Federation vs. Republic

[Pelanor Eldrich]

Let the debate begin. It's about time we hashed this one out.
Let's please keep the debate very civil, the overall mood is a bit fragile at the moment.

Thanks! -Pel

Federation vs. The Old Republic

[Pelanor Eldrich]

Here's my current understanding.

DPU: Favors a bicameral structure with a senate composed of representatives of single sims (or sim equivalents of mainland parcels) when we reach a land mass of 5 sim equivalents. Maybe local planning & zoning boards (min 3 persons) for each sim.

CSDF: Favors the republic model with a single CDS wide government and the establishment of non-government organizations. Having NGOs helps create a civil society with the added benefit of keeping the government smaller.

We want to reform the electoral system so that all citizens can rank candidates for office, as is the privilege now of those citizens in a faction. We propose the Single Transferable Vote system as yet another way to enhance the citizens' representation, by allowing them to choose directly their representantives.

We also want to solve the problem of local v. national representation by making all RA representatives local representatives in one, national legislature.

We proposed the CDS to continue to expand as a republic with a unitary political system. One government but with local representation. We successfully defended the idea that the CDS should remain a single republic and avoided early fragmentation into tiny groups.

CARE: Unknown (by me)

Simplicity: Unknown (by me)

Franchulate Act: Allows mainland parcels to be governed either under a republic model (1 local admin only) or using any form of local democratic body which elects the local administrator.

I'm vastly oversimplifying a complex topic. Please look at the forum debates and the political platforms. Keep in mind that we're 2 sims, expanding to 3 with 70-80 citizens (I think). Do we need local autonomy? Do we have too much gov't/too many gov't officials already? What happens to national cohesion with too loose a federation?

Those of you who know me know I'm in the confederation camp, but think that both models can co-exist for expansion. By the way, there are many who do not favor expansion. That bears being kept in mind. While some feel that the fruit of democracy requires more citizens, others feel that we are losing a sense of cultural identity and connectedness with expansion. Discuss. -Pel

[Samantha Fuller]

My annylis of the low population density & comunity activity of sims more or les mirors desmond's as being primarly due to prim limits. However the CDS is not typical. The CDS sims cannot and never have suported a Democratic comunity if anything it is the other way around. What they can and do is host (provide a meeting place for) a much larger comunity intrested in online Democracy. This makes arguments about the CDS teratory being to small or goverment heavy largely irelevent . If we create a goverment people want to be part of it will in due time aquire more sims.

[Sonja Strom]

It seems to me that federalism might be a good approach to expanding the CDS with Franchulates. They could have their own local governments, with these being under the democratic coordination of the CDS Representative Assembly and Chancellor, and its overall regulation.

[Beathan]

Sonja --

Exactly. That was part of Pel's original conception when he put forward the Franchulate bill. I believe that local governance can and should be one of the issues discussed in Franchulate negotiation.

Beathan

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Seriously, having a "federation" of 70 or so people is preposterous The smallest federation I'm aware of is Switzerland, which has 7 million inhabitants, and is an exceptional case anyway. There might be a few smaller ones in the real world, but we'll still be talking about "millions of citizens" or at the very least "hundreds of thousands of citizens", not a handful of people.

Don't overcomplexify a system that is, in effect, already quite complex for such a small community as ours. The old proposal (nevermind the public opinion) was in effect saying that just because you live 50 m away from your neighbour, on the next block, you're part of a different country/state under a different government system and different local laws. That doesn't make any sense, and besides being unenforceable anyway, it creates another level of governmental/debating structure that will lead to nowhere.

The issue went still further to suggest intra-sim segmentation. People living inside the city walls — either in NFS or the CDS — have different needs, different covenants, and different patterns of living than the ones outside. This was discussed ages ago — namely, pointing out that the social patterns "inside walls" in Neufreistadt tend to happen in the streets — most often the Marktplatz; before the demolition of Altenburg, that was a locus of social interaction too — while socialisation "outside walls" happened inside people's houses. So putting both communities under the same "local government" would not be fair, since each group would have different needs, tastes, and the right to different representation.

However, if you start going that route, you'll ultimately go to the "Republic of One", since at the end, we all have different needs...

Notice that "Local representation" is quite different from the "federal" suggestion. It means recognising that a group of citizens living in a neighbourhood have the right to be heard about their neighbourhood, and that right should, indeed, be incorporated into the governmental structures. Currently, any citizen can create their own Neighbourhood Association and demand to be heard at the RA. But this could be reinforced by having RA reps getting elected for "circles" — there were quite a few proposals for that — instead of CDS-wide. That way, every neighbourhood would have "their" elected representative at the RA. That would be an acceptable compromise — not a larger governmental structure, but precisely the same structure in size, just elected differently to reflect local needs better.

Let's postpone the discussion for "federation" when we do, indeed, become a 1000-sim-wide government spawning over very different communities. In that case there will, indeed, be a need for changing the whole governmental structure and creating a supra-entity that rules over 20 or 30 thousand citizens, each affiliated to a specific community.

No, I'm not discriminating against franchulates — they will have their own representative of some sort, too. Just not a double-structure with a Federal Government and Local Government.

It's too soon yet!

[Beathan]

Gwyn --

I think that you are caught up a bit in the labels (the rhetoric) of Federation v. Republic. The key point is one of the degree to which we want (and want to recognize) local autonomy and control.

We have an easy marker (not available in real space) to distinguish one local area from another -- the simlines. Further, our sims have different themes and, for this reason and to some limited extent, attract different kinds of people. I don't think it is absurd to want these local concentrations of people to be able to regulate their own sim space to some extent. Whether we call such a system a "Federation" -- or a "hierachy of governments within the Republic" -- or "community self-regulation" -- does not matter.

