View Topic

Becoming a member of the royal family doesn't make them bound to support the Monarchy...in fact, despite Chanku being a prince, he's been one of the most vocal opponents of many of my proposals, including the recent Judicial Reform Amendment Act. I presume it wouldn't be effective for the purposes of opening new seats either, since the only person that would be banned from running would be Chanku, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he simply disowned the royal family so he could continue in the Underhusen.

As I've said before, I don't believe that the Riksråd being elected to the Underhusen in of itself is a big problem...it may very well just be an anomaly since it's hardly been the norm in elections overall, but it may be an issue in the regional culture that puts a lot of trust and responsibility in a core group of people. I think the solution is to attempt to enable and empower other people to take part in regional affairs as a whole, but those sorts of changes take time. I don't' believe the solution is to ban groups of people from consideration in the democratic process of the Underhusen.

Then dont. But honestly, I think that adding term limits and maybe one of two more seats would go a long way.

Then dont.

As if I could decree that.

I, North, self appointed arbiter of all that is good and righteous in this world declare it so!

Damn, didn't work.

I defiantly don't think that limiting the number of Riksråd members in the Underhusen would help too much in making the UH more active, in-fact I could see it having the opposite effect. But despite that, even if it would help, it would still be interrupting the democratic process in the only democratically elected part of the government, which is something I am opposed to...

If you look at the last term, there was only 1 member of the Riksråd in the Underhusen, and significantly less was done that term than even this one. So I don't see that it would help all that much, besides potentially brining in fresher faces, but I think the main problem is that most people aren't too interested in the legislature, most all of the comments on laws and any government business across the forums have been from citizens who are already in the Overhusen or Riksråd...
I think I agree with North there, I believe consecutive term limits might be useful, it could keep the UH fresh and stop people getting burnt out, as well as many other things, it looks to me like this should be highly considered...

Also I was thinking when activity was brought up for discussion that adding more seats next term might be useful, but sometimes there may not be enough candidates to warrant that, last term for a while we thought we were going to have to instigate 4 seats before more nominates decided to run... So it should still be looked at carefully, but in theory I think it could be very useful.

I have to agree with HannahB, Wintermoot, and Colberius X. Since we have only one somewhat democratic (technically republican) section of government, the Riksrad. Further there are only two members of the Royal Family, me and Wintermoot and we vary greatly on our thoughts. Wintermoot admitted that I am one of the most vocal opponents against him and I agree.

I have a simple idea.

Make the Underhusen Citizen-only, banning the Riksrad/Overhusen/Royal appointments from running. Scrap the existing Overhusen appointment process, and effectively replace it with the Riksrad (Jarls); representatives of the Monarch with exisiting expertise and vested interest in the sound generation of laws, particularly in their given portfolio. Also let the Riksrad/Overhusen debate laws more, should they wish. Overall this shouldn't be too much of an extra burden on them because I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) the OH doesn't debate laws to the same extent the UH does before voting on them. You might even want to make the two chambers co-equal in the American sense, whereby both can create laws which must be passed by both chambers. That way you'd be splitting up the workload.

The thing is around here it's nice and cosy, you can count on everyone to do stuff. It's just about the same handful of people who do most of the work: Wintermoot, Laurentus, Chanku, Pengu, and a few others... and every now and again you have someone like Hannah joining the team. Everyone else is kind of on and off in their contributions, if I may be so vain to take the example of myself here that includes me. I just know the region will be in excellent hands one way or another so I don't bother to vote or hold who I vote (if I voted) to account.

Something like this might shake things up and make life more interesting, speed things up, and separate interests, whilst also maintaining the principles of citizens and the monarchy working together.

But if you guys prefer ongoing incremental change based on consensus rather than a random idea from some guy I'll totally understand.

That was discussed while discussing the government during the initial constitutional conventions. However it was decided against. Further the reason why the Overhusen has their restrictions is because of the simple fact that Bicameral legislatures tend to fall apart easily. Because a Bicameral legislature was wanted, it was decided that the Overhusen would be unable to do a lot of things, because of the fact that doing so would complicate things.

Further technically speaking the Underhusen IS citizen only. You have to hold Citizenship or Paragon Status in order to run (Paragon Status previous being named Honorary Citizenship). I personally feel like such a system would be interesting, but ultimately would fail to do anything within a good time-frame.


Also I had originally requested 3-month sessions, while the government was being debated, however I was shot-down saying it was long-enough. (I felt like 3 months would be enough to get shit done, while allowing for a bit more inactivity, however I was new at the time and thus I decided to trust those that had more experience than I). I've noticed that a lot of this discussion isn't necessarily new, it's been discussed prior, a lot of it during the drafting and creation of the Fundamental Laws.

A bicameral legislature can be very complicated in a small community...it was structured the way it was so there'd be no need to keep track of things like reconciliation of different versions of the same proposal that would then need to be voted on again by both chambers, for example. Most regions only have unicameral legislatures for that reason, but we decided to be special.

Essentially, the Overhusen exercises the veto power that the Executive of most regions has, especially in the fact that it can be overridden by the Underhusen.

Well that too.

It's this laid-back atmosphere that Aaron has mentioned, along with Pengu's mention of the same in the Riksråd discussion, that makes me feel it's necessary to shake things up like this too.

I do quite like the limit to the number of terms a Skrifa may serve as mentioned by North.

Additionally, I'm rather curious of what would happen if the current Underhusen and Overhusen switched roles for one term, though that's not related to the discussion at hand.

Not that I advocate it personally, but what if the Underhusen was open-assembly? No elections and any Citizen could propose legislature or vote?

On its own, that is an idea I like quite a lot. It becomes problematic when we consider the powers and responsibilities that fall out of legislation placed on all members of the Storting, i.e. serving as judges, revoking people's citizenship through acts etc.

TECHNICALLY speaking it would be legally allowed to do so now. Skrifa would still have to be elected, however the Fundamental Laws doesn't dictate how, or what, Skrifa actually do. It doesn't dictate who can or can't vote on a law. If we wanted the Procedural Rules could be modified to give the power to vote to the citizens and make the Underhusen an open assembly. The same technically goes for the Overhusen.

As a newer member, with not much legislative experience, I can't be of much help, but maybe my views can help. The problem I've always struggled with legislatures in NS is that there isn't really that much to discuss after a region passes all its initial laws setting its structure, there is a point where they become nothing more then a reviewing body to fix previous laws when their flaws become known. Unlike the real world we don't have that many issues, and so expecting constant legislature activity has seemed unreasonable to me, because of the fact there isn't that much to legislate.

While a legislature is important to review old laws for flaws, and react on the occasion there is an incident that requires legislation to prevent it from happening again, expecting constant activity seems unreasonable to me.

Perhaps I've just missed something critical though.