandate), the position was quite firmly bounded in its abilities by the constitution. It also, as I recall, created a system in which the people who got power were the people who pursued it, for better or worse, and those stakes of power meant political infighting and partisanship was a dangerous and divisive issue for the Republic.
Moreover, governments in this context have the ultimate democratic freedom of people just doing what they want to do. The consulate cannot compel or coerce the rest of the government in the same ways as “real” executive bodies because, fortunately I might add, we don’t have police, control of currency*, or control of resources needed for members to live.
*And never again so long as I am a consul will there be a (non-contested) reopening of the Consulate Central Bank or any similar reincarnation because it was, despite rose-tinted glasses surrounding that period, a corrosive force.
… All that said about why we originally discarded executive democracy, and the dangers we faced during that period, I must admit that I am somewhat dissatisfied with the current institutions of the Republic in some areas (which I believe relate to democracy!). Namely, we (as you mentioned) have a massively increased population of newer players who are notably divorced from our offsite platforms and thus most Republic politics. That’s fine to an extent, and I’m not looking to try to implement something like TEP’s RMB cafeteria or something akin to The South Pacific’s now defunct Local Council. I think both of those systems try (or tried to) accommodate delusions that the RMB should constitute a separate community from its host region. Here, we are all Republicans. That said, to avoid having a community split between those in the region onsite, and our offsite culture, there must be a continue and sustained effort to unify them through the transfer of information out, and the communication of our ideals and ideology to the public.
Rule by decree, as previously mentioned, has natural limits - the consulate ultimately needs public consensus to do things, even from positions that on paper have unchecked power.
That rule-by-decree matter applies as much if not more so to bills proposed by the council. The Council cannot forcibly compel the Consulate do things, overriding its veto or not. Ideally, vetoes are not needed, because something that isn’t able to get buy-in from the necessary stake-holders isn’t going to function correctly anyway once it passes. The Republic is run by a consensus driven government by necessity, with its most autocratic elements (the Domestic Security Bureau, and control of the founder account in The League) being a result of mechanical realities regarding the platforms it exists on. Unless those realities change, those autocratic elements will remain.
The role of speaker was introduced during a period when the council was rather aimless, to serve as a means to try and direct its energies to legislation once again. Maybe. It’s been somewhat ill-defined and not particularly successful, potentially owing to the fact that we’ve resolved many of the problems that once drove the Republic’s legislature to act.
I’m not entirely sold on the speaker being able to create whole institutions that then need to be staffed and maintained like the Department of Culture without putting it to vote, but I could see the position having a more flexible ability to establish limited scope committees with authority to resolve specific issues as a potentially good space to expand the authority of the Speaker.
Are nominations stupid though? I believe they do serve a purpose, though perhaps a more obtuse one- It gatekeeps (mostly effectively, though with some annoying exceptions in recent memory) the Council Delegacy position to people with the reputation and social intelligence to convince three citizens to nominate them.
I would be remiss to not mention that we already have a clerk position charged with documenting our laws, the Archivist of the Republic, a position whose banner Creeperopolis and occasionally I work under.
Hmmm, okay? I would not be opposed to legislation further outlining its authorities and responsibilities so long as they do not conflict with its mechanically enforced responsibilities.
I, as Mechanocracy, serve as the delegate of Concord because I’m (mostly) trustworthy … and also because I’m terminally online, which is the primary reason that I’m a delegate rather than a Vice-Delegate. In a interregional environment where GA bills increasingly are subject to Republic interest (and where those bills themselves are becoming hyper-optimized by authors to carry as much of the vote as possible on bill name alone), and where we still need to remain vigilant in getting our bills to vote and passed in the SC, response time is a necessity.
As for The League, I think that it could have a stronger WA culture, but I’m not sure that tying Consulship to the delegate seat is a good idea. Currently one of the Consuls (Quebec) needs to be WA mobile for military affairs, and should Creeperopolis ever seek to retire from their position as Consul, its possible that their successor would, like Quebec, be in the active LDF and thus be unsuited for the delegacy.
What makes it feel rushed?
Why? Republicans are not criminals and do not engage in criminality, so there is no reason to establish a criminal code.
…But what would they hear? The responsibility is not on the Consulate in this case, because the Court of the Republic, where the Consulate once heard cases, has been gone for nearly two years.
Honestly not opposed. There should be some mechanism to disregard junk proposals though, as a prolific author of them myself.
