Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

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Scott Alexander
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Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Scott Alexander »

We need a way to make big decisions like whether or not to let a new country into Bastion, but everyone is a bit wary of anything that looks like a Bastion-wide legislature.

The easiest, least legislature-like thing I can think of is for the heads of state of all the Bastion nations to meet to consider these issues - ie the Emperor, President, Kaiser, and Emperor - and decide among themselves. If they split half and half, it fails (or if it's not a pass/fail vote, Ari gets tiebreaker).

Discuss.

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Octavius
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Octavius »

Makes sense.

I'm not sure how else I can contribute to the idea-generating. It just simply makes sense. Some sort of leadership council to deal with pan-Bastion issues, when they come up. It won't do a whole lot, so there isn't even a point behind having such a council chosen by other means. Ari getting tiebreaker, though... I mean, obviously, he is our benevolent dictator, but...
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Jonas »

Hhmm. In case of such a vote between the leaders I advise to make it a support of 100% to avoid that there will exist a grudge about letting a nation in when there's just a tie.
Don't forget that we all have to live with each other more or less: if e.g. the Gralans have a serious dislike of nation X (but the others don't), then it could lead to unrest.
So, I advise a 100% approval rate...
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Octavius »

Indeed. If not unanimous approval, it ought to be a supermajority.
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Gerk
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Gerk »

Agree with the idea of unanimity. However, I'm sorta unsure as to whether the Gralan Emperor should be the one making this decision. While he is the head of state, he doesn't have anything to do with foreign affairs, which this is obviously a part of. I would suggest (and this is a suggestion more for the Gralans than anybody else) that the Triumvirate, or at least the Emperor and Lord General come to an agreement regarding the decision.

I would also further suggest that each country be allowed to develop their own way of deciding whether to admit a new nation. If they just want to leave it up to the head of state, as suggested, then fine. But it shouldn't be overly complicated, and we ought to have some sort of time limit on the whole thing so that we don't spend a month deliberating and potentially hurt the feelings of the new nation.
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Jonas »

Gerk wrote:Agree with the idea of unanimity. However, I'm sorta unsure as to whether the Gralan Emperor should be the one making this decision. While he is the head of state, he doesn't have anything to do with foreign affairs, which this is obviously a part of. I would suggest (and this is a suggestion more for the Gralans than anybody else) that the Triumvirate, or at least the Emperor and Lord General come to an agreement regarding the decision.

I would also further suggest that each country be allowed to develop their own way of deciding whether to admit a new nation. If they just want to leave it up to the head of state, as suggested, then fine. But it shouldn't be overly complicated, and we ought to have some sort of time limit on the whole thing so that we don't spend a month deliberating and potentially hurt the feelings of the new nation.
I assumed that each nation would separately arrange show they would let their leader decide on the matter. In case of Shireroth, it would probably end up with the Kaiser being the boss and making the decisions as an absolute monarch should do (that's said: de facto I assume that he would follow the Landsraad decisions).

And I agree: there should come a time limit to vote.
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Gerk »

Yeah, that's essentially what I meant, Jonas.
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Scott Alexander
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Scott Alexander »

Unanimity kind of scares me. Greg Russell knows why. So does anyone who had to live through the whole Treaty of Lisbon debacle in the EU. I'd be up for a supermajority, though.

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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Jonas »

Scott Alexander wrote:Unanimity kind of scares me. Greg Russell knows why. So does anyone who had to live through the whole Treaty of Lisbon debacle in the EU. I'd be up for a supermajority, though.
I live in Europe... I'm not scared by unanimity in an affair like this as it hasn't much to do with politics, changing our institutions, etc.
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Scott Alexander
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Scott Alexander »

Maybe the view of the Lisbon Treaty from Ireland looks different than the view from Belgium :)

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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Gerk »

yeah, I don't usually tend to go for unanimity, but for something where there is going to be four or five votes among a friendly group of people, it doesn't seem like a terrible thing.
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Scott Alexander »

Four or five votes now. If Bastion grows bigger, it'll be more than that.

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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Jonas »

Scott Alexander wrote:Four or five votes now. If Bastion grows bigger, it'll be more than that.
Four of 5 votes? Nothing against Ari, but I'm not sure that we should give him a vote in this matter (as it is very well possible that he will have influence enough in the other nations).
Important characters:
Frederik Alfons des Vinandy-Paravel, King of Batavia
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Scott Alexander »

I agree, I was just quoting from the post above.

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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Gerk »

How much bigger do you honestly expect this to get? I really don't think we should get any bigger than five, honestly. It'd just be far too massive.
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Harvey »

But it may be naive to assume that all member states will survive or never leave. I sincerely hope this is not the case any time soon, but nothing is permanent.

Scott, in your model, would the heads of state have time to poll their citizen base in some way? At least in Nelaga, I'd feel very happy if the President had at least some sort of national informal poll on what our stance should be. These things do tend to take a little bit of time, but it should be worth spending on the important issues.

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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Scott Alexander »

*shrug* I don't think this should be quite as formal as having a time limit. I think we should try to avoid having everyone do it, since that would be suspiciously "Bastion-wide government"-ish, but given Nelaga's particular democracy fetish I don't have any objection.

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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Octavius »

Have each nation figure out its own way to vote on things, then.
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Nathan »

I think that's the best way. It allows the national leader to make fast decisions for relatively small administrative decisions, but hopefully for larger decisions (new members, etc) the national leaders will have time to poll their citizens. I think a pan-Bastion decision is ok in situations like that since a new member would affect all the Bunioners.

As long as we don't make a forum called "Bastion Union Leadership Council" we can avoid the trappings of a Bastion legislature, just handle them in this forum as they come up.
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Re: Proposal: Bastion Policy-Making

Post by Octavius »

Babylon 5 Bastion Council.
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