Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on August 24, 2021, 06:11:33 PM
(plus there should definitely be some rules to establish what happens if no candidate gets 2/3rd of the vote anyway).

Then the UC continues as a Council of Regency until the Convocation gets its act together. Like what happens with papal elections. A pity we can't actually lock them up and put them on bread-and-water.

Yeah; a conclave restricted to non-Parliamentarians would be one dominated by inactive citizens whom, by Glüc's own reckoning, mostly have no idea what's going on. The kind of conclave that would become a rubber stamp for a long-term incumbent King. Note that I have no issue with the number of MZs being restricted to stop it becoming a rubber stamp for the legislature, in converse.

The other way to get "the broad masses" involved would be to require a new King to win a referendum; but that has the problem of making the process not only more complicated, but more political in the bad way that no monarchist (and few Republicans) want.

Personally, I think Senator Plätschisch's proposal + my amendments is "good to go".

Dieter says that the Witt XII b database is in plain text, including all private messages, and is thus not in a state to be opened to the public in toto. Discussions are ongoing with the Royal Archivist on how to make the public domain stuff available to researchers.

IMHO "overly formal and pompous rules" are a curse on Talossa which make it more trouble than it's worth to do anything, and then people complain about falling activity. Most of the legislative activity I'm interested in is eliminating over-complex rules.

If we're going to make things pompous, let's do it ceremonially. Like require all members of the Conclave to wear wigs and knee-breeches.

Repeating what Dieter said:

Quote
"I still have a final copy of the Witt XII b database somewhere on my computers, as well as rough web crawler copies of Witt XII b and the last Witt that was hosted by MPF (the infamous "stolen" Witt, so to speak). By the time of the reunion the web crawler copies of Wittenberg were published on a host of a Mexican guy (@Danihel Txechescu ???), but I don't know what became of this."

If I'm interpreting what Dieter says correctly, then Danihel should have rough web crawler copies of Witt XII b as well, not just the ones of Witt X which have been uploaded. And Dieter has the real, complete database. So let's not panic.

I have put Dieter and GV in touch on Facebook. Of course they're both members of the FreeDems group, so GV should have just contacted Dieter himself... but for some reason the idea didn't occur to him?

BUMP. What a good idea this was, and we still have to do it.

Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on August 24, 2021, 07:54:08 PM
The past few years however, weve changed forum, pretty much every institution has seen some major reform, we've adopted an entire new constitution, and the hereditary monarchy has been abolished. This hasn't led to any major surge in activity.

All those things you mention are activity, surely? Or do you have a different definition of "activity" in mind? I was just telling one of my Cabinet colleagues that political reforms have to be justified or criticised on their own terms, not because they will increase or decrease extra-political activity.

QuoteFor citizens who are still around but not that active anymore its difficult to keep up, which I fear means many who fall behind are probably lost forever.

Which is why we instituted La C'hronica, to fill in less active citizens, in the absence of a private-enterprise press. Have you got any constructive suggestions how inactive citizens could be helped to "keep up", without - say - returning to total stasis? I should also mention that centre-Left governments enacted the National Surveys, the only serious effort heretofore to actually ask inactive citizens what they wanted.

See, what I'm frustrated with here is an overwhelming negativity from the centre-Right of Talossan politics. What the centre-Left majority doing sucks, clearly, in their eyes; but the Cosa opposition don't seem interested in holding the Government to account via Terps or via Cosa debates, or via building an alternative government. (The best compliment that can be given to the LCC is that, when they were the second-largest party, Ián P. could have theoretically formed a government and at least tried to get Peculiarist support.) Right now, the only effective opposition comes from "the Hand of the King" making extra-parliamentary speeches. This is the kind of politics which doesn't even try to defeat the Government - instead, its best hope is that the majority will decide that the minority was right all along.

I mean, my answer to what to do if the Government is running out of steam but the Opposition don't even try to use the political institutions to hold them to account / defeat them because "what's the point" is that the political institutions are busted and need to be scrapped. But that's precisely what the Opposition want least of all. If the Government aren't as active as they should be, but the Opposition aren't even trying to create a political alternative, then that is a situation guaranteed to form a spiral of dwindling activity. And let me re-iterate - the centre-Left got in its current position after long and hard struggle against a majority conservative party (the FreeDems have never had an absolute majority), so defeating and replacing an incumbent Government is possible under our present Constitution, with hard work and strategy. But the centre-Right has shown no appetite to do so since the RUMP said "what's the point" and dissolved.

I think a form of opposition which is based around stopping the Government enacting its programme, around complaining about Government failures, around a sterile insistence that it is the obligation of the Government to throw out its own programme and let its sworn enemies tell it what to do - rather than actively trying to replace the Government and enacting an alternative programme - will by design lead to a depressing effect on activity. Don't you agree?

Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on August 24, 2021, 06:15:09 PM
At the very least more parties also means more MCs who are thinking for themselves rather than just go along blindly with whatever the party leader says.

You say "thinking for themselves", I say "going rogue on their commitments and what they were elected for".

The argument that individuals breaking with their previous commitments and collective decisions is a good thing, to be applauded, is an essentially conservative one because it insinuates that collective action - of the type needed to make changes in a democracy - is a bad thing. I don't expect for a moment that Dixhet Fira, to pick a name at random, will suddenly become a Republican. It would be insulting to even consider it, IMHO. Party cohesion is necessary for things to change in a democracy, and to smear party cohesion as being "not thinking for yourself" is an argument which betrays an inherent conservatism.

Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on August 24, 2021, 06:30:52 PM
Not sure what to think of the abstain vote now. Although its true it was said each MC would get a free vote, the list of MCs during the election used to include Danihel Txechescu and the campaign, the promise to come up with an alternative and the word "Conservative" in the party name will surely have led many voters to believe that the party wouldnt be voting for a bill that basically left no part of the Talossan monarchy remaining, other than the name.

