Why Democracies Don't Work

[zimmerwald1915]

How often went those alliances to war? Direct democracy does work perfectly if you never want to communicate as an alliance with other alliances, but you can probably also stay in peacemode on NONE for that.

I don't know about FCC, but LSF went to war pretty often. Still does, as a matter of fact. And it's not doing so very badly in the NS or FA departments either. FCC was [is?], of course, in Citadel, and you don't get into Citadel without "communicating as an alliance with other alliances", or so we've all been led to believe .

[Lord Hextor]

There is a pretty simple solution to failing direct democracies - show some interest in the membership. This is known as the Hawthorne Effect. When interest is shown in the work of people, the productivity goes up. The moment that interest is no longer shown, productivity immediately slumps. Get your membership base to feel like the work they do is important and keep a steady eye and I am certain things will improve greatly. It's not the direct democracy that fails, it is when the general body fails to show that the efforts made by individuals matter.

I am certain that by alienating the long standing member in your OP, you have made him feel unappreciated, thus, hindering the direct democracy. You felt appreciated for your efforts, therefor you were more productive in it. When you have the ability to keep alienating members, people will feel that if they don't show productivity, they won't get alienated. So from what I read in the OP, it isn't the direct democracy's failure, it was the fact that one individual had a good deal of unofficial power thus striking intimidation in the membership which ultimately hindered productivity.

[Hasin]

Meh.

A benevolent and competent dictatorship would be my ideal form of government, if I had enough trust in one man and his team. The second thing the alliance would need is a strong, informed and active community. The only alliance I see out there with those qualifications is MK. I find The rest of the dictatorship/monarchist alliances are lacking. Just my opinion.

Rep democracy works well too, but you don't need that single person and his team that you trust absolutely. If you have a great community, with a system that promotes the qualities you want, then it works well. The most dangerous thing in democracies are members that value themselves over the community. These are extremely hazardous and will literally destroy entire alliances with great ease. You need to let the community function as a unit, let it make mistakes and have successes. If a member strangles it by imposing his will to generate his successes all the time it will die. That said you need some sort of moderating influence, so the communities mistakes can be smaller. The trick is finding a line where the moderation is at a level where the community functions properly, yet forces it to recognize when it's potentially wrong.

[Lucas Perry]

Any form of government can work, if done right.

My personal favorite is a representative democracy. A lot of alliances have something similar to this, and it works!

[eyriq]

Personally I see Direct Democracy as being the ideal. The membership creates the executive, judicial, and legislative components as they see fit, while still holding all those powers within themselves simultaneously. In the final analysis the membership being able to share in the duties of their supported executives/judicials/ligislatives is purest in terms of efficiently utilizing all membership skills and in creating an Alliance that is truly representative of the membership. Very much like how TOP is run from the sound of it.

[LegendoftheSkies]

The trouble is that people try to bring their vision of an ideal real world government system to a game. A game in which people from different time zones and with differing levels of activity are expect to act like people in a RL political situation.

Actually if you're talking a true direct democracy, the only real-world example I can think of would be ancient Athens. Today, most if not all democracies are representative. I don't think anyone believes direct democracy is the ideal real world government either.

[Lusitan]

Actually if you're talking a true direct democracy, the only real-world example I can think of would be ancient Athens. Today, most if not all democracies are representative. I don't think anyone believes direct democracy is the ideal real world government either.

I believe Norway takes breaks on Representative Democracy with Direct Democracy once in a while.

[zimmerwald1915]

Actually if you're talking a true direct democracy, the only real-world example I can think of would be ancient Athens. Today, most if not all democracies are representative. I don't think anyone believes direct democracy is the ideal real world government either.

Yeah, giving only ten percent of your population the vote and enslaving a third of the rest is real directly democratic

Wait, this is an OOC forum, right?

[Comrade Craig]

A direct democracy, if it is the only method for governing, can be painfully slow and subject to random trends and whims, but the benefit of empowering all members can create a vibrant, close-knit community. Authoritarian structures are effective when quick decisions need to be made, or when dealing with outside alliances.

INT has found a compromise that works well for us. Our congress is made up of all members, and is the ultimate source of authority. Any member of congress can draft legislation and put it up for a vote. Congress also chooses the central committee, which is essentially an executive branch empowered with the ability to execute the law. Thus, we can make rapid decisions during times of crisis (as the military chain of command is always respected), but we are not subject to the tyranny of unaccountable overlords. Our commissars are free to act within the framework created by congress, but are not encumbered with the need for constant approval of every minor action.

I think INT also benefits from the culture that has evolved over time within our organization (and our parent organizations). Such a culture is critical for the success of any democratic group.

