02-05-2024, 10:10 PM | #781 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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02-05-2024, 10:18 PM | #782 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
Back on topic, here's a concept that I have a hard time imagining actually being implemented, but would produce some interesting results: imagine a society where the ruler's main job is to appoint the chief minister who actually runs the government. Nothing unusual there, we see that principle in parliamentary democracies and mayor/city manager arrangements.
In mayor/city manager systems, the mayor/council appoints a city manager, usually a professional bureaucrat of some sort, to actually run the city day to day. Most of what the council/mayor does is choose the CM, and maybe set broad policies and legislate. Imagine that same principle at the national level, where the elected or hereditary ruler's main task is to appoint the chief minister who runs things day to day. But the twist is that the chief minister has to be a foreigner. He can be dismissed by the ruler at will, but the replacement must also be from outside the ruled polity. Imagine if the Prime Minister of the UK was not permitted to be a UK subject. An American, a Frenchman, a Japanese, could be appointed, but not a citizen. The argument for it would be that a properly selected foreigner would be neutral, he would not be a member of a native faction or party, and the fact that he can be easily dismissed and replaced limits the harm he can do if a bad one is chosen. Like I said, I can't see it actually being tried in a pure form, but something a little like it seems to have been common in the Islamic world at one time, where Sultans could appoint foreign (but still Muslim) viziers, and often did. There seems to have been something just a little like this in the form of an international bureaucratic class in pre-Qin Shi Huang 'China'. The closest equivalent in the modern West would probably be the international 'NGO class', and it's not very close.
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02-06-2024, 09:15 AM | #783 | |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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The British Parliament was deliberately recruited from lunatic asylums and the chief minister (under a British figurehead) was a Chinese Mandarin while China was being controlled by British Expats. Yeah, a slight feeling of disquiet at that nowadays hopefully not based on the same feelings of disquiet it raised in the British back in the 1930s.
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Michael Cule,
Genius for Hire, Gaming Dinosaur Second Class |
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02-06-2024, 07:28 PM | #784 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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Then too several Europeans had court Jews as did Ottomans (it may have been more common among Ottomans). Clerics were also often recruited for royal counselors. Further east eunechs were used.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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02-06-2024, 08:29 PM | #785 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
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02-08-2024, 08:37 AM | #786 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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03-03-2024, 10:58 PM | #787 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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