Basically what they said. I definitely commend you for making a suggestion like such in your first days here, as well as getting a feel for how our constitution works.
But look at it this way: Wintermoot is only an absolute monarch on paper, because again he's the root administrator, so that's us just embracing that fact rather than trying to pretend otherwise.
In actual Wintreath though, Wintermoot is more like a president, except he's essentially the President for all time.
Sure, he writes royal decrees on certain occasions (just like the president can issue executive orders), but 99% of the time the laws are written and amended by elected officials. Sure, half of Storting (aka the Overhusen) is officials appointed by him personally, but he's not even the one that oversees its operation (that's the Chairman's role, just like the Speaker oversees the Underhusen). Sure, the Cabinet is appointed by him, but like every other appointed role in Wintreath (which includes the OH), it's through a Meritocratic approach: if you're putting in effort and making a difference in making Wintreath better, you get rewarded. Not to mention, appointed Jarls can choose their Thanes...and even then there's been a new system put in place by Wintermoot and the cabinet to where people can elect the Thanes.
So if anything, we're becoming more democratic since we're giving more power to the people as to who they want in office.
In the end though, Tau and Chanku said it best: We're not even really that political.
If anything, all of the Underhusen/Overhusen activity, the elections, the campaigns...they're mainly formalities so that our government is ever-changing. Most of the topics that you see regarding bills are the Secretary posting what the UH is currently talking about, and only rarely do we have those topics get a high amount of discussion...and usually it's by the same select handful of people. Most members that appear on here come to post mainly in the cultural part of the forums, one that we've strove to emphasize since we're definitely much more of a cultural region than a political one.
For the most part, though, citizens don't really care to get involved politically. We've had session after session of the UH with the same people because those generally end up being the only people eager to take part. Very rarely nowadays do we have people eager to jump into the mix.
To give an idea, elections in general are absolutely bare...especially nowadays. We're lucky if we even have a full crowd to hold an election, rather than it being a walkover because only the minimum required even desired to take part. Heck, we have people tackling on multiple roles because the amount of interest in taking part is a flicker rather than a full flame. Because again, outside of the select few that show any interest in keeping up on the political side, citizens have no interest in being political outside of voting. And even then, for a region that has over 200 nations...we're lucky if we even hit over 20 votes total during election periods.
You read that right: at most, around 20 out of over 200 nations vote in elections.
That's only 10% of the region voting on who they want to represent the region. And we're talking at least 1/4 of that 20 are the people running in the elections.
And that's during a good election time. On average, we tend to hit even less votes than that. And that's not even due to lack of advertising the election process, since we broadcast it throughout the region. That's just due mainly to the fact that, again, people just don't care enough to pop in to vote.
To add more roles to the mix would simply invite more inactivity, to be honest. What happens when no one wants to take part in it except for one of the Jarls, or one of the Thanes? Would our Prime Minister be a Jarl/Thane as well as a member of the UH? How would we determine who could run and what the restrictions would be? How long would one have to be a member to take part? What qualifications would they need to run for office (because let's be honest, if we're electing someone for that position, they need to have prior Wintreath political experience in some capacity)?
In short, it throws in too many questions to answer for a role that might not even get filled or worse, it might get filled by someone who is already tackling on other roles, so that person would become overwhelmed and burnt out.
It's just not something needed right now when we can't even ensure the person in it will be active. We've already had that problem with the cabinet itself, and we don't need an overseer position next to Moot's that could be open to that same problem. Especially since that problem would spill into the overall cabinets as well.
Let me throw out some earlier examples...the list of Jarls used to be much bigger than the 3 we have now. We had a Jarl of Defense, Jarl of Information, Jarl of Mediations, and I believe we had at least one or two more that I can't currently think of. The problem, was that there was too much delegation and not enough results. Information became useless because not enough work was happening (to be fair, it was usually a big workload), and so that office was closed and now is integrated into some of the other ministries (IE, embassy dispatches are now part of the Ministry of Integration). Likewise, our military was miniscule until it was finally practically non-existent because nobody wanted to take part, so that office was closed. But the worst part of all was that at one point, every single ministry save for a small few went completely silent. And this is with Wintermoot heading them. Even after replacing some of the more inactive Jarls with newer ones (ones that showed a lot of promise because of their work on the forums already), they still went through the same problem. What would a PM do better in that instance?
Adding another role would add to that potential heartache. If we get someone who does absolutely nothing to where the role feels more like a formality rather than having any actual functionality (aka the same feeling people have about the Underhusen/Overhusen system on days), then there was no point having the role there in the first place.
If anything though, we're a long ways away from adding more roles to our system. We've still got a big work in progress for the roles that we've already established. We're finally starting to make some progress on that front, but not near enough to throw another into the mix just yet.
I mean, hell, we're still discussing the possibility of an Open Assembly. But for the same reasons I've given you on this topic, it's only a pipe dream at this moment in time.
And those are my other three cents. Trade me my other two, and I'll give you a nickle back.
