DG4 Discussion - Const: Article D

[Cyc]

Originally posted by ravensfire

Actually, yes - I do want to keep them as they were in DG3 - advisors. Governors should be elected to run the province. To me, that means land allocation, worker requests and build queues. A good mayor is invaluable in assisting a Governor, but the ultimate authority should always lie with the Gov. We have centalized responsibility with localized advice.

I agree here also. Governors are the grass roots contact for the President to the nation. Mayors are the grass roots contact for the Governors. Governors should be responsible for posting the t/c Instructions, but they should take into consideration any instructions (or requests ) from their Mayors. Just as it would be wise for Mayors to forward the requests of the cities citizens, it would also be wise for Governors to forward the requests of the Mayors. Irritating the people below you in the food chain is not a good campaign strategy. ~ As a side note, this is the same way I see the DP in the t/c. Ultimate authority goes to the DP with the Council/Citizens as Advisors.


The entire local election idea is a hopeless pipe dream, ripe for abuse. How many citizens do most of our cities have - one. The mayor. Yes - a true democracy! One citizen - one vote!

-- Ravensfire [/B]

I disagree here. The local election deal is good in my opinion. I even included this idea in the RPG proposal I made. I see nothing wrong with someone moving to an empty city and delaring themselves Mayor. If a group of Citizens wanted to move to a town and put their Mayor in, they could do so. I just don't see a problem here.

DG2 mentions the VP - "The Vice President assumes all powers and responsibilities of the Presidency during the absence of the President."

Basically, the VP is the only deputy with a title other than, well, deputy. That's a good way to keep it - a deputy. I don't see any need to expand the role of this, or any other deputy in a body of law. If the elected official wants to delegate duties to their deputy - that's fine with me. But let's leave that up to the official

If we are going to keep the VP, I agree with this definition of the position.

 

[donsig]

Does anyone care to summarize the proposals so we can create a poll?

 

[ravensfire]

Unless someone gets to it earlier than tonight, I'll have them up. For the day before thanksgiving, I've had way too much to do at work. You are correct, we do need one. I think we're getting close to 10 distinct proposals, based around 3 or 4 different structures (number and type of leaders)

Grrr, need to remind testers that not everything is a defect. If the screen goes blank in 15 minutes, it might, MIGHT be a screensaver, not a defect in a web application.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Octavian X]

There's been three different discussions in one thread. To summarize proposals...

Executive Branch Structure - copied and pasted
1. The Council of Ministers shall be composed of the heads of the three primary departments: Internal Affairs, Trade and Technology, and Foreign Affairs.

2.
Minister of the Interior: Domestic
Dept. of Defense: Military
State Dept: Foreign Affairs, Trade, Science

3. Keep current structure

4. I envision three councils, each consisting of three people. The three departments these three councils would run would be the Domestic Department (an amalgamate of domestic, science, and culture), the Foreign Affairs Department (an amalgam of FA and Trade), and the Defense Department (consisting of miliatary).

5. Four leaders - Domestic, Foreign, Military, Trade (Just added this one as an afterthought)

Powers of the purse

- To the Senate
- To Domestuc

City control
- All to Mayors
- All to Governors
- Divided up

 

[DaveShack]

After all this, and even advocating some change myself, I'm about ready to sorta give up and say it's not broke so don't fix it.

 

[FortyJ]

Originally posted by Cyc
This is the first of the big three Articles dealing with the Branches of Government in the next Constitution. Article D deals with the Executive Branch. Discussing the Executive Branch and any future changes is the purpose of this thread.

Good to know. More on this, later in the post.

Article E is for the Legislative Branch and Article F is for the Judicial Branch. Discussions on these branches can be found in other threads.

Ok, I apologize for proposing my legislature ideas earlier in this thread, and I seriously suggest we table all discussion on these issues until Article D is resolved and a new thread is opened specifically for these purposes.

Article D from the DG2 Constitution reads as follows:

D. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of the game, and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that is responsible for one major facet of the country. These departments are domestic, Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade. Each of these departments will be generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.

Basically, it seems that we have a few proposals that specifically relate to this subject:

• Status Quo - President, VP, six council members (and deputies) in charge of each of the six departments (Domestic, Trade, Military, Foreign Affairs, Culture, & Science).
• Council of Three - President, VP, three council members (and deputies): Internal Affairs (Domestic, Culture), Foreign Affairs (Foreign Affairs & Military), and Trade & Technology.
• Council of Four - President, VP, four council members (and deputies): Internal Affairs (Domestic, Culture), Foreign Affairs, Military, and Trade & Technology.
• Parliament - single election with highest vote-getter becoming President and the various offices are divided amongst the various runners-up.
• Councils Cubed - President, VP and three councils of three members each: Domestic Dept (Domestic, Science & Cuture), Foreign Affairs Dept (Foreign Affairs & Trade) and Defense Dept (Military).

I think that about covers it. I believe these five options represent the most legitimate proposals to date for Article D. If I have missed any, I apologize and please post them below.

Otherwise, I again call for the question. Let us poll these options now and be done with this so we can move on to the next sections.

Note: anyone concerned about what each branch is responsible for (ie. slider control, etc.) should remember that this article deals solely with the structure of the executive branch - not necessarily what each office is responsible for.

 

[Cyc]

OK, I like the structure of ForyJ's summary. It deals solely with the structure of The Executive Branch. I believe that is the main purpose of this thread. Each proposed option basically defines the Offices of the Branch. Customary duties and responsibilities associated with each Office can be assumed with the Office option definitions posted by FortyJ. Additional dutites and responsibilities can be defined in the Code of Laws or the Code of Standards.

