Regional Officers

[Twente]

Based on the News below, I believe it is time to strip the delegate of all power that is not related to the World Assembly and let the administrative functions necessary in our region on nationstates.net be performed by active member(s) that can be deemed trustworthy to perform them - this is not an application.

Regional Officers are Rolling Out

Over the next few days, regions will gain the ability to appoint nations as Regional Officers, with authority over specific areas. For example, a Diplomacy Officer can be given the authority to establish embassies with other regions, and a Communications Officer to recruit and manage welcome telegrams. The name and authority of each office is up to you.

To identify the power a nation holds in its region, you'll begin seeing new icons on nation pages beneath the region, signifying their authority: Executive, World Assembly, Appearance, Border Control, Embassies, Communications, and Polls.

This feature has come from much community discussion over a long time: thank you very much to everyone who contributed! It's a big change (affecting over 5,000 lines of code) and could make a big difference to regional dynamics.


Summary

•Regions may appoint up to 12 Regional Officers.

•Executive authority is required to appoint, dismiss, or modify Regional Officers. Only Founders and Delegates can have Executive authority.

•Apart from Executive authority, Regional Officers can be granted the ability to do anything a Founder or Delegate does.

•No Influence is required to appoint, dismiss, or modify a Regional Officer.

•Influence costs are doubled for Regional Officers. That is, most functions can be used freely, but some Border Controls, such as ejecting nations, are harder to use.

•Regional Officers retain power until dismissed.

•The Delegacy can be given a specific set of powers, rather than (as is the case today) being either powerless or fully executive. For example, a region could set their Delegacy to grant authority over Border Control but not Appearance.


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[Imperium Anglorum]

I disagree. For purposes of regional security, since regional officers have a 2x influence penalty from the exercise of border control authority, implementing what you have proposed would be detrimental to the security of the region by forcing extremely high influence requirements on officers who have border control authority. Unless the founder is willing to intervene constantly in the affairs of the region, this would fundamentally weaken the state of Europe and necessarily require a endorsement cap or some other restrictive measures to prevent the government from being overthrown in a succession of coups.

I view this change as something which should be implemented analogous to the Westminster system of government. The Founder is the King-Emperor. The Delegate is the Prime Minister. Regional officers are members of Cabinet. Whilst different implementations would be ... different, this, I believe, would be a fair and understandable way to run the government so everyone understands what is going on and so a framework exists regulated by rules inherited from that system of government to prevent the abuse of power.

Furthermore, implementing the change in the manner which Twente states would also require that the founder actively manage the operations of those officers. Without executive authority, there would be no oversight for those officers in any democratic process. Those officers would then be held entirely accountable to nobody but themselves should the founder by inactive (as he has been for some time). This would lead to a government is unresponsive to the people, unresponsive to changing affairs, and run only by persons who only take marginal interest in the affairs of NationStates Europe.

To implement the changes which Twente is proposing would weaken European regional security to a level never before seen, prevent any kind of rule which is understood and known by the populace, and disconnect the Officers from any sort of popular demands. This would weaken the freedoms and security of European nations and lead to worse results from the perspectives of activity, accountability, governance, and democracy. It would do nothing but build the road leading to oligarchy and a new authoritarian state that is entirely disinterested in the actual affairs of European nations and the members of the region.

Addendum 1

Probably, the response given will be something along the lines of picking the right people for the job. I would argue that is irrelevant. Even if the Founder picked his own clones for the jobs for all of the positions, these issues would still exist. Regional officers would still have the 2x influence penalty, endangering security. The system of government here in Europe would still be fundamentally disconnected from its people. The Officers would also soon realise that without constant founder oversight, they would simply be unstoppable.

As Delegate, a major part of constraining action is the fact that if I am too radical or reactionary, I will quickly find myself no longer Delegate. If executive authority is removed from the Delegate, Officers would have no such limitations and would easily be able to abuse power with no oversight except from an overly active founder. All of these problems still exist. The temptation to use power with no consequences is too large for any person to be trusted with. (Note: The Founder is limited by the fact that if he is ridiculous, the region will quickly empty.)

