Government Structure - Executive and Legislative Branches

[ravensfire]

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.

I like this!

Except, I would call that first office something else, and make that our "top" position. As we need to expand, that position would move responsibilities to other offices.

This also makes certain initiatives that I'm working on much, much easier!

-- Ravensfire

 

[Nobody]

How about we name the first office, (normally president) Chairman of Disignated Players. (we could rename the designated players somthing like Council of players).

His job could be to organise the player pool. And create other offices.

 

[donsig]

OK, I'd support one top guy and the turn players to start off. I'm not so sure we should lay out rules for addig offcies let's keep things open ended and flexible. We may want to think about a foreign minister or ambassador type guy before we make contact but after we've begun actively exploring.

 

[DaveShack]

One possibility would be "The Leader", but that's taken by Epsilon.

Do we need to change the name? President has worked fine, and there's no reason we can't change the title of the office if something better comes along.

 

[Methos]

At first we don't need a president, as we have only one city. A mayor or city governor is all we need. Once we begin to expand than we need a president and realize, the mayor/city governor doesn't have to take the mantle of president. That can be someone totally different.

Why would we need a minister of FA when we haven't met anyone? Or any specific officer for that matter.

IMO whenever something comes up that we need an officer, someone is put up as a temporary holder (no longer than a week or whatever time period we feel is appropiate) until a permanent officer is elected.

Edit: Grrr, I'm supposed to only be lurking.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

We'll probably expand pretty fast, so it wouldn't hurt to have a head of state right off the bat.

Anyway, here is how I think the legislature and the executive should work within the partisan framework I developed earlier:

The Legislature

I'll call the legislature the Chamber of the People. It includes all citizens of the Demogame. Depending on how it goes, it may include or exclude those who hold non-judicial office.

There is also the Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber of Deputies does not actually exist; it is a construct to more concretely model the results of voting.

Elections for the Chamber of Deputies must be held at least once within a certain set period of time; however, a member of the Chamber of the People (i.e. any citizen of the Demogame) may initiate a motion of no confidence to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and call new elections at any time. Alternately, the citizen may call a motion of no confidence in the Cabinet only, or in a specific Cabinet minister (including the Prime Minister himself) or the Government (i.e. the coalition that provides the Cabinet, requesting a new coalition, if that is possible). Either way, this provides greater responsiveness while maintaining stability; if the people think the government is doing a bad job, we can kick the bums out right away, but if we like the job the government is doing, we don't have to go through the rigmarole of constantly reelecting them.

The Chamber of Deputies is elected thus:

You can vote for a political party or for an individual.

If you vote for a political party, that's that. A political party requires 2% to get "seats" in the Chamber, which represents two seats in the 100-seat Chamber. After that, it's one "seat" for every percentage point. Obviously, we'll have to deal with rounding.

If you vote for an individual, this is how it works:

1. You vote in the poll. The individual is guaranteed the "seat" if he/she has at least 2% of the vote. He/she may choose to donate one percent of the vote to any party already in the Chamber; he/she should probably list the parties he/she is willing to donate to beforehand.
2. Citizens who vote for individuals should also send a list by PM to a designated official, saying that if the individual gets more than 2% of the vote who they would vote for, ranked from 2 to any number.
3. And other stuff. I'm trying to make it like Single Transferable Vote (like elections to the Australian Senate)

After the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is determined, parties and individuals (Independents, we'll call them) can search for allies in the government. Any member of a ruling coalition may be elected Prime Minister or Cabinet Minister. A designated official (let's say the Speaker of the Chamber of the People, equivalent to the last games Censor, sort of) will be informed of a working coalition. Minority coalitions are possible if no majority one can be found.

After that, it's pretty standard parliamentary democracy. The parties and Independents find a suitable Cabinet, present it to the Chamber of the People, and it is given an up-or-down vote.

This may sound like it might take a long time, but it probably should not. Coalitions should be clear instantly if they are necessary, and the math is simply a matter of plugging numbers into tried-and-true equations. I know this proposal is unlikely. But it's different.

 

[Methos]

If you vote for a political party, that's that. A political party requires 2% to get "seats" in the Chamber, which represents two seats in the 100-seat Chamber. After that, it's one "seat" for every percentage point. Obviously, we'll have to deal with rounding.

If you vote for an individual, this is how it works:

1. You vote in the poll. The individual is guaranteed the "seat" if he/she has at least 2% of the vote. He/she may choose to donate one percent of the vote to any party already in the Chamber; he/she should probably list the parties he/she is willing to donate to beforehand.
2. Citizens who vote for individuals should also send a list by PM to a designated official, saying that if the individual gets more than 2% of the vote who they would vote for, ranked from 2 to any number.
   

I find the above hilarious, especially when you consider this post also made by Lockesdonkey

I doubt that continuous play as per donsig is a good idea. It requires a great deal of messy mathematics; my eyes glazed over as I read that post.

All jokes aside, I disagree with having political parties in this game. Didn't this come up in DGI too?

 

[Furius]

I don't see why a representative legislature rather than just everybody voting is required... We have legislatures in the real world to deal with enormous numbers of people and difficulties of transportation (Among other things, admittedly), and these are problems that don't strike me as likely to occur in forum format...

Therefore I believe that the legislative branch should be all citizens rather than a parliament-type set up...

As for the executive, could we have a ore exciting name than President, please? Like something in the language of whichever civ we end up with?

 

[Lockesdonkey]

The parliament-style system has nothing to do with lawmaking. It's just to give a pool to elect the Government. I think that using this means that we can express our collective displeasure with a single individual, a Cabinet, or the whole bunch of proverbial bums.