I think you answered your own question. I'm not privy to internal Beaver debates, but the decision of the party majority on the constitutional issue (and maybe even on sitting in government with the hateful FreeDems?) is probably why s:reu Txechescu is not an MC. And the large vote for Balançéu and Dien (together doubling the LCC performance) surely shows where the single-issue GOD SAVE THE KING voters went and why they're unlikely to feel betrayed by the LCC keeping scrupulously to their election commitments.

Anyway, elections should have consequences. There was a certain Baron who complained, a few Cosas back, that for 9 out of the last 10 Cosas (or some number like that) the same parties had been in government. This is going to happen in a society which is very deeply divided (almost 50-50) over a basic constitutional issue, and where a party can only fall out of the legislature if its own members unanimously give up on it. So: let's make every party which wants Cosa seats work for it.

I'd suggest dampening down on the apocalyptic stuff. There were eleven active Talossans in 1991. We don't want to give encouragement to the demagogues who yell stuff like "if you don't enact MY programme in full right now IT'S ALL OVER FOR TALOSSA!!!" I should also point out that it's Northern Hemisphere summer and people are at the beach.

The argument for a Cosa which requires more than your own vote to enter must be one about the ability of voters to hold politicians accountable - not one of activity. We had a Real Cosa 1997-2003 and I don't think it changed much activity-wise.

Well, I suppose this once more becomes a live issue.

My position is that it must never be more complicated or difficult to get rid of the King through this Convocation procedure than it would to simply delete OrgLaw II.3 through the regular amendment mechanism. That is, a 3/4 majority in the Cosa, 5 Senators, and a simple majority in referendum. Because otherwise, what's the point? The current OrgLaw II.4 will never be invoked because it's harder - requiring a successful case in the CpI and a 2/3 referendum victory.

That is to say, I now support this measure in principle - i.e. as a thing we should do right now - but the thing is that if a King starts acting the goat in the midst of a seven year "term", a sufficiently riled-up legislature will just delete this new OrgLaw II.3 and choose a new King / declare a Republic, making this reform otiose.

I should also point out that this proposal has a similar problem to 55RZ21, in that it instantly puts John W. out of a job, so he's more likely to veto it.

Can I recommend the following amendment:

1) that this amendment replace OrgLaw II.4, rather than OrgLaw II.3;
2) add a provision that 2/3 of the Cosa and 2/3 of the Senäts will be authorised to call one of these convocations at any time, with the same rules (inc. six-month cooling-off period).

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on August 24, 2021, 04:32:19 PM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on August 24, 2021, 04:27:11 PM

It is a mammoth task to get anything to change if the King or conservative forces think it diminishes their power. And those conservative forces will die in a ditch over preserving a Cosa which encourages party splintering and no-one can ever be voted out because they make obstruction of the political majority into a positive good.

I really don't see how one connects to the other here. If a party splinters and thereby loses support in the next election, then sure, they might not lose every last one of their seats, but they should lose a considerable number of them, right?

Sorry, I may have misphrased that. I didn't mean "splintering" in the sense of "breaking up", I meant it in the sense of "encouraging large numbers of micro parties", in the way stereotypically associated with Israel and pre-1994 Italy. As you know, to get monarchy reform through we had to negotiate a deal with at least 5 parties in this Cosa, and 2 of them (in whole or part) reneged on the deal without explanation, and there's nothing we can do about it because you only need to vote for yourself to get seats.

There is a real disconnect in Talossa between those who think democracy means "the majority will should prevail, with respect for minority rights", and those who think it means a kind of eternal status quo where minorities can block any serious reform (and let's face it, a Monarchy is the ultimate minority).

Quote from: anglatzara on August 24, 2021, 02:16:11 AM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on August 21, 2021, 06:10:52 PM
... and the NPW delegation to the Cosă just abstained on this bill that the Party promised to vote for.

I just give up on Talossan politics, as long as there's no way for a party to be put out of the Cosă in an election. There is just nothing to stop people making agreements and then just tearing them up without reason, logic, or explanation. You can't make multi-party deals in such circumstances and therefore doing anything "important" is impossible.

Which is why we desperately need to downsize the Cosa.

As I've said elsewhere, one of the reason Talossa's politics are so "immobile" is that our institutions have a built-in conservative bias, made doubly strong by the Royal veto. It is a mammoth task to get anything to change if the King or conservative forces think it diminishes their power. And those conservative forces will die in a ditch over preserving a Cosa which encourages party splintering and no-one can ever be voted out because they make obstruction of the political majority into a positive good.

An alternative to a smaller Cosa would be an explicit threshold ("you must gain X number of votes to get any seats"). It would still require an OrgLaw amendment but it would put paid to the "granularity" argument. Then we could argue firmly over where political accountability is a higher good than "everyone should get to play legislator".

If I'm reading it right, you're adding exceptions to my proposal rather than changing its fundamentals, is that correct? If that's right, then I would recommend you refer it to the CRL, and if Marcel and Eric agree that it's adding exceptions and not taking anything away, I am happy to present this to the next Clark.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on August 23, 2021, 06:22:45 PM
I'm starting to wonder what we need the Ziu for at all.

For elections, which are the only thing which many Talossans will do any more, and that's partly only because it's compulsory. We've tried a direct democracy system in Fiova and... well, you can see how enthusiastic people are about it.

I would be actually enthusiastic about watching you take over a provincial government and setting it up in the way you think Talossa should work. So much about what we do in this country, we do because of traditions. The Secretary of State sending out Clarks as opposed to two actual legislative chambers debating is the way it has worked since 1985, and the inbuilt conservative bias of our system means that's the way it'll stay indefinitely barring a real social movement.