Antillan Constitutional Convention

[bullmoose88]

OOC:  I'm thinking that you guys might want to decide how much of the constitution you want to be erm...for lack of a better word...codified...and how much you want to be a mishmash of convention, pieces of legislation, past and present royal actions, past and present parliamentary actions...history etc.


You also might wish to either flush out some sort of history (political I assume), and decide what, if anything that might be been around prior to now is in effect.  

Shrug.  Thats all.

Off with your heads.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

Also am I the only one who think the Prime Minister should instead be called Hand of the King?

That sounds more like a military office...

[afleitch]

OOC:  I'm thinking that you guys might want to decide how much of the constitution you want to be erm...for lack of a better word...codified...and how much you want to be a mishmash of convention, pieces of legislation, past and present royal actions, past and present parliamentary actions...history etc.

In short; most of it. This game never gets off the ground as people get stuck at the 'constitutional convention' side of things. Let's have basic points of order and go with a British style system. People want to play the Parliament side of things; that is where fun is to be had. Once the game is established we can look at creating a clearer set of rules.

[Sibboleth]

Yeah... look at how quickly people got stuck into the Parliamentary debate thread.

[Sibboleth]

Proposed government structure.

1. Parliamentary regime with a figurehead monarchy. In other words, a Westminster system. It's simple, doesn't require masses of constitutional wrangling and gridlock Atlasia style is very unlikely to develop. In other words, it's ideal.

2. Parliament of 150 seats elected by closed-list proportional representation from very large constituencies. Again, as simple as possible. This means that unless you represent a small party, whether you make it back into Parliament at election time mostly depends on your position within your own party. Which is ideal for a game like this. The number of seats per constituency will be set in stone and determined largely by politics.

3. Two sub-national government structures to underline the differences between the island and the mainland. Pitfarris has a devolved Assembly (not very strong; perhaps like some of the aborted attempts in Northern Ireland during the Troubles) and weak local government, while the island of Antillia has no regional governments (of any sort) but has strong local government based on a city/county (the latter of which are called 'regions' here) split. Most of this is fairly unimportant to how we play the game, but is essential background noise.

4. The civil service will - as in many small countries - be extremely powerful. It will, however, be formally apolitical, functioning like the British Civil Service, rather than civil service groups in the U.S. Again, this is simple and ought to be attractive to a certain sort of player. It's also not essential, so that if we don't get such players, it's no problem.

5. Everything else can be integrated into the game as we go along.

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Comments?

[bullmoose88]

Suitable. Now can someone cobble together a government here that has the confidence of the house.  If so id like to meet you to show off my digs etc.

[lilTommy]

Proposed government structure.

1. Parliamentary regime with a figurehead monarchy. In other words, a Westminster system. It's simple, doesn't require masses of constitutional wrangling and gridlock Atlasia style is very unlikely to develop. In other words, it's ideal.

2. Parliament of 150 seats elected by closed-list proportional representation from very large constituencies. Again, as simple as possible. This means that unless you represent a small party, whether you make it back into Parliament at election time mostly depends on your position within your own party. Which is ideal for a game like this. The number of seats per constituency will be set in stone and determined largely by politics.

3. Two sub-national government structures to underline the differences between the island and the mainland. Pitfarris has a devolved Assembly (not very strong; perhaps like some of the aborted attempts in Northern Ireland during the Troubles) and weak local government, while the island of Antillia has no regional governments (of any sort) but has strong local government based on a city/county (the latter of which are called 'regions' here) split. Most of this is fairly unimportant to how we play the game, but is essential background noise.

4. The civil service will - as in many small countries - be extremely powerful. It will, however, be formally apolitical, functioning like the British Civil Service, rather than civil service groups in the U.S. Again, this is simple and ought to be attractive to a certain sort of player. It's also not essential, so that if we don't get such players, it's no problem.

5. Everything else can be integrated into the game as we go along.

---

Comments?

Just grand i have two comments:

#2 - Parliament: can we try and get a map once we flush out the details (who dosen't like a good map!) i suggest since we have maps for the counties in place for Bronseland, Peterford and Pitfarris that these county borders be used as the "constitiencies"? In counties with small populations we can have two/or more counties combined that way each county roughly sends the same number of members?   
#3 - I rather like that idea, since it gives the Cooperatives something to fight for (regional level government, and something in common with the Nationalists)

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

Proposed government structure.

1. Parliamentary regime with a figurehead monarchy. In other words, a Westminster system. It's simple, doesn't require masses of constitutional wrangling and gridlock Atlasia style is very unlikely to develop. In other words, it's ideal.

2. Parliament of 150 seats elected by closed-list proportional representation from very large constituencies. Again, as simple as possible. This means that unless you represent a small party, whether you make it back into Parliament at election time mostly depends on your position within your own party. Which is ideal for a game like this. The number of seats per constituency will be set in stone and determined largely by politics.

3. Two sub-national government structures to underline the differences between the island and the mainland. Pitfarris has a devolved Assembly (not very strong; perhaps like some of the aborted attempts in Northern Ireland during the Troubles) and weak local government, while the island of Antillia has no regional governments (of any sort) but has strong local government based on a city/county (the latter of which are called 'regions' here) split. Most of this is fairly unimportant to how we play the game, but is essential background noise.

4. The civil service will - as in many small countries - be extremely powerful. It will, however, be formally apolitical, functioning like the British Civil Service, rather than civil service groups in the U.S. Again, this is simple and ought to be attractive to a certain sort of player. It's also not essential, so that if we don't get such players, it's no problem.

5. Everything else can be integrated into the game as we go along.

---

Comments?

1. Approved.

2. To simplify things, I suggest that constituencies be region-wide. Perhaps separate St. Mark's proper from the rest of Marksland for this purpose. I have two suggestions for how many seats are apportioned to each region.

     A. Variable, according to population. The number of seats apportioned to each region changes with each census.

     B. Set in stone. The number of seats apportioned to each region is the same as it was when Parliament was founded.

Option B could provide for an interesting scenario where less populous regions are overrepresented, and could provide fuel for some interesting debate.

3, 4, 5. Sounds good.