So, I wrote an essay of sorts, here it is.
Feel free to respond in kind if you wish.
A Case for the Storting
Recently, there has been some debate and discussion between a few people as to whether or not to destroy the Storting, or to keep it around, and some of the current members of the Underhusen have been elected with the promise to do so. While I am sure that there are some good arguments in favor of disbanding it that I have yet to hear, the ones that I know of do not stand up under scrutiny. At the moment the plan is to replace the Storting - or at least the Underhusen - with either an Open Assembly or to give legislative powers to the Thanes. The arguments for either are that Thanes are elected now and that there isn't must for the Underhusen/Storting to do. Both of these arguments are flawed, along with flaws with the systems that have been thought of to replace them.
First, we should go over the argument that Thanes fill the "election void" now, and as such the activity from the Underhusen Elections no longer help drive activity. However this argument ignores several things; it ignores that each Ministry exists at the whims and will of the current Monarch, that thanes only exist at the whims of the current Jarl of that Ministry, and that Thane elections only occur because of the will of the Monarch. This means Thane elections are not a guarantee, unlike Underhusen elections, but that they are merely a promise that can end at any time, and while some may dismiss this criticism with the statement that the Monarch is unlikely to change his mind soon, this is nonsense. Thane elections are new, with us only having had one election -- and election which didn't even fill all of the Thane positions. Further this is not our first time dabbling in elected cabinet positions, as we held elections for Jarls once before and the results were rather bad. Also, even if Thane elections are here to stay, there is no guarantee that Thane positions will exist beyond the will of the current Jarl, or beyond the whims of the Monarchy. In fact, should a person a Jarl doesn't like get elected, they can simply be dismissed or have their position dissolved at any time. Further a Jarl, or the Monarch, can decide to bar someone from running in an election, for practically any reason. As such the election of Thanes is not similar to the Underhusen elections, as these elections are inherently closed and limited to existing citizens. Since these elections are closed to anyone new to the region, this means that the position of the Underhusen as an easy and visible entry into the government of Wintreath isn't replaced, and thus Thane Elections are not an analog to Underhusen Elections.
Second, there is the argument of a lack of things for the Underhusen/Storting to do. However, this is nothing more than fiction. There are things for it to do, the Skrifa elected so far just have yet to find those things. For example, our Code of Criminal Laws could be updated, our judiciary is odd and could use some fixing, our oldest laws could be updated to the modern format, redundant laws could be combined, our Constitution has some flaws that need fixing, and things could be improved upon in other areas as well. It is fiction that has spread by either lazy, or inept, Skrifa who are unwilling -- or unable -- to critically look at our legal system and find the holes and flaws that require fixing.
Now, we get to dealing with the replacements. As mentioned before there are two current ideas floating around, the idea that Thanes should comprise our legislature, and the idea that the Underhusen should be replaced with an Open Assembly. While I will be discussing them separately in the coming paragraphs, I do wish to touch on some issues both ideas have. First there is the issue of integration. The current system is pretty heavily integrated with our current legal system. Our courts are created on the fly, and are comprised of Skrifa and Peers, our laws are designed around the existence of the Storting, specifically the Underhusen and Overhusen. As such, removing either one of those two, or the Storting entirely, would require an overhaul of our entire Constitution, as well as all of our laws, to allow for our government to be completely operational. While this would create work it would be temporary, and we then arrive were we started, the legislature not seeming to have much to do. The changes suggested merely distract from the issues, while not actually solving them.
Now, the idea of an Open Assembly is not new within Wintreath, it was suggested before and almost became reality, only failing due to the Citizenry voting it down. There are also many issues that come with an Open Assembly, such as the speed at which they move, that they are open to abuse, and that it doesn't really work all that great in several of the regions that have tried this system. On the matter of slowness, I wish to use the situation with Govindia as an example. From suggestion in the Citizen's Platform to it becoming law, the entire ordeal took exactly four days, seventeen hours, one minute, and thirty seven seconds. If you start from the time it was introduced into the Underhusen this time is reduced to four days, fourteen hours, fifty-nine minutes, and eighteen seconds -- assuming I did the math right. In the situation of an Open Assembly, it would have taken longer. Assuming that there is a seven day voting period (in accordance with most other public votes and current Underhusen Procedure), in addition to a forty-two hour comment period (as with current Underhusen Procedure), it would take, at minimum, one week and two days for any bill to pass, and this includes the ordeal with Govindia. Of course, you could have something saying that if all members vote it is closed, but with it being open to all citizens, good luck getting all sixty-seven citizens to vote. I must also ask, should any bill, regardless of its nature, take at least one week and two days to pass? No, it should not. Moving forward, onto the issues of abuse in the system of an Open Assembly, you do not need to look much further than the events of Lazarus. This situation showed that a group that wants too can simply import voters to get an agenda passed. While our current system is, admittedly, not entirely defended from this it requires at least three to four people that run in the election and get elected, which wouldn't be too easy. They would then have to fight away recalls and be re-elected to protect the policies that they passed. Finally, on the issues of the failure of this system, just take a look at the regions of Osiris, Ainur, Lazarus, Cynosure, or even the GRA, among others. These regions all use, or used, an open assembly, but all have had activity issues with some undergoing moderately frequent government changes in an attempt to fix things. So with these issues, I am unsure how one can look at this and think that this wouldn't be similar in Wintreath.
With the idea of removing the Storting, or at least the Underhusen, has also come the idea of replacing them with Thanes. However the issues that arise from this idea are that Ministries only exist at the will of the Monarch, Thane elections are also at the whims of the Monarch, Thanes exist at the will of the Jarl, and also Thanes -- and even Jarls -- are not constitutionally protected positions. I have covered some of these issues before, however they bear repeating. Giving legislative authority to Thanes -- regardless of whether or not the entire Storting or just the Underhusen is replaced -- is essentially giving up it's voice to the Monarch. If we do this, it would be no different than just granting all the power to the Overhusen, or establishing an all powerful Monarchy. While some may agree that we should give the power to the Monarchy, they miss the detail that we are a NationStates region and thus, government is kinda necessary due to what we are. If we get rid of it, we might as well just leave NationStates entirely. In any case, once we give legislative power to the Monarch, we give up our ability to voice our thoughts directly in the government, and we lose our representation. Also, in order for this to remotely work, we would have to enshrine the Ministries, the position of Jarl, and the position of Thane into the Constitution, which would remove the flexibility of the Monarch, and would be a general overstep. Also doing so just leads to the question of why, why not just create an absolute Monarchy?
So, with this, I must ask why rid us of the Underhusen and Storting at all? Doing so would, at best, give temporary work to the legislators, while not actually fixing anything. The cries of that we now have Thane elections to replace Underhusen elections and the lack of work for the Storting is, at beast, misleading. Replacing the Underhusen or the entire Storting with Thanes or an Open Assembly present myriad issues, and would not solve any currently existing ones. Really, our current best option would be to retain our current system of legislature. After all, to butcher and heavily alter a quote from Churchill, "The Wintreath Government is the worse government, except for all others tried before it."
