06-12-2014, 11:46 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Berlin, Germany
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
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06-12-2014, 11:48 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
I'd start with the Roman Republic and then tinker with the setup to eliminate or at least lessen the opportunities for the shenanigans the PTW (Powers Thas Was ;-) ) in Rome used to effectively disenfranchise the rural tribes.
Hans |
06-12-2014, 12:06 PM | #23 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
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I like PTW. Quote:
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 06-12-2014 at 12:11 PM. |
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06-12-2014, 09:45 PM | #24 | ||||||||||
Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
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"Democracy" has a huge number of variations, as many posters have pointed out. I am interested in hearing any workable systems people might come up with, but it seems to me that any low-tech democracy would be necessarily representative (along the lines of The Colonel's post) and federal (with an elected local government theoretically subservient to a national one). It would also probably require a strong executive like a Roman consul or American president to take command in situations where waiting for a council vote would be impractical. Quote:
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Which brings me to a related note: the existence of political parties. What party politics might one see in a low-tech democracy? Land reform was a crucial element in Rome's political discourse, and I think similar issues would predominate in any low-tech (and thus necessarily agrarian) democracy. Justice and law enforcement, especially between rival districts, might also be a crucial issue at the national level; this was a large part of a medieval king's responsibilities. It might also be interesting to see "pork barrel politics", with local representatives arguing for federal funding to repair a frontier castle or build a bridge across a river. Quote:
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I especially want to provide opportunities for all of the dirty tricks common to democracy (rotten boroughs, "pork barrel" politics, lobbying, and so on) to exist. Any ideas on this front are also welcome.
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Moreover, I advise that Carthage should be destroyed. |
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06-12-2014, 09:57 PM | #25 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: a crooked, creaky manse built on a blasted heath
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
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But I seen that you mean small s soviet, a concept that predates the Bolsheviks and at the roots has nothing to do with Marxism. Good catch. :) Quote:
Jacobins! Last edited by combatmedic; 06-12-2014 at 10:02 PM. |
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06-13-2014, 11:10 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
Another possible model would be federations of tribes or city-states, which typically had a central council with representatives from each member. They tended to either be dominated by the strongest member or break up under the slightest pressure, because tribes and free cities were usually enthusiastic about their independence, but in a game one could solidify.
Some of the typical scenarios to think of are someone just ignoring a court ruling, bribing the judge or murdering the witness because he has ten times the income and political capital and a hundred times the armed force of the court; feuding and self-help which are manageable when each side has a dozen buddies getting out of hand when each side has a thousand soldiers; and people with money using high-interest loans or generous laws around landholding to acquire most of the farmland. Expanding upon partial solutions to these is a bit beyond the scope of a thread, but reading history helps.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
06-14-2014, 12:02 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
I note, in an example that goes against my own argument, that the Swiss Confederation dates back as far as the 13th century, a bit before printing came to Europe.
However, I think that the fact that they and the other city-states and confederations were a lot more participatory than the other options available (monarchy, feudal overlordship and so) we shouldn't allow verbal slight of hand to persuade us to identify them with modern representative democracy which though it has roots way back in the past is a creature of the Enlightenment and after. Secret ballots, parliamentary privilege to grant immunity from arrest, open debate, the idea of a 'loyal Opposition'. All of those are quite modern and without them democracy looks a lot like what its opponents accuse it of being: mob rule. The idea that the laws should be openly published and known by everyone goes back a long way though. The idea that as many government decisions as possible should be made publicly so that the people can see what's going on... Well, that one's still an ongoing battle. And I would say by the way that one person's demagogue is another person's radical reformer and if the peasants are offered viewpoints that might cause them to vote for someone other than their feudal lord's son for parliament then that's a damn fine thing for the health of the state. I also consider that any praise of the Roman Republic is... At this point I have to pause and take a deep breath and sip some tea to calm myself down. The Republic was designed to be a rigged game right from the start and was always played that way. I have no sentimental admiration for it and regard the idea of instilling paralysis deliberately into a constitution to be a madness that always serves the interests of the established political elites. (Dammit, I'm getting more and more radical in my old age. I hope when I stop being able to remember to put my trousers on in the morning I won't start looking for some barricades to man...)
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Michael Cule,
Genius for Hire, Gaming Dinosaur Second Class |
06-14-2014, 05:00 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
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06-14-2014, 05:36 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
Okay? It largely describes any cohesive single nation, which would be required for the request in the OP. The AoC and the European Union are good examples of what you can't really call a united, functioning country (in the case of Europe, no one does) because it lacks one or more of these elements.
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06-22-2014, 09:35 PM | #30 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Low-Tech Democracy.
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So your low-tech democracy will tend to be loose. It might or might not be technically a confederation, but it'll necessarily have a lot of local control, just as it would if the central authority were an emperor or a high priest or whatever. Quote:
Travel tends to be slow, difficult, and often dangerous (though a big empire can reduce the danger considerably), so there are incentives to do things locally. So what does the central state provide to such an assemblage? The same sorts of things monarchical empires do, to begin with. Policing the roads, keeping one city-state from destroying another, setting standards for trade and commerce, providing a reliable currency, providing defense from dangerous outsiders, etc. Now, if your city-states are on the big side, the central government might build and maintain Roman-style aqueducts to provide water for the cities and agriculture in dry regions. Maintaining the road network is an ongoing chore that needs organization, money, and scale. Certain raw materials simply are not locally available (if there is no iron ore, there won't be any iron mines), and that provides another reason to maintain large trade networks. It's simpler for such a state to congreal around a monarch, but it could be democratic, in part because most of what the central state would be doing would be pretty basic, by today's standards. It would probably not be a multiparty democracy in the same sense that modern liberal democracies are, because the central state wouldn't be elaborate enough to generate that. More likely you'd have a governing council with an elected representative from each city-state or equivalent, and that council would then elect the president or whatever to actually run the state and command the armed forces. The big difference between such a democratic empire and traditional ones would be that the central official would likely rule for a set time, and might be removed from office by the council without (at least in theory) using force. The armed forces would probably be so organzed that they are paid by and chartered by the state as a whole, rather than individuals in the service of the state. But the resulting federation would still bear a distinct resemblance to the Roman Empire, the Han Chinese empire, the Indian empire, etc. It would do a lot of the same things, and not do a lot of the same things, as the other realms. Now, local politics would quite possibly be vibrant, with parties or the equivalent, and all the fun and games we associate with democracy. Maybe small regions might display such tendencies. The common defense would be more popular and sustainable if there is a distinct cultural unity encompassing the city-states. If the people of each city-state recognize a common identity with the people of the other cities, it's a lot easier to hold the democratic federation together. A common religion, a common language, common heritage, all help. But that, again, is also true of monarchical realms. The Roman Empire never got much bigger than the territories of Classical Civilization, for ex, and when it did its rule was always tenuous. Even if the whole thing is working, though, most citizens are likely to be primarily interested in local politics. The comparison would be the EU today, or the USA in the early decades, when interest in State government tended to be greater because the State government impacted daily life much more. |
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