01-29-2018, 09:37 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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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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01-29-2018, 09:40 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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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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HMS Overflow-For conversations off topic here. |
01-29-2018, 11:40 PM | #33 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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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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01-30-2018, 12:11 AM | #34 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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01-30-2018, 01:55 AM | #35 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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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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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
01-30-2018, 05:11 AM | #36 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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01-30-2018, 05:20 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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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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Michael Cule,
Genius for Hire, Gaming Dinosaur Second Class |
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01-30-2018, 06:50 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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-- MA Lloyd |
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01-30-2018, 07:03 AM | #39 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
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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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-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 01-30-2018 at 07:08 AM. |
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01-30-2018, 07:51 AM | #40 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems
Quote:
have multi member districts. |
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