| Amendment: Assembly's ability on treaty dissolutions |
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Due to some recent debate, I present this amendment to the Assembly:
Quote:IV. THE ASSEMBLY
Deputy Regional Minister of the Planning and Development Agency(March 8-May 19, 2014)
Local Council Member(April 24-August 11) Court Justice of TSP(August 15-December 7)
I support this. This the the type of common sense solutions we need.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
I oppose this, because I think it creates an incoherence in our government. Foreign policy is a function of the executive, not the Assembly. That makes sense, because the responsibility for executing the treaty falls upon the ministers: MoMA must work with the ally's military; MoFA must communicate with them; and MoRA must hold festivals. That's just intuitive, which is why we have a Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the sole authority to deal with treaties.
Our Charter has the Cabinet handling 98% of everything to do with treaties. Only MoFA can negotiate treaties. Only the Cabinet can present them for ratification in the Assembly. And, above, it's the Cabinet's responsibility to do the things the treaty says we should do. This supports the idea that Assembly votes are checks, rather than that foreign policy rests by default with the Assembly. Nobody wants the Assembly as a whole to be negotiating treaties... So, the incoherence this would create is that we can have Cabinet with no intention of having bilateral relations with an ally, due to just the deterioration of the treaty over time and events, but the alliance nonetheless stays on the books if we can't politically maneuver an Assembly repeal vote. If we make it the sole authority of the Cabinet to negotiate treaties and present them to the Assembly, and make it the responsibility of the Cabinet to maintain the alliances, then it makes sense that we should defer to the Cabinet on when those alliances are no longer in our interests. Creating this veto point in the Assembly ultimately doesn't matter, anyways. If a treaty repeal is brought before the Assembly by the Cabinet, in all likelihood the other signatory is going to dissolve the treaty on their end regardless of the outcome. Why wouldn't they? Again, it's not the Assembly that conducts foreign policy, it's the Cabinet, and the Cabinet has already said it thinks the alliance should be over. The other possibility this creates is that the Assembly acts on its own, without Cabinet consent, to repeal a treaty. I think it's is fundamentally unfair. It doesn't make any sense to me at all that the Cabinet is given the responsibility to maintain alliances and given sole authority to negotiate treaties, but then the Assembly may throw it all away without the Cabinet's approval. That's chaotic. We have three branches of government for a reason.
From another point of view, treaties are laws and the Assembly is responsible for legislation.
(07-18-2016, 09:37 PM)Eluvatar Wrote: From another point of view, treaties are laws and the Assembly is responsible for legislation. Treaties are laws in all ways except the most important: the Assembly cannot write them, cannot put them to vote without Cabinet approval, and cannot do much of anything to execute the terms of them. The crux of this disagreement is really where you think power flows from. Some believe it flows from the Assembly outwards, meaning that the Cabinet's foreign policy power is merely devolved from the Assembly. I believe that power to all three branches of our government flow from the Charter itself. We have separation of powers, and the Cabinet is granted all foreign policy power. The Assembly has a check on that power by being required to ratify treaties. I don't think it's a good idea to give another check requiring that the Assembly vote to dissolve them. That's because the Assembly has nothing to do with treaties once they're ratified. It's entirely the responsibility of the Cabinet to uphold those obligations, to organize events, to conduct military missions. If a treaty loses the confidence of the Cabinet, then the treaty has no business existing. Why should the Assembly be able to keep a treaty around when the Cabinet already considers the alliance to be broken? Is it really a good idea to force an alliance upon an unwilling Cabinet? With Balder in particular, there's been years of neglect. I know for a fact that previous Cabinet members (myself included) have wanted to repeal the Balder treaty, but haven't felt like doing the required political maneuvering on top of the verbal abuse we'd get for proposing it. So it just sat there dormant, and in the meantime the TSP-Balder relationship deteriorated do basically open hostility. Why are we okay with that, but we're not okay with just letting the Cabinet dissolve treaties on its own? It's not like the Cabinet just willy-nilly shreds treaties. Balder was the result of years of neglect. Even with TNI, despite having plenty of cause, the Cabinet never proposed to dissolve the treaty. Cabinets just have never proposed dissolutions for no good reason. If that were ever to happen, we have elections and motions of no confidence to remedy it. I think the check on ratifying treaties makes sense. Entering into a treaty is an unknown that can change many things. It has implications for regional alignment, for example. The Assembly should have that check, so an overeager Cabinet doesn't bind ourselves in an unmanageable network of alliances. But when it comes to dissolution, the status of an alliance is already a forgone conclusion by the time a Cabinet feels it necessary to propose dissolving it. It's a matter of formality at most, which makes the case for requiring an Assembly vote unpersuasive to me.
Then do a treaty dissolution like a treaty ratification: Cabinet proposes it, and the Assembly votes on it. How hard can that be?
Deputy Regional Minister of the Planning and Development Agency(March 8-May 19, 2014)
Local Council Member(April 24-August 11) Court Justice of TSP(August 15-December 7)
I can see how one could hold your perspective, and I thank you for reminding me that the President of the United States IRL can in fact unilaterally withdraw from Treaties (according to most legal theorists). However, I fundamentally think that treaties are laws and repealing them is therefore a legislative act.
I would be entirely comfortable with requiring the Cabinet to propose any treaty dissolution, and the Assembly to ratify such a proposal. I don't think debating whether the treaty with Balder should be dissolved or not is appropriate to combine with this debate. This is a separate debate, about the process itself.
(07-18-2016, 10:55 PM)Ryccia Wrote: Then do a treaty dissolution like a treaty ratification: Cabinet proposes it, and the Assembly votes on it. How hard can that be? Again, what happens when the Cabinet proposes it, but political maneuvering in the Assembly prevents the dissolution? We can't pretend here that an Assembly vote is a perfect and innocent representation of the political will. Politicians here and abroad have politicked votes before and will do so forever. At the end of the day, we have a Cabinet that's already stated it considers an alliance broken, but then must still be responsible for executing the treaty. That's not coherent, is it? If the Cabinet reaches the point where it feels it needs to propose dissolution, then the status of the treaty is already a foregone conclusion. All an Assembly vote requirement would do is introduce the possibility of a political and constitutional crisis in our region. We need to stop legislating those points into our laws.
I can't believe I need to say this, but Cabinet is no better a representation of the people's will than the Assembly.
(07-18-2016, 11:16 PM)Eluvatar Wrote: I can't believe I need to say this, but Cabinet is no better a representation of the people's will than the Assembly. No, it's certainly not, but it's the structure of government we've decided to have. If we want a Cabinet, we should let them make decisions on their own, subject only to the most necessary checks and balances. I think requiring an Assembly vote for treaty dissolution is an excessive check. Otherwise, there's no point in bothering with the facade of having "branches," and the Assembly should start directly managing TSP's FA. |
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