Government Structure - Executive and Legislative Branches

It's about time that we discussed how we want the government's executive and legislative branches to look - the judicial branch, being something of the third rail of our politics, won't be touched by this thread, and deserves a discussion all its own. I'm moving forward with this discussion without really knowing if we're going for the build-as-you-go approach - if we aren't, than the eventual goal of this thread is to create a document, similar to the CoL of DG1; if we do build-as-we-go, this discussion will serve (hopefully) serve as a guide for our future discussion, so we at least have a vague idea of how we want to go about this.

We've already polled this once in the Offices Poll, which outlines the direction we're going. So far, we're looking at having deputies that are appointed by the corresponding officials, with a designated player pool to play the save.

The following officials were also favored by a majority in that poll
President - head of the government
Ministry of Domestic Affairs - settler placement, worker moves, coordinating the governors and wonders
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - dealing with foreign leaders, conducting all trades
Ministry of Defense - all things related to the military
Ministry of Science - setting research goals/tech queue, coordinating with Foreign Affairs on tech trades
Ministry of Civic Affairs - deals with religion, civics, Great People (both controlling them and coordinating GPP)
Governors - each assigned a certain number of cities as decided by voters (perhaps like the provinces of days gone by)

Along with the executive, we should probably go ahead and define the legislative branch as we've usually done - a Citizen's Assembly consisting of, well, the citizens.

Is this acceptable from here? What changes do we want to make to the above list? Do we want something like the Censor of DG1 (it would be a great extra duty to give the President, whose position in the government is somewhat useless given the use of the designated player pool)? Are there any other issues we need to discuss?

I would agree with the offices that you have placed forward. Quite close to the original Civ4 advisor system that we have in place in the program itself.

I don't like starting with so many. It would be better to discover what we need along the way.

I don't think we should start with any. We don't need a full blown beauracracy to decide where to settle our first city. Let's try concentratig on the game for awhile.

I agree with DaveShack and donsig. Let's let suggest to us what we need to do.

Has that approach even been polled yet? We've had a nice offices poll that was the basis for this thread, so that's where I'm starting from, so that we at the very least have a somewhat vague idea of where were heading, should we chose to build-as-we-go. And, in the case that we don't chose to do that, we'll have a nice way to start a CoL.

It hasn't been polled specifically, perhaps now would be a good time for that. Or we could ask if people who voted for start the game now would still vote that way knowing it would result in build as you go.

I say a president, who can decided when to add another office or not.

President - head of the government
Ministry of Domestic Affairs - settler placement, worker moves, coordinating the governors and wonders
Ministry of Defense - all things related to the military

I feel like we should have at least a few offices to start out with and this are about the "minimum" that I see...

Yeah, I want to start out with at least something.

President, Domestic, Foreign, Defense - 4 offices, I think we can fill those...

I agree with Falcon we should have 2 or 3 offices when the game starts. I think President, Domestic Affairs and Science.

If your one of the people that think the president should be the only office that starts and decides when to add offices, we would at least need a Ministry of Domestic Affairs. We could for awhile combine some duties of Ministry of Defense/Science/Foreign Affairs. With the President and Domestic Affairs.

President- Gets the duties of Foreign Affairs and Science
Domestic Affairs- Gets the duties of Ministry of Defence

We could let events of the game tell us when to have other offices.

First contact with another civ results in excited discussion of how to handle new neighbors, resulting in a foreign minister.
First military action (perhaps with barbs) reveals we need a general.
Six different people start threads advocating different techs to research, showing we need a science leader.

I'd start with a president and a governor.

I'd start with some designated players.

If we build as a play i hope we get a Minister in charge of vassle states

Nobody said:

If we build as a play i hope we get a Minister in charge of vassle states

Click to expand...

I didn't think we were playing warlords...

donsig said:

I'd start with some designated players.

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing - see one of the threads I've created ...

-- Ravensfire

Black_Hole said:

I didn't think we were playing warlords...

Click to expand...

I didn't think we even polled that yet... I remember some general talk earlier, but don't remember anything coming of it...

I advocate the following:

Prime Minister: Head of government.
Minister of Domestic Affairs: Per Octavian X.
Minister of Defense: Ditto.
Governors: Ditto.

More as we go.

I model this in two ways:


Nonpartisan:
The first Prime Minister is elected and nominates the Cabinet, which is subject to approval by the body of citizens by presenting to them a list of the three people he or she believes are most qualified for the job; the body then chooses from among them.

The Cabinet is automatically dismissed after a fixed amount of time. However, a citizen may initiate a motion of no confidence in the legislature, calling for the recall of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and for new elections to be held. A citizen may also initiate a motion of no confidence in a specific official, causing that official to be recalled and a free election (i.e. without Prime Ministerial nomination) from among the citizens to be held.

Partisan (probably won't happen, but it's cool to talk about!):
Political parties are formed; they must contain a certain minimum number of members (say, 7) before they are eligible for election.
Citizens vote for political parties; the percentage of votes cast for a given party can be seen as "seats" in an imaginary 100-seat legislature. If no party has an absolute majority (i.e. more than 50% of the votes), then each party should designate a leader to negotiate with other parties to form coalitions. Once a government is formed, the parties or coalitions elect a Prime Minister (ideally from the largest party of a coalition) and a Cabinet (ideally including members from the other parties in order of their size). However, the Prime Minister or Cabinet from outside their party if they feel it best (allowing non-partisans to participate in politics.) Either way, the Government must be confirmed by popular vote. If two successive proposed governments fail, new elections are needed.

Alternately, we could have a Non-Partisan League which acts as a political party for election purposes.

Still more alternately (and more insanely unlikely, for multiple reasons), if the game gets large enough, we could have a twenty-seat Parliament elected only to elect the Cabinet and Prime Minister (all other lawmaking power would remain in the hands of the citizens).

Returning before the "alternatelies", the Government is dissolved automatically after a set period of time. A citizen may initiate no-confidence motions in the Government or a specific member thereof to remove them.

DaveShack said:

We could let events of the game tell us when to have other offices.

First contact with another civ results in excited discussion of how to handle new neighbors, resulting in a foreign minister.
First military action (perhaps with barbs) reveals we need a general.
Six different people start threads advocating different techs to research, showing we need a science leader.

Click to expand...

I agree with this method. It also allows us to grow as the civ would anyway. I recall in the previous game where some of the offices didn't have anything to do in the beginning of the game. It seemed rather foolish IMO to even have them.

Instead, I suggest we start off with the DP's and a mayor, and nothing more. As we meet other civs or advance in the game so does our offices. Once our civ decides on building a settler than a discussion of a president can be brought up.