Power of the People and its Delegation

[DaveShack]

1. Power of the People
   1. All decision making power within the Democracy Game is derived from the collective rights of the citizens.
   2. The Power of the People can be delegated to officials of the game in one or more of the following ways, or in other ways which may subsequently be discovered.
      • By Mandate as evidenced in a citizen's selection to hold office via the elective process.
      • By Constituency as evidenced by citizen comments in favor of a decision, in a public discussion.
      • By Opinion Poll in the form of the results of a non-binding poll
      • By Referendum in the form of an official, binding poll which has force over the current decision only.
      • By Initiative in the form of a binding poll initiated by the citizenry, which has force over a current decision and future decisions of the same type
      • By Recall of an official and selection of a replacement via election or appointment
   3. In the event that two or more such delegations of the Power of the People are in conflict, the following hierarchy shall determine which decision has precedence.
      • An initiative has force of law and supercedes any other decision type (including an earlier initiative on the same subject) except another later initiative which repeals it.
      • Binding polls of any type have precedence over any other decision type.
      • Non-binding polls have precedence over non-polling decision types.
      • Citizen input has precedence over mandate.
      • If two or more polls or discussions occur on a matter, the last one to complete shall prevail.
      • Lower forms of law may modify parts of this hierarchy, except for the provision regarding initiative which may not be modified.
   4. A lower form of law may specify procedures and restrictions on implementing decision types, except
      • Initiative must always be allowed
      • No decision shall require more support than an amendment to the Constitution.

History of Changes

• Modified section 4 to require initiative, to accomodate Black_Hole's suggestion to allow lower forms of law to only require Mandate and Initiative. The addition preserve's the people's power if the CoL were to say Mandate is the only required decision making process.
• Modified section 3 to allow lower forms of law to change the decision hierarchy. This accomodates Ginger_Ale's suggestion by allowing the CoL to include allowing the President or DP to resolve inconsistencies between instructions.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

This is fine, well written. One thing I would add to section 3: if things conflict, as a last resort or even not, have the President (or DP) act with the instructions that he think will be in the best interests of the country / reflect the opinions of citizens.

 

[Black_Hole]

Here is an idea:
We need our leaders to lead, not post discussions and polls and then post those results in the TCIT...

Leaders run the government, the citizens(could be called parliment or legislative branch) can require the leaders to do something by posting an intiative poll, with a yes/no/abstain... Like "Shall we require the research of Alphabet next?"

Leaders can have discussions but if no intiative poll is voted yes, the leader may choose

 

[Nobody]

I like this, davy

 

[Swissempire]

I like DaveShacks plan, but i think it should be modified a little to reflect some of the idea's Blackhole stated. If they were to merge, then we would have, in my opinion, a very very good system

 

[DaveShack]

Here is an idea:
We need our leaders to lead, not post discussions and polls and then post those results in the TCIT...

Leaders run the government, the citizens(could be called parliment or legislative branch) can require the leaders to do something by posting an intiative poll, with a yes/no/abstain... Like "Shall we require the research of Alphabet next?"

Leaders can have discussions but if no intiative poll is voted yes, the leader may choose

This is the mandate decision making method. What you're suggesting is that we should not require discussion / polling, but we should allow it, right? With this constitution article as written, the CoL is allowed to specify procedures / limitations, such as discussion and polling is not required.

You did point out a shortcoming of how it's written, at least the initiative method must be required.

 

[Black_Hole]

This is the mandate decision making method. What you're suggesting is that we should not require discussion / polling, but we should allow it, right? With this constitution article as written, the CoL is allowed to specify procedures / limitations, such as discussion and polling is not required.

You did point out a shortcoming of how it's written, at least the initiative method must be required.

