Political reform - yet another view

Day 2,990, 11:47 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by VoodooMike71


There’s been a debate going on for the past few days, centred upon the general malaise that’s smothering the eUK government and political process. There’s no getting away from the fact that - politically - things have been bad for a number of months now. Political engagement is at an all-time low, while the rumblings of discontent have been growing.

Some say the solution is simple - more people need to get involved. This is, of course, absolutely correct. But it's a message that's been going out for months, and it hasn't worked. I wouldn't pin our hopes on it working in the future unless something else changes.

And so, finally, a debate on the future of the eUK and how we should run our affairs has been sparked. This is very welcome.

Several ideas have already been put forward. Prince Harry suggested linking ministries to parties. Addaway put forward an alternative format for our representative democracy. In his run for CP, Rory Winterbourne II proposed an entirely new way of doing things, which he called Total Democracy.

All these ideas are valuable - as is the debate they’ve started - and all have their strengths and weaknesses. However, I don’t believe that any of them will work 🙁 Here’s why...

Meta gaming
So far most suggestions have relied upon using meta-game techniques to improve things. Whether it be through referenda, meta-game committees or external discussion and voting, the suggestion is that we can bypass the game’s weaknesses and set up better things ourselves.

This is true, and meta-gaming offers a lot of great advantages. But getting new people involved isn’t one of them.



The fundamental issue we’re facing is the lack of political engagement. We end up with the same small group of (active) people running the show, while all of us bemoan the lack of new people willing to get involved. And this is happening while we rely mostly on in-game mechanics.

The problem with moving outside of the game is that it sets up a new set of obstacles that bar people from getting involved. Just look at our use of the forums (the what?) and IRC. The moment you move things outside of the game, you automatically lose a sizeable chunk of players who simply can’t be arsed to faff about with IRC, GDocs, forums etc. So what we end up with is a variety of tools that the same group of active people use to do the same thing they do already.

It’s a shame, because there are good things offered by moving outside of eRep and its clunky, unhelpful mechanics. But the one thing it won’t do is increase engagement and get more people involved, which is exactly what we’re trying to achieve.

So for that reason, in my view, meta-gaming is dead in the water.



So where does that leave us? Here are four possible solutions (some more serious and workable than others)...


Option 1: Dictatorship
Someone mentioned this in an article comment - why don’t we explore the dictatorship module a bit more. Perhaps they have a point.

Everybody used to moan about the political module. Then the dictator module turned up so we moaned about that, and proceeded to think of clever ways to bypass it so we could go back to the old system we used to moan about.

We’re pretty progressive in the eUK, so we’ve test-driven - by my reckoning - four different types of dictator. We start with a malevolent internal dictator. Then we had a hostile MTO dictator. After that we had a benevolent MTO dictator. And for some time now we’ve had Woldy - a benevolent constitutional dictator.


This is not Woldy. It’s General Pinochet


At no point have we really looked at the idea of dictatorship to see if we can come up with a more creative use for it, beyond simply maintaining the status quo of our failing democracy. Maybe there isn’t anything there we can use, but we should at least try. After all, given that political activity is sliding down a slippery slope and increasingly few people can be arsed to do anything about it, maybe an active dictator is what we need?

Also, the day will inevitably come where Woldy says that he’s been dictator for ages and really could do with knocking it on the head, so please can we come up with an alternative. Does that thought send a shudder down your spine too?


Option 2: Parties
RL politics is driven by political parties - it couldn’t exist without them. And yet in eRep calling them “political parties” is a misnomer - parties are pretty much a politics free zone.

In terms of game mechanics, parties are built into the heart of the politics module. We vote for them (rather than individuals) to form Congress. PPs decide who should be sent to Congress. They nominate and support CP candidates etc etc. Parties even get to publicise their political persuasion and philosophy - extreme left egalitarian anyone?

But despite all that, we completely ignore the political element of the party system and turn them into social clubs instead.



When was the last time you saw a proper, thought-out party manifesto? When did you last vote for a CP based on their policy ideas rather than the people they choose to put into the ministries? Who should I vote for if I want to lower taxes, encourage immigration, start a war with Canada or support a system of welfare state for young players? It’s impossible to answer these questions with the name of a party, because parties don’t currently define themselves this way.

Add to that the game mechanics bias towards the top five (and the resulting scrum for members to get in/stay in it). And then consider the fact that all but a tiny handful of people are in a party, and yet 80% of those people are completely inactive both within their parties and politically in general. The result, I think, is the real root of our political woes.

So to get around this, parties could get political. Formulate and publish real policies. Follow those policies through, in Congress and in your choice of CP candidate. Pick cabinets from your own party to strengthen that identity. And then, finally, recruit and engage people based on your (and their) political stance.

And vote ESO! 😉


I’ll make the final two options much shorter...


Change everyone
We complain that the same dozen or so people run things all the time. So how about that group of people simply and voluntarily don’t stand for election any more? Anyone who’s been involved in government or Congress for - say - the past six months steps back and refuses to get involved in any way. This would effectively force the rest of us to get involved pronto, or embrace the chaos that would come with not having a government at all.



I doubt it would be much worse than being wiped by France, and you could guarantee that at least a few new faces would come to the fore.

In the old days, we used to call this anarchy 🙂


Option 4: Ultra Congress
Abolish government and let Congress run everything. Under a dictatorship the CP and - by extension - their Ministers have no direct power anyway, so just get rid of them. Let Congress make ALL decisions, and run all the ministries themselves, instructing the constitutional dictator to press buttons accordingly, just as the CP does now.

Of course, Congress is notorious for being idiotic most all of the time. But perhaps that’s because Congress doesn’t currently have a lot to do. If they have everything to do, perhaps that will focus their minds and encourage them to get organised and do the job properly. And perhaps it will encourage PPs to select the right people for Congress.

On the plus side, Congress is the most democratic organisation in the game, and no matter what the outcome, it would be funny for a couple of months. And, again, some new faces may come to the fore.



So that’s it. I don’t know which - if any - if these ideas would work, but hopefully they contribute to the debate and maybe trigger some change.

Thanks for getting this far.



Carlton says “The wind of change is blowing. Or someone farted. One of the two.”