Informational Poll: Democratic Oligarchy

This poll will gauge the support for my previously posted plan for a new government, viewable here.

Feel free to express your own opinions in this thread, too.

Voting will end in three days.

For reasons stated in the discussion thread, I voted no. We recently had a discussion about eliminating council votes entirely, and it seems completely contradictory to propose an elected oligarchy rather than democracy in this game. I am convinced that it is better to have all the citizens be able to play the game, as has been shown over the past turns where our President was unable to play the save, and it has worked much better and the save moved much faster than if only our Council was able to do so. Frankly, I don't think the Lower Councils for each department will work at all, given that we only have 10-15 citizens with some degree of activity; there were not nearly enough to support a political party and I'd be surprised if any of the Councils would have more than 3 active citizens in their ranks. The other provisions of that proposal make so that the leaders don't even necessarily have to follow the will of the people, though they are supposed to go with what they feel is the peoples' will, they are not by any means bound to it. Under the current system, all the people are able to decide for the country in most significant issues. As I pointed out, we may as well elect a Dictator for each term...taking the reasoning of this proposal to a higher degree, why shouldn't we?

You, Me, Octavian, Wizard. There's four active members. Wow, there's enough members to fill the council. That wasn't hard, was it?

I have to review this a little more before voting. If no one has any more arguements for either side, I will probally abstain in the end.

I am voting no for the same reasons as bootstoots

I say no also. There aren't enough active users here to supprt a well' working Ogligarchy. With more active users, the situation would have been totally different, but as it is what it is, I'll say no.

What do you mean? It needs less active citizens than our current setup!

I strongly support this idea. In our current state we seem to be almost unorganised at some times, which is not a good sign to show!

I would also like to say that I think my participation in the MSDG will increase a lot now, so count me in as an active member.

Great! We got a new active member!

that makes a total of 2 active members! Multisite Dualgame

Originally posted by Gingerbread Man
What do you mean? It needs less active citizens than our current setup!

Click to expand...

I was talking about the Lower Councils. Supposedly they are to be the focus of this proposal, but I don't see how they will work given our current levels of participation. As the Lower Councils are about the only way the people can show direct power besides the election of the oligarchs, I see no reason that we should do this and still consider this a democracy game. There was widespread opposition to Council votes, so it sounds crazy to set up a government where the elected leaders have all effective power, who are only asked but not required to follow the will of the people.

Excactly. That's the point.

I am sure we can make some changes on this proposal then so it can be useable. The current system is too slow, and we aren't enough active people there either I believe.

So to sum up a little:
- People don't like the council votes
- People don't like that the elected leaders gain full power and don't HAVE TO follow the will of the people
- We are to few people for both the current system and for the proposed one

This is as far as I have understood it. Anyway, there are changes we could do to eliminate these problems and get a more effective system of government.

First of all we could eliminate the council votes and only require a majority of active members for those votes.
Secondly, we can make it easy to remove the elected leaders from power by a simple vote only requireing a majority of the active members. That way the leaders will most certainly follow the will of the people or else they can very fast be removed from office.
To solve the third problem we will need more active members in both the systems, or change something in these systems so they require less active partisipants.

Yea. I think it would be OK, if we just abolished the council vote. The citizens would have power, but the council would also keep a little power.

Ok. Here I've made a few changes to Octavians proposal:

The Council of Administrators

- Three members: Administrator of Internal Control, Administrator of External Policy, Administrator of The Armed Forces
- Elected to office for what is currently defined as two terms (90 turns)
- All administrators are exepected to be very active in the game, both in the forum and in the chatrooms
- Only administrators are allowed to play the save
- Responsible for posting specific orders on a turnly basis
- Responsible to produce regular progress reports to inform the general public
- All admins are expected to act as diplomats, in addition to whatever special ambassadors the Administrator of External Policy would appoint
- These administrators are the only elected officials - other officials would be appointed and removed by the Administrators of this council
- One or all of the administrators can be removed by the majority of the active members in a vote that can be started by any member at any time. During this vote anyone can nominate anyone to replace the administrator.
- As soon as an administrator is removed by a majority of the active players a new poll can be started by anyone to decide who is going to replace the administrator. Only those who accepted a nomination during the poll to remove the current administrator can be voted on. As soon as a candidate has gained enough votes inside the quorum of active members, so that the other candidates can not win, he is immediatly accepted as the new administrator
- Each administrator will be leading a council

The councils of the Administrators
- Each administrator leads a council
- Citizens may join only one of the councils
- Administrators are expected to gather opinions and information from their councils, and to use those opinions in the creation of turnly orders
- Each council will have a forum thread were it lists its members and its current orders for the game

Administrator of Internal Control
- Head of the Council of Internal Control
- Head of state for symbolic purposes
- Coordinates efforts of other administrators if that will be needed
- Master record-keeper (What is this good for??)
- May appoint members of the council to delegate authoity (ex: Minister of City Placement, Minister of Workers, Governors)
- May remove the powers of a member of the council
- In charge of domestic concerns: build queues, city placement, research, etc.
- In charge of maintaining a list of the currently active members

Administrator of External Policy
- Head of the Council of External Policy
- May appoint members of the council as ambassadors or other officials to delegate authority (Office of Trade, etc)
- May remove the powers of a member of the council
- In charge of dealing with other nations
- Will maintain a list of information (reasonably detailed) that shall not be revealed to other civilizations

Administrator of The Armed Forces
- Head of the Council of the Armed Forces
- May appoint members of the council as ambassadors or other officials to delegate authority
- May remove the powers of a member of the council
- Controls all military actions

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There is however a few things I would like to discuss:
- Elected to office for what is currently defined as two terms (90 turns)
If the idea that one can change administrators at any given time is accepted, then we wouldn't realy need this to say they are elected for so and so long.
- Only administrators are allowed to play the save
Should we instead have a list, a group of members who can play the save?
- Coordinates efforts of other administrators if that will be needed
Is this realy needed??
- Master record-keeper (What is this good for??)
And I ask again; what is a master record-keeper??

So, what do people think about this?

well, it is an improvement. I still am not all Gung-ho about it.

The Master record keeper:
Right now, we're extremely haphazard with out foreign agreements. Our NAP with Apolyton has only been renewed because they reminded us. This is just organizational.

The Chief Administrator, I feel, if still very necessary, to fill in for absent administrators, and to settle disputes that may arise. This is judicial reponsibility, mainly, to act as the chief Judge. He'd also cast tie-breaking votes when all matter of polling ends up tied (like citizen polls on policy).

The Chief Admin would also ensure that, during times of forum outage, that all the admins are coordinated, via e-mail, etc.

Besides, I wanted four because otherwise, it'd look too much like the Apolytonian system of three consuls.

It is an improvement, yes, but I'm still not fully into this...

The Master record keepers responsibilities could easily be the responsibilities of the Administrator of External Policy.
I'm not sure about the Chief Administrator, but that it resembles the Apolytonian if we only have three administrators realy doesn't bother me.

And Hygro and Wizard: What is it that you do not like about this proposal? I'm sure we could do some more changes so more people will agree on it.

And how do we want the save to be played? Only by the Administrators or by some people in a player-list?

There could be an emergency player list, so they could play if no admins are there...

I don't really like this, cause shouldn't this be a democracy, nt an ogligarchy game...? The proposal takes power away from the people.