A new Mock Parliament

[Foucaulf]

Reviving Mock Parliament has been thrown around in IRC for the past few weeks. What TNF has said is surprisingly close to what was talked about with Dallasfan, Flo, Lumine and me. I think we will agree on the following:

- A 20-member parliament, likely FPTP. (I would think you need to enforce strict residency rules, as strong as the ones Atlasia has now)
- A small cabinet of a few people, and a three-member court.
- Limited GM powers.

Past attempts at mock parliament usually stalled due to excessive focus on worldbuilding, party formation or constitutional fixtures. This is where I would suggest we start things up the British way, with no written constitution and getting straight into the issues. We'll see what parties and policies form on the way.

x Foucaulf I suppose.

[Foucaulf]

Let me flesh out two electoral system ideas I had thought about:

FPTP with constituencies. Most people are going in this direction but there is cause for alarm: if this game had Atlasia levels of participation, it would still amount to at most 8.5 players on average per constituency. I'm thinking of a situation where elections don't really happen and instead anyone who wants to play the game will just wait for another MP to resign. Then we look more like "mock corrupt city council" than "mock parliament." Either we accept this, or we can have a system where one player can cast multiple votes across 2-3 constituencies.

Closed-list PR. Atlasia always operated on an open-list PR system, which gave proportional representation a bad rap. We could, however, run an election across the game involving lists. Players figure out the list order among them and then submit it to a registrar general. Based on the "national vote" for the lists, those at the top get elected and those on the bottom do not.

[Foucaulf]

May I interject with some advice (ignore at will!)

As acting GM I should try to answer these questions.

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This is an artifact of when we had conversations about mock parliament on IRC: usually evenings in the US. There's a tradeoff here: do we stick with an American political system so new players can jump in faster, or do we move to a different country? The focus may have been more to the former, since we really thought of this as an alternative to Atlasia.

I'm assuming we're starting with a historical US scenario, but parliamentary supremacy rules. I don't see why parliament can't just order a GM to write a new scenario if the need arises.

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Exactly what I thought. I'm taking requests for policy research over in the other thread!

We can delve into the intricacies of this, but getting used to parliamentary supremacy means getting used to there being no giant hurdle to establish rights or lack thereof. If we're successful certain rights will be set as precedent, and keeping track of said precedent will probably be the judges' main duty.

[Foucaulf]

And Verin yes I think it's important to limit officeholders - I was just talking to Dallas about this and he (correctly) pointed out that a universal parliament/pure government sim as some were suggesting would be just the US General Discussion board with a map.

I'm hoping that everyone who signed up will try to run in a race (either constituency or on a party list). I also hope they'll check back every now and then if they're not elected.

This game will really survive on a mutual commitment to sperg - for us to vote down cabinets if they're being inactive, for us to challenge MPs who are running out on ideas. That kind of interaction is only interesting if left without interference.