Basically I think we should drop these two:

# By Constituency as evidenced by citizen comments in favor of a decision, in a public discussion.
# By Opinion Poll in the form of the results of a non-binding poll

Unless the people clearly and decisively want something the elected leader should make the decision, we elect them to lead

 

[DaveShack]

Unless the people clearly and decisively want something the elected leader should make the decision, we elect them to lead

But dropping these two areas (discussion and info polls) you're suggesting the leader isn't allowed to get input. The point of the list in the Constitution is that these are the allowed mechanisms for the leader to base a decision, not that they are required mechanisms. The CoL for a particular game may set standards by which a leader has to get input, but doesn't have to do so.

If we eliminate these two items, I'm sure there are some armchair lawyers who would want to get elected and then go through the whole term without conducting any discussions or polls, no matter how important the issue is.

Keep in mind that I agree with the purpose of what you're trying to do, which is restore leadership powers to leaders. It's just not the right way to go about getting a constitution ratified, because we'd get a bunch of "chicken littles" saying the sky is falling because "will of the people" is getting tossed out the door.

 

[ravensfire]

If we eliminate these two items, I'm sure there are some armchair lawyers who would want to get elected and then go through the whole term without conducting any discussions or polls, no matter how important the issue is.

Which would be an absolute shame to see done, so if we can prevent it with a few words, all the better.

Keep in mind that I agree with the purpose of what you're trying to do, which is restore leadership powers to leaders. It's just not the right way to go about getting a constitution ratified, because we'd get a bunch of "chicken littles" saying the sky is falling because "will of the people" is getting tossed out the door.

I completely support the idea as well. To be honest, I just want to see something in there that, if we have someone that does ignore people, we can correct that problem. Tossing the will of the people clause and replacing it with something better (looks at the top post) is a good thing. Tossing it out and replacing it with the hope that people will do the right thing is, regrettably, a recipe for problems.

To the original idea - I'd suggest looking into better differntiating "Initiative" and "Opinion Poll". I think you're wanting "Initiative" to refer to the polls by a leader. From a read of the sections, there's some ambiguity in there that can cause problems.

I *think* that your idea is to keep these concepts on the side, and each DG adopt the ones that are needed, both up front, and during the game as needed. I can't help but admire that, it's a slick idea. That would, of course, mostly answer my concern above. If I am right, putting something that would more clearly deliniate the two concepts is still probably a good thing.

This is by far the best and most detailed analysis and proposal for decision making in the DG. Nice work, DS.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Octavian X]

I think that this is a fairly well-thought out proposal, and one that I think could work. As ravensfire points out, though, it does assume that leaders will take the time to use the higher forms of approval. That's a risk they take, though, assuming a recall procedure is created and it isn't too burdensome or difficult to use.

Since conflicts inevitably will occur, though, we do need a good way to resolve dispute. I would hesitate to simply allow the DP the final say in the conflict resolution, as he may very well be biased toward one side of the issue or the other. I would just put this in the hands of the President, as those issues on which we are likely to conflict will be the controversial issues, and thus ones that need to be discussed and polled carefully. As a last resort, you could even consider adding an appeal to the Judiciary if two or three people are dissatisfied with the President's choice of action or recognition of valid sources of 'Power of the People.'

(By the way, I think that's a terrible name. 'Will of the People' was fine, or maybe 'Will of the Assembly' or 'Soverign Authority' or 'Democractic decision.' But Power of the People? Quite honestly, I get the picture of the movement that ousted Filipino dictator Ferdinard Marcos (People Power), something crude, with people just angrily protesting. Is it too late to consider a change?)

 

[DaveShack]

(By the way, I think that's a terrible name. 'Will of the People' was fine, or maybe 'Will of the Assembly' or 'Soverign Authority' or 'Democractic decision.' But Power of the People? Quite honestly, I get the picture of the movement that ousted Filipino dictator Ferdinard Marcos (People Power), something crude, with people just angrily protesting. Is it too late to consider a change?)

I'm not hung up on the names for things as long as they make sense. I did want to avoid "Will of the People" at first, in order to allow the discussion to potentially go in different directions than traditional. I started off having this being "Forms of Decision Making" but wanted to emphasize "the people" somehow.