Furthermore, people are used to doing math for elections; real countries do it all the time, and as I recall, the French Wikipedia uses a more complex system for votes. But for when we can play? It's somewhat ridiculous in my opinion.

Not to mention that I recognize a partisan system is unlikely; I just want to throw it out there. I think that this just might provide a system that is fresh and interesting, and if need be we can throw it out by constitutional amendment. I have new ideas to make this whole thing a bit simpler, anyway.

And I agree wholeheartedly that President has gotten old. Pick something new!

 

[ice2k4]

@Lockesdonkey I don't mean to shoot down any of your proposals, as they are interesting and may be fun, but when a newcomer looks at this type of system, they might experience confusion or they might just feel the rules are too complicated. Even though this would mock a real government a lot better than the conservative version of rules, it does get a bit complicated.

How about we name the first office, (normally president) Chairman of Disignated Players. (we could rename the designated players somthing like Council of players).

His job could be to organise the player pool. And create other offices.

I wanted to bring up this topic a bit later, but I guess you've raised it somewhat now. I feel that the President had too little importance in DG1. I advocate that the President (our leader) should be the leader of the Executive Branch, instead of being just another member who shares power.

In the last demogame, government officials, although encouraged, really never talked and worked together. One of the President's duties was to organize the officials (or something of that nature), yet the President never once fulfilled that (with the exception of my Presidency and the Presidency that succeeded me, although for the most part it was a failed attempt.)

Being a leader of the executive branch, he should bring the rest of the branch together in one thread, to discuss all issues. That way officials don't make decisions based on one citizen discussion thread, that will only benefit their department. Also requiring weekly (or per turnchat) reports of every point in a specific department would be nice. Most of the time the citizens were the ones who would search and identify problems or points of importance after turnchats. This caused a lot of small things to go overlooked, but with officials searching just in their area of operations, they are more likely to find those little things that come back to haunt us.

 

[Tullius]

I agree with the people who've argued for a simple structure in the beginning, there's no need to have all these positions when we don't even have workers, or contact with foreign civilizations, etc. Let's see what we need, and when we need it, we'll vote on it and install someone into office!

 

[DaveShack]

I wanted to bring up this topic a bit later, but I guess you've raised it somewhat now. I feel that the President had too little importance in DG1. I advocate that the President (our leader) should be the leader of the Executive Branch, instead of being just another member who shares power.

I agree! We usually put something in the rules about the President having the responsibility for anything not mentioned as duties of another official, and sometimes (but not always) give the power to "resolve disputes" whatever that means. Neither of these powers goes far enough towards making the President a true leader.

Sometimes we elect a President who does the full job including the unwritten leadership part, but most of the time we don't.

There are two ways to push "President as Leader". One is to lobby vigorously for giving the President meaningful duties, balanced with an easy method for the citizens to challenge the power if it gets out of hand. The job must be worth the trouble someone is going to put into it. The Constitution's placement of Initative above Mandate means we can take away powers with a simple poll, so the checks/balances thing is covered.

The other is to be very selective at nomination and election time. Entice strong leaders to take the top job. Respect the situation of those who decline because they can't put enough time into it, and applaud the ones who accept.

 

[ice2k4]

I would like to see the President gain the power of firing or re-assigning the official, so this way he can organize the government more effectively (placing him more like a management figure.) To check his authority, we could require him to first give notice of the firing/re-assignment, and then give the citizen's 48 hours to complain. If a single complaint is raised before the 48 hour period, an immediate poll (48 hours in length, from the time of the poll creation) would be made asking to veto the President's decision. Only 51% should be needed to veto the action, since the official in question was elected by the people.

 

[Furius]

ice2k4's suggestion seems very good to me...

I would also like to see the president receive the power to nominate people too offices if none are elected... As with the judges for example
And I assume the president would also be DP pool Manager... If only to avoid too bloated a bureaucracy


Obviously the President must remain accountable to the people

 

[Octavian X]

If we want an executive that works together, we could just change some of the institutions to force them to do so. In the past, when it came to making orders for gameplay, we entrusted each individual executive to post orders for the designated player to follow. Each minister came up with his own instructions.

Instead, we should have all the ministers submit gameplay instructions at once, to create a unified turnplan, with all aspects of the game accounted for in their plans, so that the right hand knows what the left is doing. The President (or President-analogue) gathers and coordinates the plans of all the ministers, and posts if the for the designated player to follow. This, of course, might lower the number to gameplay sessions we can expect to have per week; however, with a single plan clearly laid out, we could play more turns per turn session.

 

[Furius]

You mean, they give their instructions to the president (Who really must be renamed once we know what civ we're playing with) who then molds them into a whole?

 

[DaveShack]

Hmm, we tried something going in the opposite direction, in Civ3 DG6. The idea then was to have an overall plan, and then have lower level officials post specific instructions which aimed for that plan. It didn't work out because the flow of information was too confusing.

While I like the idea of someone being responsible for making sure instructions mesh, flowing the instructions through that office sounds like trouble. If that one person is absent, we potentially grind to a halt.

 

[Macha]

ice2k4s idea is a good one

 

[Furius]

If that one person is absent, we potentially grind to a halt.

That's a very good point... This plan would not work if we adopted continuous play, for just that reason...

I'm sure it could be modified so as to make it work with that method however... Or we could elect a leader with no life

 

[jasonnorthrup]

How many citizens are there currently? In the past, how many citizens have there been? This is important to determine an effective organization for the "legislature". If there are fewer than 100, then it seems no need to elect representatives.