Also, my observation of so-called "authoritarian" regimes on planet Bob has led me to understand that all successful dictatorships are acutely aware of popular opinion. When people are unhappy, they leave the alliance, and there is little the leadership can do to stop them. When you see a successful, active alliance that is led by someone with dictatorial control, you can be certain that he/she has a finger on the pulse of the alliance.

-Craig

Edited October 9, 2009 by Comrade Craig

[Napoleon IIII]

Direct Democracies work if you have a very active membership.

Which is why USN is not one.

[BamaBuc]

In a microalliance of extremely close and devoted friends who are all competant and can all get on at the same time... Yeah, direct democracy can work. Otherwise, not so much.

-Bama

[Lord Brendan]

Constant Change of Government. No Idea if that's a Direct Democracy problem, but regular democracies don't have such issue regularly.. or at least no more regularly than any dictatorship would have.

formation.

I disagree here. Dictatorships tend to keep the same leader for a long time (Polar for over a year now, IRON for almost a year, NPO for almost 3 years, TOOL for its entire existence, MK for pretty much its entire existence, etc etc). This can be a good or bad thing, depending on the abilities of the leader in question.

Actually I challenge you to find an autocratic alliance that has had more than one leader per 8 months of its existence.

[Näktergal]

Every government has it's flaws. Government can never be perfect because it is run by people, who are all imperfect.

This, this, a thousand times this.

CN constantly provides examples of governments screwing up, whether they be almost entirely democratic or totalitarian. Centralized and secretive power seems just as prove to self-destruction as power that's shared and open. For every flaw in democracy balanced by a benefit to more centralized governments, there tends to be benefits to democracy that balance out the flaws of more centralized governments.

In a very real sense, almost any government can function properly if those people involved in its functioning are themselves of true quality, while almost no government can thrive in an environment where the "citizens" are either apathetic or outright disruptive.

In terms of sheer organization, democracies tends to work better for smaller alliances, where you don't have to try and coordinate hundreds of members voting on every single issue and still manage to turn out timely decisions. But that doesn't mean that democracy itself is inherently flawed - especially when you realize that larger alliances tend to have logistical and political problems (to some degree or another) regardless of what sort of government they have. It's the nature of a game with a ton of "part-time" players who can't be bothered babysitting the game 18+ hours a day or spending more time on IRC than they would at a paying job.

Part of what I've always found amusing is that the most outspoken detractors of democracy or open, transparent government in CN are the players who've spent nearly all their time in the large, mega alliances, or who see CN as a "play to win" sort of game. But that's a flawed view, because it only deals with part of the playerbase - and honestly, not everyone sees (or plays) the game that way.

Also, even with elite members, direct democracy is pretty awful. When every member has access to the decision on whether or not to go to war, your opsec will go down the drain.

On the other hand, you also reduce the risk of coups, internal corruption by leaders who keep secrets from their membership, and people who refuse to follow orders because they don't understand or support the rationale behind them. It also (in theory) tends to limit the dangers of a cult-of-personality government where representatives are elected or appointed solely out of popularity, because no one knows anyone else well enough to say "so-and-so is the best person for this job". Not that every centralized government would suffer from these flaws - but then again, not every democratic-style government is a paralyzed ball of indecision, either.

Everything has pros and cons. There is no one universal government style in the game that would appeal to and function for every player, or that will guarantee a fresh new alliance success in all their desired goals simply by adopting it.

In many ways, an alliance has to honestly decide what it wants most out of the game, and then base their choice of government on that decision. And what works for one might be enough to destroy another.

But, to me, alliances in this game need a set leader and a group of people under them that are active, aware and willing to put in some work to further the alliance. This system provides some consistency to the alliance, its government and its policies. The only real flaw with it is that often people in the alliance get frustrated by not "going anywhere" in the alliance and a lot of the time it is a fair criticism. But, to me, it is a good thing because people should earn a place in a leadership role in an alliance and not expect it because they have been in an alliance a long time or come from another alliance where they had a role in the alliance.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one could say your view on the subject is somewhat biased, all things considered. You really haven't been one of the "little people" in years, and when you've been looking from the top down for nearly 3/4ths of the time you've been playing the game, it isn't always easy to get a feel for perspective.

That being said, my own perspective tends to be skewed by the fact that I've spent nearly all my time in smaller, more egalitarian alliances, where information is more open and decisions are relatively representative. By this point, I simply couldn't survive in a larger, more autocratic alliance simply because my own playing style and what I want out of the game isn't compatible with their organizational structure. I'd almost certainly be bored and annoyed in alternation until I eventually just left the game out of disinterest.

To address your point, though, I think the NPO actually provides a good example for addressing this sort of issue. When they had the right people to plug into the framework, they were successful in the extreme. And yet, that same system is currently ejecting quality members left and right and leading to apparent in-fighting and a lack of ability to properly react to external threats (if we can base our understanding of their internal affairs on their reaction to the Karma War, their new Emperor, and stories from ex-members).

