There’s obviously a third option, which is to maintain the current language which clearly prohibits someone from being TSP Minister of Foreign Affairs and TNP Minister of Foreign Affairs whilst possibly prohibiting someone from being TSP Minister of Foreign Affairs and TNP Delegate.

Vagueness is not always a vice when it comes to the law.

I think at the very least the current law should be extended to a definitive prohibition on simultaneously holding a cabinet office and a non-figurehead head of state/government position in another region. Especially in regions without elected cabinets where all cabinet authority is derived from the Head of Government like TNP. Frankly I think that cabinet officials should also be required to commit their WA to either the region proper or the SPSF as well, but I expect there would be resistance to that idea.

WA committing won't work, and TEP's style is a nightmare. No thanks. Even the NPO with their restrictions don't really enforce them much, if at all. Otherwise it would have been impossible for me to be TRR's delegate and be in the NPO. As TEP is now, that would have been impossible for sure (and that is just for the equivalent of legislatorship here!).

I'm the Head of Government and the Delegate for Inferno Stellaria. Which is hardly speaking a region. While it technically is, it's much more accurate to call it a Personal Server of Phoenix +. Quite a few people here could agree and attest to this. I would understand in a case like TNP, but it would be madness to bar me from being Minister of Culture here in TSP for that.

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Personally, I think that placing greater restrictions on authority over government positions is a good prospect, especially with the possibility of the risks that conflicts of interest pose as HS mentioned. However, there should be some leniency on these restrictions themselves.

- The WA/SPSF membership requirement that has been brought up should only apply to the Cabinet and obviously the Delegate, as positions like the Local Council, Chair of the Assembly, Chief Justice, etc. having this restriction would be unnecessary, as they are positions that basically do not require interactions with foreign regions and thus are not immediately involved in foreign affairs.
- The point concerning equivalent offices should only apply within their respective branches of government. For example, Example's Delegate cannot be TSP's MoC, as they are both executive positions. However, the foreign region's Delegate can still be TSP's Chair of the Assembly, as one is an executive position and the other is a legislative position.

These should solve the issue of restricting potentially willing players, especially foreigners and non-WA nations, from having their chance of being an Officer of the Coalition, while still keeping some degree of security regarding conflicts of interest.

While keeping your WA in the region could possibly imply a greater level of commitment, keeping a WA elsewhere doesn't necessarily imply a lack of commitment. People can have their own goals or involvements elsewhere, people could simply prefer to keep their WA elsewhere, or even not be in the WA at all. If the candidate has no clear conflicts of interest and has a proven record of working honestly and diligently in whatever ministry they are running for, why should it matter where they keep their WA?

Basically all of the current Cabinet, as well as the previous two Cabinets (as far as I remember), either has had their WA membership on a TSP nation or is a member of the SPSF. Having a WA/SPSF membership requirement wouldn't affect the current situation that much.

(This post was last modified: 05-20-2021, 10:31 PM by Stan Melix.)

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Hmm. It's more democratic because the voters can vote people with big CoI's out, but being say MoFA here and MoFA somewhere else might be problematic.

On the former portion of your statement, I ultimately think it comes down to how you view the Assembly. I personally view it as our prerogative to make such qualification-related regulations on the positions which we elect people to. However, it could of course be your philosophy to simply let the Assembly decide each individual time without the blanket regulation. 

For the latter, I don't think the Assembly would ever elect someone in that circumstance, nor do I think in other places an executive would appoint someone in that circumstance barring some extraordinarily strange circumstances. The only situation I could see this happening realistically is when one of the regions is a small or mid-sized UCR. I believe The Communist Bloc and Wintercrest have the same FA leaders, for example. Though, that scenario is already outlawed by this iteration of the law as I understand it.

MoC or MoE conflict of interests aren't really as problematic anyway, so those I wouldn't mind removing that restriction.

I think there's room for problematic stuff in the realm of cabinets making joint decisions and declarations. However, I concede it is not nearly as objective or pressing as two directly equivalent positions would be.

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I'm the Head of Government and the Delegate for Inferno Stellaria. Which is hardly speaking a region. While it technically is, it's much more accurate to call it a Personal Server of Phoenix +. Quite a few people here could agree and attest to this. I would understand in a case like TNP, but it would be madness to bar me from being Minister of Culture here in TSP for that.

This is an important point. Earlier on HS came up with a bunch of examples of conflicts of interest involving non-FA minister positions, but they were all about big-name GP regions like TBH, Osiris, and Europeia. While I'm inclined to agree with his reasoning in those cases, I know that the effect of his proposed law isn't limited to big-name GP regions where a "conflict of interest" would actually be reasonably likely to have FA/political consequences. Rather, the amendment targets any region "with an established system of government", even ones where holding a position of authority has almost no chance of affecting TSP.

