Democracy / Representative Democracy / Parliment / Republic ?

[DaveShack]

This thread is for a very basic question about how we want to make decisions.

In a democracy the primary power resides with the people. Elected or appointed officials have the responsibility to organize their area of focus, but do not have decision making authority. They can however use their judgement to interpret the people's decision.

In a representative democracy the power starts with the people, but is transferred to the official in the elective or appointive process. The leader is responsible for decisions. The people may recall a leader they don't feel is following the people's mandate, and they can always vote out the leader in the next election.

A parlimentary system involves electing people to seats in parliment. The parliment then votes for a prime minister who forms the government by appointing people to leadership positions. At any time, the parliment can vote for no confidence and dissolve the government, at which time elections are held. In a DG setting, the people would also be able to recall officials. This would be a complete experiment in the DG, we have not tried it before.

If we want strong local government, an interesting alternative would be a republic. In a republic, the people of a governmental subdivision (we'll call them provinces for a short name) elect that province's representative, let's say governor. Each province gets an equal say (or proportional say) in the national government, with the governors possibly selecting national officials. This would also be an experiment.

OK, lecture is over, what do you think?

 

[Nobody]

I like a representive goverment, that still follows the will of the people. (bad line) for instance if we want to go to war, poll it. But some thing dont need polling.

 

[DaveShack]

I like the representative democracy style. The leaders should lead, though they can ask the people what they think. Informational polls are a lot like the public opinion polls in RL, official polls are like "referendums". A poll posted by a non-official after a significant period of discussion is a lot like a ballot initiative.

Actually that gives me an idea, during the nominations phase we could also have "petition drives" for new laws. Any new law that gets enough signatures and passes judicial review could be put to a vote during the election polls, giving it more visibility.

 

[greekguy]

Rep. democracy style. this means people elect leaders, then leaders carry out platform and perform job. if voters are unhappy with the leader's performance, they can recall him. sounds fair to me. gives the government some power, while not making voting useless.

 

[I am the Future]

I like the rep. democracy Idea, but it would be fun to try the parliment idea too.

 

[GenMarshall]

I perfer to have a representative democracy, as in demogames of past.

 

[Armed_Maniac]

I like the democracy, though the rep. demo looks like it might be more effective. The republic also looks interesting...

 

[RoboPig]

i like the democracy one and parliment. both look pretty good

 

[Gloriana]

I think it's not a good idea to start experimenting with a totally new game on our hands as well. Having said that, I think leaders should have the power to actually DO something and not turn to the people for every single decision, so my choice would be a representative government, with an added note that important decisions (such as declaring war) should be taken by a referendum that is binding, not informative.

Republic would be really cool to try out once we got to know Civ 4 a bit better. Hey, how about reverting to anarchy for a turn here then, and move on to republic in true Civ style...?

 

[DaveShack]

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention two possible governments:

Anarchy -- speaks for itself.

Monarchy / Despotism / Oligarchy A single ruler, or small group of rulers, has total control for a given term. The people can whine and complain but have no power to change anything, except they can forment a revolution which results in the next ruler / group being chosen.

 

[Octavian X]

Now, I had a proposal for a parliamentary system a while back - the Prime Minister, along with his appointed advisors, would, rather than creating seperate plans and posting them all in the turn chat thread, would create a single, unified plan that included all instructions for all areas of government. Before each play session, the Prime Minister's government would present this plan for approval (either by a public vote, or by a vote of a smaller parliamentary body) - with excessive failure of turn plans also being grounds for a dissolution of Parliament and new elections, along with votes of no confidence as Dave mentioned.

 

[TheDuckOfFlanders]

A total democracy is most of the times to clumsy.To much vote's ,to much to maintain ,to much power for people that really do not want to decide on anything ,and no fun for the leaders as they are only polltakers but carry no weight.

Representative Democracy is just more fun.the leaders have most decission power ,but from a ellectoral perspective they still do have to take into account the people.The people who can influence those at power by voting retain a fairly good power base. (from the perspective that there won't be thousands of voters ,50 is more realistic )

Parlementary democracy sounds fun ,but does the Pm play the turns himself to?If yes then sounds ok to me.In fact it might look much better to use such a system if you want to roleplay with party's ,afterall party's will tend to take a PM from their party ,thus the strongest represented party will usually apoint the PM.