Some things strike me as best handled locally (covenants, for example -- and the question of teleportation). Other things strike me as best handled at a unified level (foreign relations; funding; creation of the macro-institutions of government). The two questions are: 1. "Which things should be handled locally?" and 2. "How can we create some mechanism to handle those things locally?".

Beathan

[Gxeremio Dimsum]

Ever get the feeling we just have the same conversations over and over on these fora?

I realize we are (still) small. It's funny that this should be used as an argument against allowing more local autonomy, since when we've had this discussion before (multiple times) a main argument in favor of local autonomy is potential growth. This was shot down by the republicans, who insisted that the franchulate act was enough to send our growth soaring. And while SL passes its 10 millionth avatar milestone, the CDS is basically at the same place it was a year ago. The idea that people would want to sign over their land to be completey ruled by an entity that's not paying for their land is silly - the benefits of franchulates are nill UNLESS you maintain a modicum of autonomy while enjoying the rule of law - in other words, a confederate system.

The argument that we're too small to have federal and local government is flawed, because 1) sims in SL are by definition limited to a small number of concurrent users, not to mention landowners (no point having land unless you can get enough prims on it to meet your needs) and 2) the other option outside of CDS is no federal government and only hyper-local government (one plot of land). So really the point of departure for 99.99% of the folks in SL is not "federal government is obvious, local government is optional," but rather the other way around.

I've used the Esperanto community example before, and now we see a truly thriving Esperanto community in SL, meeting in another sim. If we wanted to create a democratic community at this point, we would almost certainly not enfranchulate as there is no perceived benefit to paying for land and then handing it over to another entity. We might be willing to join a confederation, especially if the benefits included exposure in a wider community, a shared voice on issues of concern, and structures that made it easier and cheaper for us to run a democratic community.

[Sonja Strom]

Well said.

To me it seems that allowing local decision-making (and even local representation) could make life easier for the volunteers in the government. For example, in the two sims we now have, each has its own covenants and Estate Managers. I assume this is the case because it was easier to have it be this way than to have it be the same across the two sims. Localization to sim/franchulate level could be expanded to include other aspects, like granting exceptions to local covenants and ensuring land fees are paid. Then the RA and other CDS-level positions could concentrate more on issues that affect the whole of the CDS.

Such a shift of responsibilities might not have to bring about a difficult and bureaucratic extra layer, but be more like a sharing of governance. For example, each sim could have a Mayor, Councilor, or another better title, to help with issues for that sim. Such a position would not require even a vote of citizens, as it could be appointed by the RA. Of course there could be much more complexity to it if desired, but I do not think that would be necessary in order to have it.

From this, a natural result would be broader and deeper participation in the life of the CDS.

It is true that at this time there are only two sims, and allowing local governance in these two sims does not seem necessary to many (including me, although I also see nothing wrong with it). However, if the CDS wants to grow in size, I believe the tasks of local governance will become more complex and more time-intensive for the individuals responsible for overseeing them. Also, it is possible that with growth consensus decisions will become more difficult to make across the CDS. How I see this is, any time is a good time to talk about and make improvements to the structural framework within which the CDS can become larger and remain an enjoyable community for all of its diverse areas.

[Bromo Ivory]

Local governance makes sense when we have more citizens. I would be all for it - provided we had a certain threshold met of some kind - 70-odd folks does not yet seem to be 'federation' material.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

Personally I think more would be gained by decentralising the political debate on the basis of subjects rather than territory. As we grow it is inevitable that the RA will be asked to decide on more and more issues and serving in the RA could potentially entail sitting in on endless meetings where anyone can submit an item for discussion and everybody presents their viewpoint on and on.

Establishing permanent, standing committees focused on debating issues within areas that seem to arise on a recurring basis would be a way to take some off the decisionmaking burdens away from the RA without encouraging seperatism in our sims and creating unnecessary duplication of decisionmaking on the basis of a community of 20-40 citizens. For example, we could have a city planning committee, an institutional and constitutional committee, a cultural committee and a budget and procedure committee. Each of these committees would be responsible for negotiating every item submitted to them to the point where a position is achieved that is supported by a majority in the RA. The RA would thus not have to meet as frequently and the committees could serve as the place to discuss and negotiate hugely technical issues with the RA simply serving to set political direction and discuss visions of where we're headed. As far as I know this is how many RL parliamentary democracies have chosen to organise their business once the issues under discussion reach a certain complexity of subject matter and plethora of viewpoints.

[Jon Seattle]

We have a lot of very important things to do in the CDS, and the project of making the CDS a federation should take second place, in my opinion, to making the CDS independent and self-managing. I happen to believe that there should eventually be a federation, but I think the DPU has it backwards. You can either assert that:

1. Groups of 20 to 30 individuals should be separate communities and should have separate cultures and this is a good reason for federalism, or:


2. Eventual federalism is a good way to bring existing (substantial) groups together to form larger political entities in Second Life.

I happen to agree with #2, but most of the arguments put forward are aimed as splitting us up at a point where we cannot even organize our own basic management functions, in part because we are so small. Right now the CDS is more or less owned and managed in the RL world sense by Sudane. She does quite a good job. But until we can organize our own affairs can we really dream of “Birth Of A Nation” and other such dramas that will involve substantial growth?

In the end the questions is: do we want the CDS to be a massive role playing game about democracy, or do we want it to be an actual democracy? Perhaps Sudane would be happy to manage the day-to-day RL operations of 20 or 40 CDS sims, each with its own government, but if I were her, I would have my doubts.

If we are serious we need to plan a way of having democratic institutions take over the basic management functions of our community. This is the main task we face. If we manage to get over this hurdle, if we survive the transition into a free-standing organization, then will finally get to ask about the optimal size of our communities. My guess is that any sane answer will be something substantally larger than 20 or 30 people.