For me, I've been Forest's offsite administrator for several years and Communications Branch until March, positions which gave me a Regional Officer position and an official role in Forest's government. My job has been basically to ensure the forums are working and run the annual photo contest. But I'm also a member of the CRS here in TSP -- so that'd be a conflict. I'd have to stop running the Forest photo contest, because, um... it conflicts with my TSP security position.

But say I did that, and resigned upon the passage of this amendment. I'm also an administrator in the roleplay/worldbuilding region Tiandi -- part of its appointed leadership team. Tiandi is a completely different world from TSP, more a communal chatroom and wiki-building discussion space than anything most GPers would recognize as a region. But it does have an established government, however unimportant, and I'm part of it. So, despite the fact that I bet none of you have ever heard of Tiandi, I'd have to immediately resign from there too.

But wait, I'm still not clear. A few years ago I founded a region called Meihua. At its height, it had about 60 nations, a forum, and a constitution being drafted. But it's gone highly inactive and now probably has one message on Discord every month or so. Nevertheless, as founder, I am the active governmental authority of the "interim" government. I'd have to transfer that power off to someone else. Which would, ironically, be the most activity the region's seen in over a year.

(Of course, we also have NationStates Today, where I'm Chief Executive. Is that covered? It has a government (the Board and Governors), but firmly doesn't consider itself a region, and you can't be a citizen or have your WA there. So is it a region? I don't know.)

Suffice to say, I'm not going to be quitting all three of those utterly non-GP regions -- Forest, Tiandi, and Meihua -- just to satisfy an arbitrary consequence of a TSP requirement more aimed at TBH, Osiris, and Europeia. I'd much more quickly resign as a CRS member, where frankly I do just about nothing anyway.

I fully agree that even non-FA government positions can often have FA implications. But when you're talking about regions that explicitly are not involved with the GP world at all... sometimes it really is true that positions in those places have no possible FA implications. HS's amendment strikes me as overkill for nevertheless banning them, if nothing else.

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I do not. I see an issue with same responsibility positions. I believe Belshaft's assertion is the correct one. The worst scenario we will have is a person will use both those positions to pursue a same agenda in both regions. Belshaft's additional mention of Delegate can sometimes apply.

MoFA in TSP and Officer of Culture is not a path to pursue a same agenda. Well unless your agenda is to enforce culture via FA lol.

At the best scenario, it's as I said earlier in the thread, it will breed laziness and lack of creativity.

There's zero reason to lessen current restrictions, and it's my personal belief making them much more restrictive is a dumb idea.

Sorry, but I really don't agree with this argument (I'm new here, but wanted to chime in because I saw this brought up twice ). IMO something like foreign affairs, or even WA possibly, could run into that problem. I think there WOULD be a problem if someone took up a whole bunch of foreign affairs positions and then tried to lead a bunch of regions in the direction they wanted, because they're more interested about getting what they want done than the interest of the region. 

But for culture, or something like integration/welcoming/citizenship? At its core, I think you would just be upset because one person would be killing two birds with one stone. I don't think there's necessarily anything deceptive or malicious about being a culture minister in two regions. Let's say I'm a culture minister for region x or region y. I have a great idea to hold this contest for the region, and it goes great! Why shouldn't I do the same thing in both regions? In the end, both populations get a benefit of having a fun activity to do. If I had the same idea and only was responsible in one region, the result would be one region gets to experience the event, but not the other (which is even worse than both regions getting the same thing). If both regions are happy about the event you put on, why shouldn't you be able to do it in both? 

I think the crux of the argument here is that we don't think someone should be able to cash in a whole bunch of credit if they only come up with one idea and just copy + paste it everywhere. Personally, I think for these departments, if someone's good at their job and wants to work for a whole bunch of regions, they should be able to! If they're good at what they do, I don't see why they can't help out two regions at the same time.

EDIT: 

Also, I think there's been a lot of debate about what positions should be restricted, which shouldn't etc etc. Personally, I would most prefer for the voters to decide on voting day on whether they think it's appropriate that x runs for y position or not, but I know others disagree. However, I really don't think we should pursue specifically labeling which positions are barred from serving in which positions at the same time. I feel like that just gets messy. And especially if we start to consider things like whether the region is large, small, neutral, allied, etc etc....I think it just gets difficult. There are so many factors to be considered! That's why I think that this needs to be decided on a case by case basis, and just not something that should be legislated outright with a blanket ban/approval.

(This post was last modified: 05-21-2021, 12:06 AM by moe.)

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I do not. I see an issue with same responsibility positions. I believe Belshaft's assertion is the correct one. The worst scenario we will have is a person will use both those positions to pursue a same agenda in both regions. Belshaft's additional mention of Delegate can sometimes apply.

