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Old 01-29-2018, 09:37 PM   #31
Agemegos
 
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Non-contiguous districts: you have a representative democracy, but instead of your district being determined by your place of residence, it's determined in some other way (say, a number assigned when you are born or reach adulthood -- e.g. the last two digits of your social security number).
Or no districts: proportional representation.

Multi-member districts.

Proxy systems in which each citizen chooses which member of the ruling assembly gets to exercise his or her proxy, or (kind of equivalent) everyone votes for a candidate and the candidates elected get voting power in proportion to the number of votes they got.

May I suggest that alternatives to rule by an elected assembly would be more exotic than a multitude of variations on the electoral system.

• Rule by experts who have specialist training and have been promoted up a bureaucratic hierarchy, such as priests.

• Monarchy inherited by designated heirs rather than descendants, with family perhaps ineligible to be designated.

• Monarchy inherited by the king's son-in-law or the queen's daughter-in-law rather than by their children.

• Dyarchy in which a husband and wife have distinct jurisdiction, such as the husband controlling external affairs (diplomacy, trade, and war) and the wife controlling internal affairs.

• Systems like feudalism in which members of a territorial or functional hierarchy come into their positions as by right (in the example of feudalism, by inheritance etc.; for another example by election for life terms; for another by being appointed to vacancy on an order-of-merit in exams taken once in a lifetime) and have little prospect of ever being promoted or replaced.

• Democratic systems like feudalism in which people are directly elected to positions in a hierarchy and are therefore concerned with how their performance impresses the voters for the next election, but are not much concerned about obeying their nominal direct superiors.

• Democracy in which the executive is elected but citizens vote directly on legislation.

• Aristocratic republics (with representative assemblies, or with participative voting on legislation combined with election to a executive offices) in which the franchise is inherited.

• Aristocratic republics in which the franchise is bought by a large payment to the public treasury.

• Aristocratic republics in which the franchise is earned by service.

• Aristocratic republics in which the franchise is extended at the discretion of the aristocrats (black-balling, voters electing new voters etc.

• Aristocratic republics in which the franchise is extended at the discretion of non-aristocrrats (e.g. ordinary citizens vote to elect new voters for life.

• Aristocratic republics in which the franchise is qualified for by training in the arts of a citizen (cost-benefit analysis, Bayesian inference, jurisprudence, economics, sociology, criminology, grand strategy, international relations).

• Aristocratic republics in which the franchise is qualified for by training in in something highly prized but actually useless or worse for governing (theology, Marxism, tactics, chemistry).

• "Participative" democracy in which only citizens with professional qualifications relevant to a specific issue get to vote on that issue.

• A system in which administrators and government service providers are subjected on appointment or promotion to body modification so transformative as to make them (a) unrecognisable and (b) instantly distinguished from commoners, and then treated like gods until they suffer a scandal, at which time they are ritually murdered and then eaten by the commoners.

• A system in which the ruling caste is endogamous, hereditary, and trained from infancy in relevant (or irrelevant) arts and sciences, but in which members of that caste are promoted up an adminstrative hierarchy by elections in which the ruling class may campaign but not vote. (Perhaps with a cursus honorum system of qualifying service in grade.)

• A bureaucratic system in which promotions are controlled by the higher ranks, with or without caste qualifications for the lowest positions.

• A bureaucratic system in which promotions are controlled by the lower ranks.

• A bureaucratic system in which promotions are controlled by lot, or given to the suitably-qualified candidate who scores the most points on some standardised, arbitrary index of achievement and qualification.

Last edited by Agemegos; 01-29-2018 at 10:25 PM.
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Old 01-29-2018, 09:40 PM   #32
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

Localism, Up To Eleven: A large federal republic that believes that most decisions are best made locally, by officials elected locally. So far, so familiar, but this republic also recognizes that large 'private' or other organizations and groupings can overwhelm local jurisdictions with money, influence, threats, etc., and large commercial organizations tend to force power toward a center.

