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**Belschaft** · 01-26-2017, 03:59 PM

The following is my lecture from the January 2017 NationStates World Fair, copied here for those who are interested;

Making Government Accountable

Polls, Dispatches and Regional Officers

Back in the long forgotten days of early 2003, the first regional governments were forming. Groups of friends developed and congregated in the Pacifics and the first UCR’s, and they found that they needed means to organise themselves, means that NS did not provide - back in those days the RMB was cut off after twenty posts, deleted for all time. As for telegrams, you could only send them to a single person, and were only able to keep twenty of them in your inbox at a time. As NationStates grew, so did these regions, and their communities grew more complex. And so, the inevitable happened; the first off-site forum was created.

Like so much of NS’ early history, what exactly happened, where it happened and when it happened isn’t clear, lost to the foggy mists of time, inebriation, regional bragging and failed servers - the word “Jolt” should be mentioned here. To the best of my knowledge the first GCR to establish an off-site forum was my own beloved TSP - though I would not be surprised if someone contested that claim - and a record it can be found here. Regardless of the details of how it happened, it happened, and ever since then off-site regional forums have formed the centre and nucleus of regional organisation, no matter the nature of a region, it’s culture, it’s community or it’s form of government.

The Nature of Forum Government

Forum government is by its very nature oligarchic - I do not use this term as a criticism, but in a strict definitional sense, to describe a system where power and authority rests in the hands of a small group of people; “rule of the few”. Only a minority of players will ever make use of an off-site forum, though how large that minority or how representative of the region it is varies. How these various off-site forums operate and organise the regions they govern also varies, but in the case of every single GCR - even TWP, which has historically rejected the idea of a forum government or constitution binding the in-game Delegate - there exists a governing minority, organised outside of NationStates. This is the case regardless of the pretensions or claims of such groups - whether they call themselves a democracy, a monarchy, a republic or something else.

What varies among the various GCR’s is relatively simple - how easy it is to become a member of the relevant governing oligarchy. At it’s easiest, all you have to is register on the relevant off-site forum and fill out an application form, which will then in almost all cases be accepted - examples of this type of system being TNP, TSP and TRR. Whilst doing so does not confer power or authority, it does confer the ability to partake in the decision making process of the region in question, typically by voting in the legislature and elections organised on said off-site forum. There is inevitably a circle of trusted and experienced players in those regions, who are have established themselves in the region and are regularly elected and reelected to the various offices of government. This in effect operates as an inner oligarchy; whilst in theory anyone can be elected to office in the “democratic” GCR’s, the reality is that such election is contingent upon the consent and support of the regional establishment. In contrast to this we have regions that organise themselves upon a more directly oligarchic basis, most obviously TP and TWP, which make no attempt to disguise the nature of their organisation, or establish the pretenses of a democratic system. It must be understood that there are genuine differences between these types of organisation, and that many regions do operate a form of internal democracy - it is just that this is democracy within an oligarchy. Between the two ends of the spectrums there are a variety of regions that are democratic to some extent or another, or make use of the pretense of democratic institutions rather than operating as outright oligarchies - Balder and Osiris, or Lazarus during the “Peoples Republic” - being obvious examples.

To illustrate my point, we may look at the January 2017 Delegate elections that have recently occurred in both the South and North Pacific’s. Eighty-one people voted on the TNP off-site forums, whilst in TSP twenty-nine did. On the face of it these numbers appear reasonable, TNP’s genuinely impressive; however, at the time of writing TNP contains 1638 WA nations and TSP 810; each of these is a verifiable unique player. There will of course be unique players in each region who don’t have WA membership, but there is no way to judge their number. Thus we can say that roughly 4.95% of TNP’s and 3.58% of TSP’s regional WA population participate in the organisational structures of their off-site forums; in both cases less than 5% of the verifiably unique regional population. Any system of government in which less than 5% of the population participates cannot be called genuinely democratic; thus, despite the internal democracy that exists within the oligarchies of regions like TNP and TSP, oligarchies these regions remain.

Historically, when presented with this argument the “democratic” GCR’s would respond that the limitations of NationStates prevented them from improving on this; anyone was able to join the off-site forums and participate in the internal democracy. Where there were no unreasonable barriers to entry, this was even true. The limitations of NationStates that forced regional communities to create off-site forums in the first place remained, and there was no viable way to organise in-game, never mind to have a functional government there. However, that has changed - and regional government needs to change as a result.

