Imagining Europeia with Elected Ministers
Written by Calvin Coolidge
After a hard-fought election, Prime Minister X has taken power. It was a close battle to defeat her nearest opponent, Y, but that wasn't even the hardest battle. While most of her ministers had won their elections, that wasn't enough to take her interior minister over the top. Still, this was a victory, and it deserved to be treated as such. The skill of her campaigning had won her most of the Cabinet of her choosing, and she was ready to begin her term taking the best that the people had to offer. No time to waste, it would be a busy 70 days ahead.
The above scenario was a brief hypothetical of what election night would look like under a system where Europeia elected its ministers alongside its top executive. This is an idea that I have begun to kick around on the Senate floor, and have grown increasingly fascinated with as the debate continues. It seemed to put all the puzzle pieces together in a way that none of the other solutions did, addressing many of the region's main concerns. How will we ensure that the Executive is held accountable by the people? How will we ensure the newly unified government remains competitive? And lastly, how will we get people to pay attention to Foreign Affairs? All these questions and more can be answered in two words: Elected Ministers.
I can tell you're skeptical, and I would be, too if someone said they could answer all the region's problems with some crazy scheme! Let's take each of those questions, then, and break them down, beginning with accountability. After the last Senate had a few nominations go by with 0 questions for the nominees, people began to speak out against the Senate becoming a rubber stamp for the Executive to just get a nominee confirmed, with little to no oversight. Now, oversight for the sake of looking busy isn't the goal; rather, thoroughly vetting our nominees can provide insight and measurable goals for any office, and can help guide the public on what to expect both from the nominee and their ministry if they get confirmed. You know what else brings those subjects to light? An election. In addition, the nominee (now candidate) has to pass not only the questions laid out for them by the public, but then beat out others who seek to answer those same questions at the ballot box. It is next to impossible that any candidate for any office in Europeia gets all the way to election day without fielding a single question, and beyond that they will each have a platform, providing more information than the typical confirmation process right from the get-go. In the last Senate election there were twelve candidates, and each of them received at least one question, even Darcness, who stood just one day before standing ended.
There's accountability at the start, and then the accountability remains throughout the term as the Senate would maintain their oversight threads for the remainder of the term, to perform their usual scrutiny. Furthermore, questions have been raised about when to push back on an executive's ministry creation if one feels that things are getting out of hand. Under this potential system, I imagine there being a petitioning process, similar to the one we have in place now for recalling an official or putting a law up for a regionwide vote. Roughly a week before the standing for the top executive opens, the petition process is opened, with citizens required to gather a certain threshold of signatures to put a ministry on the ballot. I think this number should be relatively high, since reaching this threshold means that an office is being created, and that's not something we'd want to have made easy, or else we've created a new problem. I'd recommend 2/5 the votes of the last executive election. If this were enacted now, a petition would need fourteen signatures, since the last first minister had 35 votes. After a ministry is created, standing will open concurrently with the top executive. This is done so the top executive will know what offices they must fill, and can plan their platform accordingly.
To actually enact those ministry goals, however, the top executive would have to campaign not only for themselves, but for their ideas, and candidates who support them. This is where the competition begins. Every ministry suddenly is open to anyone who wants to put their name forward for it, and anyone can move up the ladder without having to wait to be appointed. I'd think that one couldn't run for more than one minister position at the same time, though, to avoid becoming overworked. Candidates would team up, endorse each other, and promote policy goals for each of the ministries during the election, and now voters can pick the best parts of each candidate's platforms and pick the vision for the region that they see fit. Of course, the top executive candidates would likely still dictate the range of those visions, as minister candidates would likely adopt ideas from the top executives' platforms, but anything is possible! Any winner would then get seated, after attaining 50 percent+1 of the vote, just like the top spot. From there, is there are competing visions, the next administration will be faced with the reality that the ideas they presented were not popular, and will be rebuked accordingly, right at the start of their term, and be kept from enacting an unpopular vision.
Lastly, we can see that every ministry becomes a battleground, and each area has the potential for sparks to fly during each election. Additionally, citizens will have multiple chances to run for higher office that they otherwise might have been deemed unqualified for by higher-ups, and new faces could present themselves at any turn! You know what area could benefit from bold new ideas, and renewed attention? Almost anything, but certainly Foreign Affairs, and the potential for this is greater under this system than any of the alternate proposals, which still constrain the ideas to a singular candidate, as the ministry's other, more visible goals take the spotlight. Nothing to hide under this system!
That's my pitch, then. I don't think that electing our ministers is foolproof. I know that there are flaws and faults, as there are under any system, but I think this proposal is something that has been dismissed out of hand by many, and has yet to have its time in the sun, so that's why I wrote this article. I was inspired to go down this path once the topic of electing a vice president came up in the Senate, so maybe this plan will have just a few ideas that inspire someone else to create their own unique government system, because that's what this reform process is all about! Asking the big questions and putting forward solutions. I hope you found this worthy of your time, and that it was an interesting answer to any of the problems that you see in the region. This is an important time in Europeia, where we are debating what we want out of this game, so make your voice heard, and participate in this discussion to make a better Europeia for all of us.
