Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I think that would either dilute the government with fatal unworldliness or dilute the clericy with ambition.

...may depend: serving as the equivalent of a lay-brother in a monastery or working alongside a serving order or mendicant friars might be pretty harmless and work as a culturally specific form of public service equivalent to a tour with a modern NGO. Would be entirely unremarkable for a fictional expy of medieval Europe. After all, medieval universities were at least quasi monastic...

[Johnny1A.2]

None Of The Above:

A fairly straightforward representative republic along familiar lines, whether congressional or parliamentary, but every election must include an extra option: None Of The Above. If this gets a plurality, the selection process starts over, and must include none of the initial slate of candidates, who cannot stand for that particular election again. This continues until a candidate gets a vote bigger than NotA.

Term Limits In Reverse: Any member of the legislative body up to a certain percentage can agree to 'lock in', that is, he gives up the right to ever run for any other branch of government, in exchange for longer terms and other benefits where he is. For ex, 100 members of the House of Representatives (or whatever body) might be allowed to 'lock in'.

The idea behind it would be that since they are committed to that body for their whole future political career, they'd have an incentive to protect it against incursions by the other branches.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

None Of The Above:

A fairly straightforward representative republic along familiar lines, whether congressional or parliamentary, but every election must include an extra option: None Of The Above. If this gets a plurality, the selection process starts over, and must include none of the initial slate of candidates, who cannot stand for that particular election again. This continues until a candidate gets a vote bigger than NotA.

How would this work in a system where you don't really vote for a candidate but for a list? I'm thinking of a PR system.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

How would this work in a system where you don't really vote for a candidate but for a list? I'm thinking of a PR system.

This excludes the downvoted party, and all cadidates who have agreed to be part of said list during this election. Which means that bulky parties with a thousand-candidate list will get punished for it more than small ones if they turn out to be disliked that much.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I think that would either dilute the government with fatal unworldliness or dilute the clericy with ambition.

Also any occupation singled out as associated with the national interest will at best make policy recommendations based on the "when all you have is a hammer" and at worse interpret interest based on it's own selfish interests or even disregard others interest altogether.

Monks do monastic things when they do monastic service, not bureaucratic things, but a monastic bureaucracy is also an interesting twist. Sounds like some sort of post-apocalyptic response to the perceived weaknesses in the pre-apocalypse society.

[jason taylor]

Legislature has two suppliments. One is picked by lot equivilent to jury duty. This is to ensure that it remains representative. The other is lifetime and chosen by the legislators themselves. These are to maintain the traditions of the legislature and preside over session but only vote to break a stalemate(or not if they actually prefer a stalemate). Note that these lifetime legislators are organic rather then being an executive or a separate house strictly speaking.

[David Johnston2]

Interpersonal disputes (including what be considered torts and even some felonies elsewhere) are handled by binding arbitration via games of chance.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Monks do monastic things when they do monastic service, not bureaucratic things, but a monastic bureaucracy is also an interesting twist. Sounds like some sort of post-apocalyptic response to the perceived weaknesses in the pre-apocalypse society.

Or a natural evolution of quite a lot of historical forms of government where the bureaucracy *was* mostly composed of people with religious qualifications. There's a reason we use words like "minister" and "hierarchy" in government bureaucracies too.

There has always been a lot of overlap between religious professionals and literacy or education on one hand and any other elites in society on the other - if only because the time required to learn something as "useless" as reading or the rituals of a religion are pretty tough for anyone who has to work to support themselves at the same time.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Or a natural evolution of quite a lot of historical forms of government where the bureaucracy *was* mostly composed of people with religious qualifications. There's a reason we use words like "minister" and "hierarchy" in government bureaucracies too.

There has always been a lot of overlap between religious professionals and literacy or education on one hand and any other elites in society on the other - if only because the time required to learn something as "useless" as reading or the rituals of a religion are pretty tough for anyone who has to work to support themselves at the same time.

True, but by the time they became bureaucrats they were no more monks then Janissaries were slaves. That is, it was technically the truth but they were usually more interested in affairs of state then affairs of monasticism.

[Daigoro]

Have we mentioned this yet?

Instead of national citizenship and nationhood being defined by squiggly lines on maps, individuals choose their nation-state-of-allegiance by an opt-in method. I started entertaining the notion in a space opera setting, where space stations declare allegiance to the favoured nation and thus earn their protection, but would it work on a single terrestrial setting?