That’s a hard sell. “Wow the consul is against a system that could remove them from power” yes yes, but frankly if the Consulate has so sullied the public mandate, there is no real recourse, with or without a vote of no confidence. We accepted under the adoption of our new constitution back in 2018 that the region’s broadest trajectory, buoying to success- or hurtling toward failure- was in the responsibly of the Consulate. It is the solid and rarely changing core, the foundation, of the Republic, and starting over realistic constitutes going somewhere else.
We’ve had bad Consuls before, but we haven’t yet had a Consul whose badness was specifically due to their abuse of office and the therein responsibilities (that still exist post efforts towards OOC-IC disentanglement). I unfortunately cannot believe having in-character mechanisms for the public to remove a Consul would’ve prevented the incidents of the past, or will prevent incidents in the future.
Quote:How much have you changed in five years? I've changed a lot. The League has, too. It changed its name- from the League of Conservative Nations to simply the League. It added a new region in the form of Concord, showing the world that our community, our region, can hold its ground in multiple places at once while still being able to have one of if not the largest defender military on NS. It has grown from hovering just around 100 nations to over 1300! It went from being a GP pariah to one of the most influential regions in all of GP. It underwent huge moderation reforms, purging bad actors and making the region shine cleaner than ever. It has a massively active community, challenging even feeders in the number of people who choose to call our community their home.
Why, then, has our Constitution not changed? By my count, the Constitution has been amended only once by a Council vote, and it was just for the regional move from LCN to the League (Also the addition of Concord and the removal of the Court(?), but these appear to have not been voted on by the Council). This is compounded by the fact that our Constitution is incredibly short and leaves many things up for interpretation- for example, the Speaker has no real powers, only being granted the vague role of "encouraging and facilitating improvements in regional legislation" which makes the position of Speaker seem more ceremonial than anything. It seems to me that this was more of a transitional Constitution, and that the government of the League for the last five years has just been transitional.
It bears mentioning that the fourth and current Constitution of the Republic has been modified.
- May 2019’s Council Plebiscite, which had the Consulate abolish the Regional Senate and establish the Council of the Republic in its stay.
- July 2019’s Secularism amendment, which codified the Republic’s government as a secular institution in the constitution.
- August 2019’s Rewording of the Consulate Impartiality clause.
- October 2019’s Court of Appeals Autonomy amendment, which was pursued by the capital (unclear if implemented?)
- November 2020’s Stayer Redefinition /Consulate Legal Interpretations / Council Bills, Motions, and Laws omnibus amendment, which changed wording in the constitution to recognize areas under League jurisdiction that were not the League. This was during the integration of the Monarchist and Democratic Alliance into the League. It also codified the publishing and storage of Consulate legal opinions, and established legal definitions for bills, motions, and laws.
- March 2021’s IX, X, XI amendments, by Greater Sacramento, which created the position of Council Speaker.
- June 2021’s Speaker amendment by Terranihil, which changed the nomination process of the Council Speaker to a Consulate nomination as opposed to the previous election system.
- August 2022’s Consulate Political Neutrality Amendment, which permits the Consulate to engage in promotion of civic involvement.
- 15 August 2022's Dismantlement of the Court of the Republic
- November 2022’s A Motion to Amend the Constitution, proposed by Jackson Empire, which set out a legal definition for the Speaker of the Council’s term, and permitted the Consulate to remove a Speaker failing to perform their duties as expected.
I think this record of change shows that the Constitution has been allowed to be a living document that has adapted to the situation the Republic finds itself in.
Quote:I'm not arguing for the full democratization of the League. Instead, what I envision is similar to a semi-constitutional monarchy like Monaco, where the monarch- in this case, the Consulate- retains some government power, but other power is delegated to other bodies and the legislature. I, personally, do not like investing too much power into a small group of people- it creates too much risk for disaster, especially if one or more people in the group are volatile- so I may be more inclined to give less power to the Consulate and more power to an elected head of government and legislature. Although, that's all up for discussion- everything is, that's why I made this thread.
I think it’s worth recalling why and how we got to an unelected executive in the first place. Turning back the clock to early February 2018, voters during the opinion polling for the presidential election had a frankly dismal pool of candidates to select from. There was Quebec and Lyoa, and then two other candidates who did not even have Vice President picks and had basically no chance at winning, voter turnout to opinion polling in this very noncompetitive race was at a catastrophically low <13% of residents. This followed an election in which Nexus was elected with no competition following their opposition agreeing to withdraw from the race. The population wasn’t engaged with democracy, the elections were uncompetitive and stagnant, and the region was quite obviously suffering as a result.