So...they make it illegal to do business across most local borders. Each city has its own industries, its own finance sector, its own service sector. Nobody is allowed to own property outside his own town or district of residence without special and hard-to-get permits from both his own home jurisdiction, the other jurisdiction, and the central authority. Even marriage and other 'personal' agreements across jurisdictional lines might be difficult....or they might require that one spouse must move entirely to the jurisdiction of the other spouse, leaving behind all property and links.

This creates staggering economic inefficiency, but encourages local control and full employment. All the central state does is supervise the very few cross-jurisdiction activities, maintain a military against outside forces, and arbitrate disputes between city-states (or whatever).
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Old 01-29-2018, 11:40 PM   #33
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

• There is a ruling assembly, consisting of a number of people with overlapping terms (e.g. life terms, or terms to retirement age, of people of all different ages, or fixed terms not appointed at the same time). When a vacancy occurs (through death, retirement, superannuation, impeachment, criminal conviction, or expiration of term) the members who are continuing in office co-opt someone to become a new member.
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Old 01-30-2018, 12:11 AM   #34
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Multi-member districts.
Is this considered exotic? We have it Sweden. :)
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Old 01-30-2018, 01:55 AM   #35
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

Friedrich Hayek proposed a different sort of bicameral legislature: One house would pass only laws regulating the general rights and obligations of citizens; the other would pass rules for the conduct of governmental activities. An interesting nuance was that revenues were the business of the first house, expenditures of the second.

Another of Hayek's ideas was to have a body of legislators who gained new members, each year, by a vote of the people who had turned some specified age (I think it might have been 40) in that year. Everyone would get to vote for that house ONCE and never again, and the people they voted for would have, at least, very long terms of office.
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Old 01-30-2018, 05:11 AM   #36
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Is this considered exotic? We have it Sweden. :)
Kangaroos are exotic animals in Sweden, deer are exotic animals in Australia.
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Old 01-30-2018, 05:20 AM   #37
Michael Cule
 
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
What do they call gerrymandering? That's an awesome idea with great opportunities for corruption and conspiracy.
I think they call gerrymandering impossible and any system that has electoral districts gerrymandering.

And why is this system more corruptible than another? A computer gives you a number and that's the constituency you vote in. There's no point in limiting the voting facilities at a particular location since the voters could live anywhere. There's still a point in making voter registration difficult for particular classes of people but that would probably be handled remotely by computers anyway.
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Old 01-30-2018, 06:50 AM   #38
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Originally Posted by Michael Cule View Post
I think they call gerrymandering impossible and any system that has electoral districts gerrymandering.

And why is this system more corruptible than another? A computer gives you a number and that's the constituency you vote in. There's no point in limiting the voting facilities at a particular location since the voters could live anywhere. There's still a point in making voter registration difficult for particular classes of people but that would probably be handled remotely by computers anyway.
It needn't be a computerized system - the day you were born would work just as well as any other number - and it can still be worthwhile to have geographic voting barriers - as long as more people in an area support one party over another making it hard for the ones that can't easily travel somewhere else to vote can give your party an edge, it's just diffused over all the voting districts.
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Old 01-30-2018, 07:03 AM   #39
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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So...they make it illegal to do business across most local borders. Each city has its own industries, its own finance sector, its own service sector.
Towns vanish as everybody in them starves to death. Well those where they didn't die of thirst first when the aqueducts shut down. You can't even make food an exception - cities can't pay for it without an exception for something they produce too, which will need an exception for the materials they produce it *from* which.... And couldn't transport it anyway what with your cart no longer being your property when it crossed a border.

I know the OP wasn't too interested in workability, but I think this one leads to disaster in *such* a very near term that it's virtually unusable in a game. You need something that works for long enough (on the enthusiasm of its followers if nothing else) that it can stand up long enough for the PCs to have to interact with its weird rules before it dissolves into chaos or civil war.
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Old 01-30-2018, 07:51 AM   #40
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Kangaroos are exotic animals in Sweden, deer are exotic animals in Australia.
Well, about half the nations listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_...icts_by_nation
have multi member districts.
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