Federalism

I think it should be possible to choose between centralism and federalism for your civ (not as a gov type). Federalism could give these effects:

• waste is reduced,
• corruption is reduced, but more commerce is going to the state itself (= nowhere), lowering the commerce going to the national treasury compared to centralism. Thus less commerce.
• culture flips are less likely to occur.
• civil disorder and civil war are less likely to happen.

It could have these requirements and conditions:

• like governments shifts, it should take some turns to establish to prevent from switching too often. No anarchy but perhaps a bit more corruption during that time.
• it should only be possible for some government types, like republic and democracy (despotism are centralist to its nature).
• it should require some tech of course, say democracy

what do you think?

It seems that federalism has only good points - not counting the requirements. But federalism is only suitable for certain type of countries. A small country would actually be negatively effected by this, as the state-costs would surely be bigger than the corruption-benefits. Waste would also be increased due increased bureaugraphy. You are from Sweden, it seems. Do you think that Sweden (and Finland) being one of the less-corrupted nations in the world would benefit from such a change? And compare to America, which certainly is not low-corrupted.

I like the idea though, so don't get me wrong. I simply think that it should be specialized more - so that it is good only for some civs. On the other hand, is this really necessary? It would be cool, but would it add too much to complexity, as the players must already juggle between government-types?

I thought that federalism was somewhat implied by using a republic or democratic government. I usually make tweaks in the editor to gain some of the benefits mentioned, such as less corruption and waste.
But, maybe I'm missing the point.

Shyrramar: you're right, it should have some negative consequences, I was thinking less commerce as one of them, but there needs to be more. In real world, small countries don't seem to benefit from federalism but countries like Iraq it could be used to prevent "civil war" (kurds). I wouldn't like it in Sweden though, but that's another discussion.

I don't think it should be civ-specific though. The benefits should depend more on things like land and population size, ethnical and lingual make up, maybe tax level (less beneficial for high tax countries). What's federalism about in real world?

I did not mean to make it "civ-specific", only "situation-specific", so that it is good only in certain circumstances - that making it good for some civs and bad for some in a game. It could perhaps reduce distance-corruption so as to make it useful to large countries. But on the other hand, we already have communism which effectively deals with distance corruption!

I don't see much use for this "federalism" as it is now.. It might have some potential though, so keep thinking!

Federalism is shared power between local (state) and national governments. The current government in the US is less federalism than it was pre-civil war, but that's beyond the scope of this post

Real life benefits:
1)Less corruption - state capitals
2)More freedom
3)Local militias (called militias in the past, now the national guard) to deal with localized threats


Disadvantages (real life)
A)Decentralization means often times the local government is on its own for building projects
B)Local police/national guardsmen less effective at maintaining order.
C)Building roads and improvements happens less in smaller states because of federalism politics.

How can this be implemented in game?
1) Possibly you have small wonders of state capitals...like mini FP's.
3) Local militias could be called out on a short term basis in emergencies/time of war. These troops could get bonuses against barbarians/uprisings. However, because these are local troops, being at war when you have local troops deployed increases war weariness.

A) Double the cost of rushing a project. Think of it as funding corruption (or even just overhead), when the state government gets a block of money from the national government and beaurocracy eats it. This would help offset some of the benefits of lower commerce/shield corruption.
B) I addressed this above
C) Under a federalism flavor, workers complete tasks at 75% of the speed of worker under a vanilla republic / democracy.

Federalism like US or EU???

Or Germany or perhaps Iraq in the future. EU isn't a country (yet) though.

As for the U.S. having lots of corruption, don't count on it. Yes, there is corruption, but the reason you see corruption in the U.S. in the news is because it IS news. The amount of corruption in the U.S. is actually much smaller than in many countries. Enormously smaller than in the former Soviet Union. Federalism (i.e. the separation of powers between state and Federal gov't) is what helps to decrease the corruption.

The reason for this is that there are two bodies looking for the bad guys (really four since there are also county and city governments as well). This is why I suggested in another thread that Democracy, Republic, and my new creation of Representative Government (early Democracy) should have lower, decentralized (i.e. universal) corruption.

I'm going ot expand a little past what the creator of this post intended. Political systems of government are complicated, with many scales to define them. France is a representative gov, but is very centralized. US is also representative, but federalized. Chinese Communism is economically more liberal than Stalinism. In civIV you should be able to adjust sliders of various traits, sort of like in SMAC.

One of those sliders would be Concentration of Power, ranging from Central to Local. Modern Federalism would be about the middle. Pre-1860 American Federalism would be closer to local.
As said before, the more local the power, less corruption for research, happiness, and production purposes. Less money would go to civ and workers would be slower. Also, on the ends of the spectrum toward local, cities would charge other cities for luxuries/strat resource.

Another slider might be Political Freedom, ranging from one to all the people. This is how many people the leader(s) has to consider when making decisions. Any of the modern democracy would be the populace side, with Saudi more on the single side. Iran might be about the middle. Govs with high Pol Freedom would experience unpopular wars(no imminent threat, lots of casualties, huge enemy civilian death, lenghty engagement without progress) more quickly. Govs with low POl Freedom will more likely culture flip and are not as happy, but martial law can be utilized more.

Another might be Religious Influence. This is the level of involvement in decision making and lobbying by the relgioius establishment. The range would be from Theocracy to totally secular. Iran or India would be a good example of Theocracy or close to it. From what i understand Switzerland or Sweden is the most secular country in the world. Govs with high Rel Inf would have greater culture production and less flipping. Rel instituations also more powerful. Less science and more problems with non-locals(foreign nationals), especially in conquered cities.

Another might be Economic Freedom. This is how much governments interefere with market and commercial forces. The range would be from Planned to Laissez-Faire. With more freedom leading to more unhappiness(income gap) but more from luxuries and greater taxes/commerce bonuses. Planned keeps you happy and reduces industrial corruption.

That is all the critical modifiers I can think of. Commetns would be greatly appreciated.

I like the slider idea. This could really be fun when dealing with lots of variable such as you listed above (i.e. religion, freedom of speech, centralized vs spread out, etc.)