The government framework itself isn't a universal panacea that functions regardless of who is in it - good government is a product of active, skilled, and determined members who can function well together and share similar goals.

An alliance with 12 members, all of whom are active, interested, and experienced could easily function better as a direct democracy than one with an autocratic government with 50 members, but only 4 of which are really active and effective.

[BamaBuc]

I disagree here. Dictatorships tend to keep the same leader for a long time (Polar for over a year now, IRON for almost a year, NPO for almost 3 years, TOOL for its entire existence, MK for pretty much its entire existence, etc etc). This can be a good or bad thing, depending on the abilities of the leader in question.

Actually I challenge you to find an autocratic alliance that has had more than one leader per 8 months of its existence.

I can't name many off the top of my head, but I'm sure there have been a few. MDC for sure. But I agree with your point that autocracy is more stable.

-Bama

[steodonn]

For my 1st nearly year in CN I was in a Direct democracy that worked great and we got rid of the problems that you listed here mostly by putting FA ( mostly war ) in the hands of elected MPs and having stable leader and longish term for the elected ministers

the 2nd time around dident work out so well with 2-3 of us being active you really need a good membership for Direct democracy to work

[Arcturus Jefferson]

Where I was rude and vague, Naktergal was elegant and precise.

/Comrade Craig brings up good points in the same vein

[Asriel Belacqua]

I think direct democracy can work if it's under slightly controlled conditions. LSF has been a direct democracy for two years now and they seem to be doing all right. I think part of DoC's problem was that it was a new alliance with a very flexible government. Governments with a bit more structure are probably better early on and once you see what does and doesn't work, you can relax things a bit.

Zenith started out semi dictatorial then became a bicameral legislature. We're actually in the process of converting to a direct democracy. I do think it can work if drafted properly, but if our charter changes very quickly, you'll know it didn't work for us.

OP should refer to your post, and read about LSF, who is a very interesting alliance, and has been using the system that you say fails for at least two years (I believe it is closer to 3 though, like... 2.5 or something, IIRC, I could be wrong).

It is not democracy that fails, simply the one you described did.

Also, idealistic governments are hard to do in CN, and real life. Extremely... hard.

[zimmerwald1915]

OP should refer to your post, and read about LSF, who is a very interesting alliance, and has been using the system that you say fails for at least two years (I believe it is closer to 3 though, like... 2.5 or something, IIRC, I could be wrong).

LSF has been in existence since May 1, 2006. They're three years and five months old.

[Prime minister Johns]

A autocratic government has the advantage of having consistency, the same set of individuals remain in charge and accumulate experience and become better at their jobs with time, (provided they have a certain base level of skill to begin with, otherwise Darwinism takes over and they perish).

Whereas democracy has the advantage of the membership being at least in theory able to impeach a inept leader and replace them with someone else who might be better. It's disadvantage is that leaders of democracies are not always skilled at actual leadership, they are just popular.

[Tygaland]

Actually if you're talking a true direct democracy, the only real-world example I can think of would be ancient Athens. Today, most if not all democracies are representative. I don't think anyone believes direct democracy is the ideal real world government either.

I wasn't talking of examples, I was saying a lo tof people try to supplant their ideal RL government system into this game. Probably as they are unlikely to be able to do so in RL. I think you over-analysed my intro.

[zimmerwald1915]

Whereas democracy has the advantage of the membership being at least in theory able to impeach a inept leader and replace them with someone else who might be better. It's disadvantage is that leaders of democracies are not always skilled at actual leadership, they are just popular.

Not necessarily, if what you're talking about is removing an official in the middle of their term. I don't have the documents at my disposal to actually name an alliance that doesn't have an impeachment/recall procedure written into their charter, but I don't think such a thing is all that common. You're probably talking about simply not re-electing the "inept leader", and putting someone else in his place come election time, but that's not at all the same thing as impeachment/recall.

An actual impeachment/recall system that allows the body politic to remove the "inept leader" whenever they feel like is much more akin to the system in place in "meritocracies" where officials serve "at will". That is, they serve at the will of their alliance's autocrat. In a democracy with a recall system, the hiring and firing power is reserved not to the autocrat, but to the body politic: this particular "advantage" of an autocracy, the ability to replace crap leaders at will, is shared by democracies with recall systems.

Of course, there's also the possibility of letting elected leaders fire their elected or appointed subordinates, which, when used in tandem with a recall system, can produce a very competent democratic government indeed.

