Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2
Republic of Tribes/Races/Families:
A society is made up of separate groups that remain separate, legally, generation after generation. That could be ethnic groups or family clans or whatever, but might fit esp. well in a society made up of non-interfertile races like some SF and fantasy settings.
The tribes (of whatever nature) are federated, and each tribe elects one representative to the council, regardless of population. They might live in separate cities or all mingle in cosmopolitan communities.
Or there might be two councils, one equal and one weighted by numbers, basically you'd have tribes as 'states' instead of territorial systems.
Weighted for the future: A democracy in which everybody has one vote, but parents have two, permanently, on the grounds that they have a vested interest in the society's future. They might gain still extra votes with more offspring, but that would produce a very different society than one in which parents just get an extra vote each for the fact of parenthood.
Deliberate instability: A democracy in which he member of the electorate has one vote, but every election, an additional number of votes (say 20% of the total) is distributed at random across the electorate. The idea would be to help keep stable coalitions and vested interests from dominating year after year, since the power base would shift by a fifth at random each time.
Alternatively, the legislative body might have 20% of its members up for reelection every year, but which 20% would be chosen at random. (You'd probably also need a formal term of office for any that luck out a lot, you have to stand for election every five years (or whatever) even if your number doesn't come up.)
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I used both of these too. Each "registered clan" has a certain share of vote and could sell, or lend the share to someone else. Then I realized that that would lead to a rigid plutocracy, so I added that "recurring shares" were regularly fed into the market. The concept was based on the assumption that to many increases will make for inflation while recurring shares die after a certain time. They are fed in to balance which means the leader will of course have to fight hard to get any of them.
Additionally recurring shares can be given as a reward for service to the state. For instance having a clan member perform some feat. Or just having the clan win the militia exercise.