But then we might try to vote for party's instead of people alltoghether.Would be nice ,you vote party's ,then the party's either have a majority or they need to form a coalition to to have the majority.As such for each position the victorious party would decide who gets the seat ,usually someone from their party or coalition partner ,the normal voter wouldn't vote a name anymore for each position ,rather there would be 1 general vote for wichever party you want to support.Afcourse this would make party establishments important tools ,where people can migrate between.

Local goverment looks interresting at first ,but i have my doubts ,i guess i think such decentralization would lead to a loss of the big picture and could make cooperation harder.

I'm more for a limited parlementary democracy ,based on multiple party's.(or even independants if they wish)The people vote someone in power and bear the consequences of that ,and the party's must try to work or oppose eachother.The people will still have their say and it will influence politics ,the ruling party will understand that they have to listen to and the opposition party's will cry wolf at most errors.But the leaders will eventually still have the dicission power within them ,atleast for their term.(possibly party's could make a fellow party member resign if he made a to big error) For Rpg sake it looks cool to me.

 

[Gloriana]

As an addition to the proposal of monarchy/depsotism/oligarchy;

How about we have the possibility, like the Romans in the days of the Republic, to appoint a dictator/king for a small period of time in case we all think the current government is not doing a good job and some important decisions really need to be taken but it simply isn't working out at the moment.
A large majority of voters have to say yes to this though, like say 75 or even 80% in order to ensure one person does not easily get dictatorial powers. Even if we never use this option (which is very likely) it might be nice to have it added to the constitution as a possibility, just in case.

 

[Strider]

Representative Democracy.

Anything else is just wishful thinking.

 

[GenMarshall]

Parlamentary/Game of the Republic is only sutable for a MSDG, which has been tried and failed.

 

[Nobody]

parliament might work if you had 200 active players, to elect a parliament of 50, and then a cabniet of 6. but you need a king aswell. so i am against the parliament idea. although really our house of representives/senate is really just a parliament.

 

[Alphawolf]

I vote for Representative Democracy as you can see by my Triumvirate government HERE.

-the Wolf

 

[Alphawolf]

A total democracy is most of the times to clumsy.To much vote's ,to much to maintain ,to much power for people that really do not want to decide on anything ,and no fun for the leaders as they are only polltakers but carry no weight.

Representative Democracy is just more fun.the leaders have most decission power ,but from a ellectoral perspective they still do have to take into account the people.The people who can influence those at power by voting retain a fairly good power base. (from the perspective that there won't be thousands of voters ,50 is more realistic )

Parlementary democracy sounds fun ,but does the Pm play the turns himself to?If yes then sounds ok to me.In fact it might look much better to use such a system if you want to roleplay with party's ,afterall party's will tend to take a PM from their party ,thus the strongest represented party will usually apoint the PM.

But then we might try to vote for party's instead of people alltoghether.Would be nice ,you vote party's ,then the party's either have a majority or they need to form a coalition to to have the majority.As such for each position the victorious party would decide who gets the seat ,usually someone from their party or coalition partner ,the normal voter wouldn't vote a name anymore for each position ,rather there would be 1 general vote for wichever party you want to support.Afcourse this would make party establishments important tools ,where people can migrate between.

Local goverment looks interresting at first ,but i have my doubts ,i guess i think such decentralization would lead to a loss of the big picture and could make cooperation harder.

I'm more for a limited parlementary democracy ,based on multiple party's.(or even independants if they wish)The people vote someone in power and bear the consequences of that ,and the party's must try to work or oppose eachother.The people will still have their say and it will influence politics ,the ruling party will understand that they have to listen to and the opposition party's will cry wolf at most errors.But the leaders will eventually still have the dicission power within them ,atleast for their term.(possibly party's could make a fellow party member resign if he made a to big error) For Rpg sake it looks cool to me.

I was really againist parties having power but you've convinced me that it might not be a bad idea.

-the Wolf

 

[Alighieri]

parliament might work if you had 200 active players, to elect a parliament of 50, and then a cabniet of 6. but you need a king aswell. so i am against the parliament idea. although really our house of representives/senate is really just a parliament.

Personally I don't see why so many players would be needed. A small parliament of, say 10 (I just made that up, you guys with more experience could probably think of a more accurate number), where each person holds a cabinet post could work, could it not? As for needing a King, I don't really see why that would be necessary. True, parliamentary government in real life evolved with a King, but many countries (e.g. Greece) have elected Presidents with little power who act as Head of State. Also, it might not even be necessary to separate executive and legislative power at all, which would basically make the Parliament the Head of State, given that the reasons for having a separate ceremonial executive power in real life don't exist in this game. A separate Head of State might be interesting, though... can anybody say constitutional crisis?