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Democracies on LOTC, thoughts?


Javert
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Do you like true LOTC democracies?  

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  1. 1. Do you like true LOTC democracies?

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      33
    • No
      62


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Since Democracies are hardly ever done on LOTC (And I mean true democracies where the actual PRO is elected, not just a constitutional monarchy like Haense's Duma), I've always wondered. How do people feel about them and why do you think they've not been tried as much?

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Haelun'or

But a cool idea, would need some working for humans to accept, orcs could easily make rex elected and dwarves kinda do

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As much as I love how fair this system would be, some players would oocly not be experienced, or would chase their own benefits rather than everyone as a whole. I feel like democracies should be there only with a limited amount of players, whom are trusted enough.

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it fucking sucks

 

after running through a couple haelun'or elections i (personally, nonobjectively) despise the system because i think it fosters a really toxic group mentality and endorses people who are most popular, or most oocly organized, rather than roleplay or competency. I saw what it was like to elect an unpopular opponent and it to devolve into a really toxic (on both sides) situation that was entirely OOC, when on an actual OOC level these people had nothing against one another. obviously most of us are adults and have the mental capacity to move past that and have, but I strongly think that democracies aren't done and don't work for the reason that it's mostly ooc piloted and driven. Although all my work/effort/time put into a nonelective Renatus was practically wasted when yoppl undid it and killed the nation, it felt even worse for it to crumble just the same afterward when I was in leadership of Haelun'or to watch it completely tank in activity and presence because of all the spite and anger which was so silly to place there in the first place.

 

Spoiler

i'll add here for the cuties that remember but i dont speak or reference of when i ran for any position, i understand in my 1st run for sohaership it was actually shockingly close. I understand though now with the power of foresight I really dont' think it would have gone over well considering some of the folks (now banned, or have left) on both sides who would've been at eachothers throats about it. Maybe some interesting rp, but I think it would've made an already uncomfortable air even worse.

 

I love the folks now that were there and look back upon them and that time fondly for the couple of fun rp moments there were amongst discord arguments, purges, deletions, lockdowns, and tense vcs. It's so silly it got there in the first place, but I 110% purely think that is strictly due to the fact that a minecraft democracy enabled that animosity to burn in the first place because of the cliquism it endorses. I've never experienced before or after those events anything even remotely similar to what happened then.

 

But coups and ooc plots are just the quintessential highelf experience so maybe my experience is isolated.

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Minecraft elections become really unfun when anything's actually at stake. 

 

19 minutes ago, HIGH_FIRE said:

Haelun'or

But a cool idea, would need some working for humans to accept, orcs could easily make rex elected and dwarves kinda do

Dwarves aren't a democracy at all. A handful of guys voting someone in for life (which is no different to what humans do with the High Pontiff) is not the same as everyone voting regularly. Both (a) everyone voting (and the OOC canvassing, issues with counting, etc. that causes), and (b) regularity of elections (meaning you're rarely not in "election mode" and stressing over blockgame) make an actual democracy unfun and unviable for reasons that don't affect a normal elective monarchy.

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I wouldn't say Haense's system is a good example of a constitutional monarchy. The Duma doesn't really have the power to set policy and the government's appointed exclusively by the Crown. Most of it also consists of unelected lords. The best example of true constitutional monarchy was probably when the Oren had elected archchancellors and a parliamentary majority in the Diet would give you the keys to power.

But I get what you're saying. That also isn't really true "democracy", per say, where PRO is handed over after the result of an election. This is because doing so requires a lot of institutional trust not only in the government, but in the player base of a community itself. It's often a lot simpler to just designate your successor through IRP inheritance to avoid the risk of having your nation hijacked.

 

Urguan's a decent example of electoral monarchy, but wouldn't really count as a democracy because the senators / clan leaders aren't elected. Then again I may be mistaken as I don't know a ton about dwarven politics.

 

I believe closest example of real democracy in LotC would've been the Republic of Gallmore back in 3.0, where senators were regularly elected by the people and voted on everything as a collective body. Even still though, the system it operated under was highly flawed and we never got to see leadership be passed to a second generation after the project lost steam.

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Electing the NL just doesn't work sadly because people abuse the system in a very toxic and ooc way to get into power

 

That said, I'm in favor of elections to legislative bodies such as Dumas or Senates to have the people have a say in the nation's governance

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When groups come together to form whatever communities they've formed, leadership is already set before any rp around leadership has usually even taken place. The rest is just gradually moving forward with whatever was or is planned. 