 

[Twente]

I merely skimmed your statement and will not read or respond to it in full regard until tomorrow, if at all. One thing I did notice immediately is that democratic process you speak off. Europe is not a political entity and has never been a democracy. As before, or as always, you collude the World Assembly, its members in Europe and the accounts of players. You see, Europe is a collection, a user group, of players/people/accounts, not rp-ing nations necessarily. What Europe needs is an Administrator(founder) and moderators(officers). These functions need to be appointed with a specific purpose to each. The delegate in turn can do whatever he wants within the rp confines of the game and play that game with anyone interested. The delegacy and WA are game elements, the founder and officers serve an administrative purpose. In our region they do not belong to the same family.

 

[Twente]

Before reading further, I would like to point out that I am not going to debate. From experience I know this will only lead to frustration and a whole lot of demagogy and it will probably end with some unhealthy godwinning. Yesterday I read IA's statement briefly, like myself I can see he has formed an opinion, a stance that we both are not willing to diverge from. At least, so it appears. Let me tell you what my stance is.

To me Europe’s administration ideally is benevolent and tolerant, but also indifferent and ultimately a technocracy. In my Europe the founder has full executive powers, there is a limited group of officers (1-4) that can provide border control, appearance, embassy, communication and poll functions. I see no harm in the delegate being able to create polls as well, beside being able to do his or her World Assembly task (or not).

To prevent nations, possibly in their infant state, from getting “elected” into a position where it is possible for them to arbitrarily eject other nations that may or may not even be part of the club (WA) that got them elected (*) - neutral, apathetic or actively opposing the WA concept and principals in RP or as a user, the delegate simply should not have any influence over others.

Influence is irrelevant, for the active duty of officers and the founder is minimal to naught. Europe has a long tradition of not being involved in the goings on of the Nationstates world, it has kept to itself, mainly due to the early founding of an off site community forum that facilitated something that NS had not always had in such a way itself. Therefor the members would not or hardly RP globally and the banter on the regional message board has always been just that, in all its unorganized glory (I could go for a taco right now!). Sure an officer could eject one or two nations every now and then, if warranted by bad behavior. This would set an example and precedent. But from all our experience we can conclude that this hardly ever is necessary. Even the messages we don't want to see, such as recruitment for example, is now mostly going unpunished. Without us actually knowing what effect undesirable messages have, I sincerely believe no one takes Nationstates and the regional message board seriously enough to make much of a difference anyway. So influence is not needed, it is not a requirement or prerequisite for officers, since they won't be using it all that much. I can't remember the last invasion. Since Europe is hardly involved in global RP on the NS forums, it is no target. There also is always the founder as a backup AND Nationstates moderators if all else fails in case of disaster.

Note that I do not believe these officers have to be members of this community, but can be any person (not nation) of sound mind in the region of Europe. Lastly I want to add that I also am not opposed to someone currently being the WA delegate for European WA-members to also be an officer – as long as the powers are linked to the officer status and not to the delegate status.

As long as not all nations in Europe are part of the WA, there is no place for a delegate with actual powers. Father knows best, says this benevolent apathetic technocrat.


(*) The delegate is not elected. To become delegate you must play the endorsement-swapping mini-game. The most active, or least hostile, nation wins and becomes club-president.

 

[Miratak]

The founder is active? Then security shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Twente]

The founder is active? Then security shouldn't be a problem.

The founder is active upon request especially from people he knows.

And yes, exactly, security is not an issue, therefor it is not necessary for the delegate to have capabilities pertaining to security, especially since they are prone to be exploited and/or misused for political or personal (in the context of the game) gain of the current endorsee. More so since those capabilities work on any nation in the region, not just on nations or players that are in the WA.

 

[Markuz Von Radec]

Can I be a regional officer for developing nations?

 

[Greater-Nordica]

For me democracy is key to both the smooth running of the Region and for continued activity. I think that the Delegate and Founder should retain their power, but act as heads of state (Founder= Monarch) (Delegate= President) in order to maintain order when things go wrong.

Then I think there should be a Prime Minister, elected by Regional members, who then appoints a cabinet of 11 others to varying roles. That for me guarantees representative democracy, and for security as we are able to suspend the democratic process in order to maintain European Security. This is the change I will be advocating and I will be looking to spread that message.

If I am lucky enough to be picked as a Regional officer I will absolutely accept that the reform process is a long winded one as there are entities in this Region more suited to traditional Founder/Delegate Regional politics. But as we've seen there are also those who are on the more radical reform side, who want to do away with Delegate control altogether. I don't share that view and I certainly think my proposal offers real compromise as well as sound Regional structure.

What I'd like is for us to have the rest of the Regional Officers appointed, and then have a real debate about the constitution of Europe's democratic future.