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?
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.