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LOTC democracies suffer from a lack of players in every nation to fulfill all of the roles in a modern democracy. You can't really pull off a full legal system, parliament or congress with representation for multiple provinces/states/whatever, and proper checks and balances without literally 100% of your nation's playerbase being senators and lawyers. In IRL societies that is not a problem as your average village has about the same daily occupancy as LOTC does, much less massive cities with millions of people.

Because of this, most LOTC "Democracies" are just INSANELY STRONG, POWERFUL EXECUTIVES with ZERO checks and balances apart from "Uh, if you commit crimes against the Republic, the guards will arrest you and put you in jail for 2 IRL hours or kill you so you can instantly respawn!" And the guards are loyal to the super powerful executive leader anyways and the Democracy turns back into a Monarchy/Dictatorship/Whatever in only a few election cycles. It's not made any better by the fact that PROs are literally GODS of their regions via current rules and can do whatever they want even if a legislature rules against them.


Some big empires can pull of parliaments/duma/congress stuff better than others thanks to having more players to fill up the voter base and run for office, but it's overall much more difficult to run a functioning democracy on LOTC than it is IRL.


I think it's worth mentioning that LOTC Monarchies have huge problems as well. It used to be the case that old ex-NLs (le funny shadow leaders) could exert power and influence over a lot of the server by controlling succession or some NL who really shouldn't be given nation-leading powers are made to inherit the throne (Such as BenevolentManacles most notably).

Overall I think LOTC democracies are better than having dead-beat do-nothing NLs given power through friend cliques but overall still ain't perfect.

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Democracies and republics are two different things. The most democratic process in LotC would have to be town councils wherein citizens vote on issues directly, electing a NL is a republican process by definition not a 'true' democracy.
There have been a number of times NLs were elected, or at least attempted, throughout the server's history. From Al'khazar in Aegis descending into anarchy over electing a King, to the Reformed Kingdom of Oren in Athera that elected Andrik Vydra then Olivier de Savoie, and even the formation of the Novellen Empire where Alexander II was voted Emperor by the human monarchs, and his succession similarly being decided by Haense and Curon's abstain. The Republic of Ves is another example, one I supplanted with just two elections, and I didn't even have to run for NL myself.

Democracies are just that, corruption, Aristotle is 100% correct. Republics are just a few generations removed from corruption, either bouncing back after a Dictator or embracing Autocracy. These forms of government work in smaller, municipal environments, where damage is limited, but implode at national levels which threatens the security of roleplay. 

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It's an innovative idea in theory, but it is not one conducive to the staff-recognised LotC rules system. The fundamental reality is that the office of 'OOC Nation Leader' or 'PRO', as interpreted by staff, is functionally absolute, with pretty much no considerations on the IC context ever taken into account. The only rights that can really be extended to the populace are those which come from the PRO, who can then take them back at any point. The infrastructure of rules that we have today (And have always had, to be honest) treat PRO as an effectively inalienable position. Yes, a coup can technically be called, but the PRO holder retains the position (and therefore legitimacy as the 'OOC Nation Leader') until such time as they're defeated. Bearing this in mind, I think the closest you can get to a democracy on LotC is a constitutional monarchy, with the PRO holding substantial reserve powers. But that creates an alternate dilemma - why would any elected government work for this constitutional monarch and govern their realm for them, when they know they exist purely at their whims in the fashion of any other ruler with absolute power? This is what the PRO system engenders. However, I could see the prospect of a democracy becoming much more viable if there is a rule change which takes into account roleplay when determining how much authority a PRO actually has. 


As many on this thread have mentioned, there are also substantial issues with OOC social cohesion which come with elections. These issues are aggravated when juxtaposed with elections IRL, because RP characters care about a different set of problems than real-life voters do. Most voters in the real world tend to care about kitchen-table issues above everything else - am I getting a raise, what are my taxes like, what is my healthcare situation, how is inflation affecting the cost of living, etcetera - but these dilemmas are almost totally irrelevant in the context of Minecraft RP. The stakes are higher and everything bends towards becoming existential - for example, is this candidate, if elected, going to get us into a war that will destroy our nation? Is our activity going to decline? Moreover, everyone personally knows everyone, so old acrimonies and rivalries play a much greater role. 

 

Running open elections also requires an obscene amount of administrative work that most playerbases simply do not have the capacity and resources to handle. I think Oren was the best placed of any group to actually do that, given the amount of dedicated bureaucrats who were working there, and even then it was a serious struggle. 

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