[Satsukage]

Not all governments suit one alliance. some alliances would work best with democracies, some would work best with monarchies. It depends on the people. Like John Locke said, the governed need to approve the government. Anyways, you cannot say that a direct democracy is not gonna work for every alliance on planet Bob, because the fact is it could work for some alliances. Let me give you an example, Many people believe Communism is terrible and treats its people horribly. Yes, Communism is an ideal government in theory, but in practice it may not be as ideal as people believe it to be (not saying I like communism, I personally don't) . However, communism suits the people in China. Other people in the world might see China's government as a terrible thing, however, the Chinese people approve of their government and as of now, China is in fact doing very well. Same idea with a monarchy. Absolute power given to one ruler can cause problems according to who the individual is. People if the people approve, then it is acceptable. It is up to the governed to decided whether the govern is right or not. The outsiders (the people not in the alliance) might think the government is terrible, but it depends on the frame of reference.

[Timtacious]

I love me some Jorostian dictatorship

Yeah, I agree, it seems like it'd be tedious.

[Tygaland]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one could say your view on the subject is somewhat biased, all things considered. You really haven't been one of the "little people" in years, and when you've been looking from the top down for nearly 3/4ths of the time you've been playing the game, it isn't always easy to get a feel for perspective.

But apparently far easier to criticise th eperson rather than the argument.

That being said, my own perspective tends to be skewed by the fact that I've spent nearly all my time in smaller, more egalitarian alliances, where information is more open and decisions are relatively representative. By this point, I simply couldn't survive in a larger, more autocratic alliance simply because my own playing style and what I want out of the game isn't compatible with their organizational structure. I'd almost certainly be bored and annoyed in alternation until I eventually just left the game out of disinterest.

It is a good thing that you have a choice as to which alliance you join then isn't it. Much like the choice to join whichever alliance you like, you also have the choice to leave whenever you like. As for smaller alliances, STA did not start of large and I'd classify the alliance as mid-sized at the moment. When I lead the NpO it was not a large alliance either byt today's standards and it had some democratic aspects with the councils. I was also in ONOS in its early days and a regular citizen and also in >_< as a regualr citizen and well as a stint in the NpO as a regular citizen. As most of my CN career has been in the STA, an alliance I created, it is fair to say the majority of my time in the game has been in a leadership role of some sort but it is not fair to say I have not been around the traps and experienced the lower levels of alliance membership too.

To address your point, though, I think the NPO actually provides a good example for addressing this sort of issue. When they had the right people to plug into the framework, they were successful in the extreme. And yet, that same system is currently ejecting quality members left and right and leading to apparent in-fighting and a lack of ability to properly react to external threats (if we can base our understanding of their internal affairs on their reaction to the Karma War, their new Emperor, and stories from ex-members).

The government framework itself isn't a universal panacea that functions regardless of who is in it - good government is a product of active, skilled, and determined members who can function well together and share similar goals.

Yes, it is the method of identifying those members that is the crux of the issue. Does a democratic vote to elect representatives successfully identify the best candidate or does it promote a popular but possibly unsuitable member to a role better suited to someone else less spam-inclined? Does direct democracy as a system water down any potential assets to the alliance by removing any way of a talented and dedicated member to rise above the others and put their skills to use?

An alliance with 12 members, all of whom are active, interested, and experienced could easily function better as a direct democracy than one with an autocratic government with 50 members, but only 4 of which are really active and effective.

If you had read my statement I did say that the problem with democratic government in Cybernations becomes more pronounced the larger the alliance gets. Purely by the fact that the more people you have the more likely they are to be from different timezones and coupling that with differing levels of activity the direct democratic process will become a grind.

I'll also point out that I said I had no issue with alliances using whatever form of government they like. Good luck to them if they want to use direct or representative democracy or have a magic 8-ball guide their decisions. For me, I think the best form of government in this game is one with an "emperor" or whatever title is chosen as supreme ruler and a solid team of members as advisors or counsel. I think continuity and consistency in policy and government is important to an alliance.

[LegendoftheSkies]

Yeah, giving only ten percent of your population the vote and enslaving a third of the rest is real directly democratic

The fact that they permitted slavery doesn't change what type of government they had. America permitted slavery until the mid/late 1800s and it was still considered a representative Democracy even when they had slaves who didn't have the right to vote. In any democracy you have restrictions on who can vote. Sure, not letting slaves vote hardly seems ethical, but you can't deny that Athens was one of the first to act on the idea of a normal citizen getting a direct say in what laws their country would enact and is one of the most well-known examples of such an idea in action. Of course it's not a perfect democracy when viewed from our current perspective, but back then slaves were considered property, not citizens. That's just how it was. Judging the ethics of people who lived thousands of years ago by the standards of today is ridiculous. They had a totally different mindset.

Though, that has little to do with my original point which was that few people today would consider a direct democracy an ideal government for a real world nation. I tend to believe that representative democracy was derived from the direct system as an improvement.

Edited October 10, 2009 by Legend of the Skies