mpog wrote:I have one concern, one question, and one request.
1.Rathon wrote:I might support a country now, only to have the HoG change five times between now and November 1st. And then, if the HoG changes during the term, that means the Security Council representative changes too? It just seems very risky to vote for an active nation with a broad political spectrum- a Socialist could vote for a nation and end up supporting a right-wing Security Council member when the HoG changes.
I share this concern.
Agreed; with any system involving electing Security Council nations, there will be a risk of the Head of Government changing after the election. However, I wonder whether you might possibly be over-estimating the amount of instability this would cause? When it comes to foreign affairs policy, governments tend to focus on concerns related to their core national and geopolitical interests - whether they are left-wing or right-wing. In the UK, for example, there are some foreign policy changes whenever we switch from a Labour to a Conservative government or vice versu, but by and large, there tends to be more continuity than change.
Also, bear in mind that Security Council elections will be reasonably regular (once every real-life month), so there will be opportunities for nations to try to eject Security Council members they are unhappy with.
But as I say, I accept the basic point you are making, and yes, this inevitably means it would probably be wise to factor in OOC considerations as well as IC ones when it comes to deciding which nation to nominate. ie. You may want to think in terms of "On balance, which nation is most likely to be a positive/stable presence in the Security Council for the next RL month?"
mpog wrote:Another problem of voting for nations is that due to changing majorities in the elected nations we may end up with players that don't RP in the Council.
Agreed; this is another concern I was wrestling with when considering the scheme. However, here are some reasons to be more optimistic:
* Players who are enthusiastic about Security Council-related RP are likely to gravitate towards Security Council member nations, especially at times when the RP is hotting up. This will make it more likely that those nations participate in the RP.
* As it says in the outline, "A player controlling a Head of Government may opt to nominate another player to RP the nation's representative at the Security Council". So if a player controlling the Head of Government is not interested in Security Council RP (or else perhaps just doesn't happen to have the time available, or whatever), then they can delegate the RP to another player.
mpog wrote:2. What is the role of the Security Council and of the World Congress?
This has not been developed in detail yet, and it will probably take time for more detail to emerge. However, since the World Congress is named in the outline as Particracy's equivalent of the United Nations, we can safely assume the organisation's founders had a general ambition to try to keep the peace, discourage international aggression, build better relations between national governments, and so on.
mpog wrote:3. Could we have the option added to not participate? I don't mean abstaining in votes, but the possibility of nations not being members of the Organisation.
Another good question. Right now, membership of the World Congress is not actually something we have a very defined concept of. By this I mean, for example, that there is no fully sketched-out mechanism for a nation to join the World Congress, leave the World Congress or be compulsorily ejected from the World Congress. Everything has been kept simple. We are working on the assumption that all nations are entitled to participate in Security Council elections if they wish to do so, and also entitled not to do so if they do not wish to do so. Similarly, we are working on an assumption that national governments and other political actors across Terra are entitled to form their own assessments in terms of how much legitimacy/authority they attach to formal resolutions issued by the Security Council.