MoFA in TSP and Officer of Culture is not a path to pursue a same agenda. Well unless your agenda is to enforce culture via FA lol.

At the best scenario, it's as I said earlier in the thread, it will breed laziness and lack of creativity.

There's zero reason to lessen current restrictions, and it's my personal belief making them much more restrictive is a dumb idea.

But for culture, or something like integration/welcoming/citizenship? At its core, I think you would just be upset because one person would be killing two birds with one stone. I don't think there's necessarily anything deceptive or malicious about being a culture minister in two regions. Let's say I'm a culture minister for region x or region y. I have a great idea to hold this contest for the region, and it goes great! Why shouldn't I do the same thing in both regions? In the end, both populations get a benefit of having a fun activity to do. If I had the same idea and only was responsible in one region, the result would be one region gets to experience the event, but not the other (which is even worse than both regions getting the same thing). If both regions are happy about the event you put on, why shouldn't you be able to do it in both? 

I don't agree with this because people are inherently lazy. Even if we are not trying to be, our real lives and burnout can appear at any given time in addition. Time and time again, in every single region with activity we see people take up post and can do the bare minimum. Those who go full throttle are either younger new trailblazers who throw themselves into things (Phoenix and Hyacinth are good examples) or they're people who are really good at doing what they do and getting it done (which not all of us are fortunate to have the same level of skill and drive).

That's just one person in one position. I will admit I am jaded here, but over a decade does that to you. When I see people have same level positions in culture for example or at least a part of cultural teams, they'll recycle the same stuff between regions. It's the easy way out. I am not saying it's inherently bad, but it's not innovative. It stagnates creativity. So I do not believe in exemption.

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I'm retracting my proposal. Ultimately, while I'm in principle very wary of conflicts of interest for all the reasons I've outlined, I have no answer to the arguments about legal language raised by @Somyrion or @moonstar. And I'm not really sure I can come up with language to resolve these problems cleanly.

I don't think Alt's proposal is anywhere near sufficient, but it's something I wouldn't mind voting for. The critics of it are right that it doesn't do or matter very much. But I really do think devoting your WA to the region is the bare minimum form of prioritization we should ask of the Cabinet. I also remain opposed to the original proposal of repealing the only existing conflict of interest prohibition.

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My proposed amendment doesn't restrict individuals to one region. It restricts them to serving in government of one region at a time.

Oops, misread that. Sorry
 

I think at the very least the current law should be extended to a definitive prohibition on simultaneously holding a cabinet office and a non-figurehead head of state/government position in another region. Especially in regions without elected cabinets where all cabinet authority is derived from the Head of Government like TNP. Frankly I think that cabinet officials should also be required to commit their WA to either the region proper or the SPSF as well, but I expect there would be resistance to that idea.

Okay yeah, this is a good compromise, I think. Although my main concern would be what happens to those who are delegates/head of government in their personal regions, if they want to run for Cabinet positions in TSP, i.e what @moonstar said. Maybe get a clearance from the Assembly/the Court? Might be a hassle though.

​​​​​​

-snip-

 

Also, I think there's been a lot of debate about what positions should be restricted, which shouldn't etc etc. Personally, I would most prefer for the voters to decide on voting day on whether they think it's appropriate that x runs for y position or not, but I know others disagree. However, I really don't think we should pursue specifically labeling which positions are barred from serving in which positions at the same time. I feel like that just gets messy. And especially if we start to consider things like whether the region is large, small, neutral, allied, etc etc....I think it just gets difficult. There are so many factors to be considered! That's why I think that this needs to be decided on a case by case basis, and just not something that should be legislated outright with a blanket ban/approval.

I fully agree with Somy and moe on this one; it feels overkill to me to impose a blanket ban barring people from all government positions in other regions and it should be considered on a case-by-case basis. And like I said before, I believe some Assembly/Court purview could work here in consideration as well.

I will oppose the original proposed amendment, as I believe the current law is fine as it is.

(This post was last modified: 05-21-2021, 01:44 AM by Moon.)

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I think a WA requirement for Cabinet members would be totally reasonable, for what it's worth.

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I don’t see at all the point of a WA requirement. I don’t care if a minister has clicked a button to join some artificial UN equivalent. It doesn’t affect me, but it doesn’t help me either. I care if they know their stuff and if they have proven to be committed to doing good work for the region. Them being in the WA tells me nothing about their commitment, it only tells me that they’re good at pressing the “Join the WA” button. What does tell me how committed they are is looking at their prior history in the region, the way they answer campaign questions and checking if they have any conflicts of interest. Them having a WA elsewhere or not at all? That’s a baffling requirement to set.

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(This post was last modified: 05-21-2021, 09:16 AM by Kris Kringle.)

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