Polls, Dispatches and Regional Officers

Over the last three years, NationStates admins and developers have made significant technological developments to the game, specifically in the area of regional organisation; three in particular have a major impact on regional government - Polls, Dispatches and Regional Officers. In combination with other improvements - the ability to send mass telegrams, to conduct telegram conversations with multiple people, and the unlimited RMB - these have all made organising a regional community in-game viable in a way it never has been before. Whilst most regions, including all GCR’s, have made use of these tools to organize their communities, they have done so in a manner that has extended the reach and power of the existing off-site forum. Whereas in the past the oligarchy established there would choose from amongst themselves someone to act as Delegate, who would then control the in-game region and it’s WFE, now a multitude of individuals can be chosen and given that control via Regional Officer positions. Whereas once the limited size of the WFE meant that there could be little information provided there - most importantly a link to the off-site forums and instructions as to who do endorse - now dispatches can be pinned to it, providing more detailed instructions and explanations. Instead of just one or two links to the off-site forum, now there can be dozens of them, directing people to the various parts that might interest them. These are just the most obvious examples, but the same is true across the board.

In no major region has there been a genuine effort to make use of these new tools to change the way the region itself is organised, to relocate the centre of government. When we gain a tool that can be used to organise a region in-game, we immediately give control of it to an official from the existing off-site forum; at no point have we attempted to use the tools we have to organise a regional community in-game to organise a regional community in-game.

The reality is that the new tools offer us a way to establish genuine, mass-participation in our forms of regional organisation. In TSP, for example, we have created a two stage system of Delegate election; the first part organised on our off-site forum, the second held in-game via a poll restricted to WA member nations. In doing so, we went from twenty-nine people voting to 109; from 3.58% to 13.46%. This is just a small first step - TSP needs to go much further - but it is a beginning; regional WA members elected their own Delegate, in-game. The process involved polls, dispatches, regional officers and mass telegrams, but in combination they allowed us to organise our community directly in NationStates.

Accountable Government

There remains a need for off-site forums, as an operational hub and repository for the regional community; the single-track nature of the RMB and Regional Polls means that it can never function effectively, for example, as a place to debate and draft legislation, or to conduct a trial or disciplinary hearing. The reality is that the same triad of in-game region, off-site forum and instant messaging that is used today remains indispensable. What we must do is begin making use of the tools we have for the purpose for which they were created; there is no good reason why regional officials should be elected on off-site forums when they can be elected in-game. Why cannot a new alliance or constitution, having been drafted by the regional government, not be put to a popular vote of regional WA members? Why does someone who has moved a puppet nation into a region and registered on the forums have a say in how it is governed after being there a day, whilst someone who has resided there in-game for years have none?

Regions like The Pacific, which embrace their status as an oligarchy, do not need to address these questions - though they should consider doing so. But those of us in regions that like to think of and call ourselves democratic need to, and need to do so urgently. We’re running out of excuses.

_{Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making}
^{Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator}

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Sygian · 01-26-2017, 05:55 PM

Very good read!

Escade · 01-26-2017, 07:44 PM

I'm interested in how your position on this has changed over time as the game has changed. What do you think the next logical step would be from here?

Escade

~ Positions Held in TSP ~
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Minister of Regional Affairs, | Minister of Foreign Affairs | Minister of Military Affairs
~ The Sparkly One ~

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**Belschaft** · 01-27-2017, 01:59 PM

That's something which has actually been debated here extensively over the last six months. Currently I'm trying to draft up a model for a semi-representational system, where public officials with a popular mandate serve as "MP's" within the existing Assembly structure.

_{Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making}
^{Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator}

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Vox Templar · 05-30-2017, 07:08 PM

As a new member of NS and TSP, I have thoroughly enjoyed this lecture very much. It raises interesting questions about how governance is conducted and how do we all proceed in the future.

Thank you!

"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." - Gen. James Mattis

**Belschaft** · 05-31-2017, 01:18 PM

I should note that many of the changes I talked about have now been implemented in some form here. TSP's democratic deficit has been vastly reduced.

_{Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making}
^{Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator}

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AwesomeSaucer · 05-31-2017, 03:31 PM

Very interesting lecture with a lot of smart commentary on the nature of dedicated forums. I do think that there needs to be some kind of an update to the system so that more people can easily access relevant information and elections without having to register off-site.

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Phoenixea
Evan C. | AwesomeSaucer