I will post a poll about 6 hours from now unless we get a rash of posts indicating a need for a change or whatever. The poll will look like this:

Please choose one of the options listed below to be the basic structure of the Executive Branch as defined in Article D of the Demogame 4 Constitution ~

Status Quo - President, VP, six council members (and deputies) in charge of each of the six departments (Domestic, Trade, Military, Foreign Affairs, Culture, & Science).

Council of Three - President, VP, three council members (and deputies): Internal Affairs (Domestic, Culture), Foreign Affairs (Foreign Affairs & Military), and Trade & Technology.

Council of Four - President, VP, four council members (and deputies): Internal Affairs (Domestic, Culture), Foreign Affairs, Military, and Trade & Technology.

Parliament - single election with highest vote-getter becoming President and the various offices are divided amongst the various runners-up.

Councils Cubed - President, VP and three councils of three members each: Domestic Dept (Domestic, Science & Cuture), Foreign Affairs Dept (Foreign Affairs & Trade) and Defense Dept (Military).

This poll will remain open for 7 days.
Disussion can be found here.
Blah, blah, blah...

 

[Fier Canadien]

Good: Poll! We're quite late if we still plan to begin on January 1st. We still have half the constitution not even talked about and there's the CoL and the CoC after that.

I propose to blitz trough the remainder of the constitution and then overview the CoL (as it may well be long).

 

[ravensfire]

Originally posted by Fier Canadien
Good: Poll! We're quite late if we still plan to begin on January 1st. We still have half the constitution not even talked about and there's the CoL and the CoC after that.

I propose to blitz trough the remainder of the constitution and then overview the CoL (as it may well be long).

More than just that, start multiple discussions. We need to start the thread on Article E, Legislature. I'd like to use the Reforming the Judiciary as the Article F thread.

We can also start threads on the CoL/CoS parts for Articles A and B. Once the polls for each article close, a new thread should go up for the CoL/CoS sections that might be needed.

-- Ravensfire

ps - good summary and poll!

 

[Cyc]

Please vote in the Poll for this thread!

This may just be a preliminary Poll, let's see what the results are.

 

[Cyc]

People, let's not forget to vote in this poll. Right now we have 14 votes! If you haven't voted, please click here.

 

[Octavian X]

Whenever we do get around to writing this article, I believe it would make sense to attach something more to it. The purpose of it would be to define the executive positons as 'leader' positions, or something like that. More specifically, such a change would be impleamented to put a concrete block between the idea of a leader and his deputy. Rather than a seperate article altogether, Article D seems a sensible enough place to do this.

 

[zorven]

The poll is closed and the winner is:

Council of Four - President, VP, four council members (and deputies): Internal Affairs (Domestic, Culture), Foreign Affairs, Military, and Trade & Technology.

Now we need to come up with the wording for this Article and poll it. If you have a specific proposal for the wording, please clearly mark it as such such we can easily track them.

 

[Donovan Zoi]

Bumping this thread.

I am pressed for time this morning, so please read zorven's post above and start the wording of this article. It should hopefully be as simple as renaming the old set of leaders with the new.

For reference, here is the current wording of Article D:

D. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of
the game, and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that
is responsible for one major facet of the country. These departments are Domestic,
Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade. Each of these departments will be
generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization
III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.

 

[ravensfire]

Originally posted by zorven
The poll is closed and the winner is:

Council of Four - President, VP, four council members (and deputies): Internal Affairs (Domestic, Culture), Foreign Affairs, Military, and Trade & Technology.

Now we need to come up with the wording for this Article and poll it. If you have a specific proposal for the wording, please clearly mark it as such such we can easily track them.

D. The Executive branch is responsible for determining and implimenting the will of the People. It is headed by the President who shall be the primary Designated Player. The President shall be advised by a council of 4 leaders and by the Provincial Governors.
I. The Minister of Internal Affairs shall be responsible for Domestic and Cultural activites.
II. The Minister of Foreign Affairs shall be responsible for matters with Foreign nations, excepting trades of any nature.
III. The Minister of Defense shall be responsible for all Military troop activities.
IV. The Minister of Trade and Technology shall be responsible for all Trade and Technology activities.
V. The Provincial Govenors shall be responsible for the care and maintenance of the land and cities within their Province.


As usual, details to be fleshed out in the CoL.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Cyc]

I say this looks ok, but as I also see nothing wrong with the original wording of Article E, I believe we should take subsection V. out of ravensfire's proposal. Governors can still be deemed Leaders without being in the Executive Branch. :crazyeyes: Funny, I don't remember Governors even being in the poll options. Oh, no! donsigism is spreading...

 

[Sarevok]

it sounds good to me, also easy to figure out.

 

[zorven]

Cyc: do you propose to keep Governors in the Legislature or to be part of no branch?

 

[ravensfire]

Cyc and zorven,

In all actuality, the discussion about the place of Governors really hadn't started when the poll was posted, we didn't even think about it as an option. The core of that poll, however, is that the Council should have 4 members, and that is within my proposal.

We need to settle where we're putting the Governors, and soon. How about a poll, running for 3 days, with two options - Executive and Legislature. Based on the results of the poll, we put the Governors in that branch and proceed from there.

-- Ravensfire

 

[zorven]

Ravensfire,

Your suggested poll is probably a good idea. I think that needs to be decided before we can finish either Articles D and E.