And how democratic was the presidential system anyhow? Even with the people’s mandate (and in retrospect, there was fraud in a some of those presidential elections, which somewhat undermines the legitimacy of that people’s mandate), the position was quite firmly bounded in its abilities by the constitution. It also, as I recall, created a system in which the people who got power were the people who pursued it, for better or worse, and those stakes of power meant political infighting and partisanship was a dangerous and divisive issue for the Republic.
Moreover, governments in this context have the ultimate democratic freedom of people just doing what they want to do. The consulate cannot compel or coerce the rest of the government in the same ways as “real” executive bodies because, fortunately I might add, we don’t have police, control of currency*, or control of resources needed for members to live.
*And never again so long as I am a consul will there be a (non-contested) reopening of the Consulate Central Bank or any similar reincarnation because it was, despite rose-tinted glasses surrounding that period, a corrosive force.
… All that said about why we originally discarded executive democracy, and the dangers we faced during that period, I must admit that I am somewhat dissatisfied with the current institutions of the Republic in some areas (which I believe relate to democracy!). Namely, we (as you mentioned) have a massively increased population of newer players who are notably divorced from our offsite platforms and thus most Republic politics. That’s fine to an extent, and I’m not looking to try to implement something like TEP’s RMB cafeteria or something akin to The South Pacific’s now defunct Local Council. I think both of those systems try (or tried to) accommodate delusions that the RMB should constitute a separate community from its host region. Here, we are all Republicans. That said, to avoid having a community split between those in the region onsite, and our offsite culture, there must be a continue and sustained effort to unify them through the transfer of information out, and the communication of our ideals and ideology to the public.
Quote:I'd like to put out some major points of discussion and my opinions:
The Consulate
The Consulate should remain as it is- a group of three, led by a Chief Consul. However, my idea is to strip away some of its powers. Currently, the Consulate receives virtually unchecked power under Article 2, Section 2.I of the current Constitution which states, "The Consulate shall use their authority to facilitate regional development and progress." What "regional development and progress" is isn't defined, meaning the Consulate can do virtually anything under the guise of regional development. This is made worse by the fact that the Council has no way to stop the Consulate from doing something, as the Consulate could simply veto anything the Council passes under Article 2, Section 2.IV- "The Consulate maintains veto rights over the Council of the Republic in dire situations..." What are "dire situations?" The Constitution does go on to provide examples, like "Constitutional questionability" and "regional security," but those are just examples and "dire situations" could mean anything, such as the perpetual state of war we are in. After all, the reasoning is as simple as "we are in war, we need to commandeer the region and rule by decree."
Instead, the Consulate should have limited veto powers. The Council should be able to override Consulate veto. In addition, I would propose adding "Consulate Orders" or some other, better name which are immediately effective orders issued by the Consulate that can be struck down by the Council at any time.
Rule by decree, as previously mentioned, has natural limits - the consulate ultimately needs public consensus to do things, even from positions that on paper have unchecked power.
That rule-by-decree matter applies as much if not more so to bills proposed by the council. The Council cannot forcibly compel the Consulate do things, overriding its veto or not. Ideally, vetoes are not needed, because something that isn’t able to get buy-in from the necessary stake-holders isn’t going to function correctly anyway once it passes. The Republic is run by a consensus driven government by necessity, with its most autocratic elements (the Domestic Security Bureau, and control of the founder account in The League) being a result of mechanical realities regarding the platforms it exists on. Unless those realities change, those autocratic elements will remain.
Quote:The Speaker
The Speaker has barely any legal definition other than what I mentioned earlier. Instead of what we have now, I propose having an elected Speaker that serves as a head of government. They share the executive with the Consulate. The Speaker appoints cabinet members or ministers or whatever we want to call them to run departments or ministries, like we have now. So, instead of having a law defining the Department of Culture like we have now, a Speaker will choose if they want to have a Department of Culture and then appoints whoever they see fit for the job.
The role of speaker was introduced during a period when the council was rather aimless, to serve as a means to try and direct its energies to legislation once again. Maybe. It’s been somewhat ill-defined and not particularly successful, potentially owing to the fact that we’ve resolved many of the problems that once drove the Republic’s legislature to act.
I’m not entirely sold on the speaker being able to create whole institutions that then need to be staffed and maintained like the Department of Culture without putting it to vote, but I could see the position having a more flexible ability to establish limited scope committees with authority to resolve specific issues as a potentially good space to expand the authority of the Speaker.
Quote:The Council
Nominations are stupid and bad and we should get rid of them. What I propose instead is an application system, similar to citizenship, where someone applies to be a Council Delegate and then they are either approved or not. Instead of using the nominations as a kind of de facto activity check, we could instead have an actual activity check at the end of every month or every other month and anyone who hasn't voted in at least half the votes in an activity check period (or CTEs or left or any other thing that would cause them to be ineligible) gets removed and will have to reapply.
In addition, we need to have some kind of Council clerk or something who updates the law archive on the forums and on the wiki and runs votes. In general, they would just manage the day-to-day operations of the Council instead of just tacking that responsibility onto the Consulate. I'm thinking something like what TSP has where the clerk would be voted in and then would serve until resignation or ineligibility, and they could appoint deputies who would help with their duties. The clerk could also manage Council Delegate applications as anyone who goes that far should have already been thoroughly vetted during their citizen application.
Are nominations stupid though? I believe they do serve a purpose, though perhaps a more obtuse one- It gatekeeps (mostly effectively, though with some annoying exceptions in recent memory) the Council Delegacy position to people with the reputation and social intelligence to convince three citizens to nominate them.
I would be remiss to not mention that we already have a clerk position charged with documenting our laws, the Archivist of the Republic, a position whose banner Creeperopolis and occasionally I work under.
Quote:Some minor points I'd also like to address in a potential new Constitution (and associated new laws):
Defining the DSB as a legal institution. Right now it just kind of "exists" with no legal basis and it would be nice to fix that.
Hmmm, okay? I would not be opposed to legislation further outlining its authorities and responsibilities so long as they do not conflict with its mechanically enforced responsibilities.
Quote:WA Delegates.
I think the best way to handle this is to have the Delegate of the League be a specific Consul and the Delegate of Concord just be anyone on the DSB. We could always have appointed Delegates for Concord, but I think with the nature of the frontier it may just be easier to allow either Spode, Fandom, or Neo to be Delegate at any given time. The status quo works too, though.
I, as Mechanocracy, serve as the delegate of Concord because I’m (mostly) trustworthy … and also because I’m terminally online, which is the primary reason that I’m a delegate rather than a Vice-Delegate. In a interregional environment where GA bills increasingly are subject to Republic interest (and where those bills themselves are becoming hyper-optimized by authors to carry as much of the vote as possible on bill name alone), and where we still need to remain vigilant in getting our bills to vote and passed in the SC, response time is a necessity.
As for The League, I think that it could have a stronger WA culture, but I’m not sure that tying Consulship to the delegate seat is a good idea. Currently one of the Consuls (Quebec) needs to be WA mobile for military affairs, and should Creeperopolis ever seek to retire from their position as Consul, its possible that their successor would, like Quebec, be in the active LDF and thus be unsuited for the delegacy.
Quote:Generally we just need to elaborate on more things and give specifics. The current Constitution feels incredibly rushed.
What makes it feel rushed?
Quote:We should have a Criminal Code.
Why? Republicans are not criminals and do not engage in criminality, so there is no reason to establish a criminal code.
Quote:The judiciary: No. Although that doesn't necessarily mean the status quo is good, either. An idea I came up with was the concept of the "legislative court," where the Speaker, a Consul, or perhaps a Chief Justice (although I don't like this) appoints three Council Delegates (who are willing to participate and do not have a conflict of interest) to a jury, which hears the case and then comes up with an opinion. This seems to me as the best way to take the responsibility off of the Consulate while not having an actual court.
…But what would they hear? The responsibility is not on the Consulate in this case, because the Court of the Republic, where the Consulate once heard cases, has been gone for nearly two years.
Quote:The Council should be perpetually convened, and there should be a specific way to bring a proposed bill to a vote, e.g. a seconded motion after a bit of time.
Honestly not opposed. There should be some mechanism to disregard junk proposals though, as a prolific author of them myself.
Quote:A motion of no confidence by the Council against the Speaker, the Consulate, or a specific Consul could also be added. We could also add a way to recall the clerk or whatever we decide to call it.
That’s a hard sell. “Wow the consul is against a system that could remove them from power” yes yes, but frankly if the Consulate has so sullied the public mandate, there is no real recourse, with or without a vote of no confidence. We accepted under the adoption of our new constitution back in 2018 that the region’s broadest trajectory, buoying to success- or hurtling toward failure- was in the responsibly of the Consulate. It is the solid and rarely changing core, the foundation, of the Republic, and starting over realistic constitutes going somewhere else.
We’ve had bad Consuls before, but we haven’t yet had a Consul whose badness was specifically due to their abuse of office and the therein responsibilities (that still exist post efforts towards OOC-IC disentanglement). I unfortunately cannot believe having in-character mechanisms for the public to remove a Consul would’ve prevented the incidents of the past, or will prevent incidents in the future.