Opinion: Senate Confirmation Apathy Symptom of Executive Bloat




Opinion: Senate Confirmation Apathy Symptom of Executive Bloat

Written by Deepest House​


(Europeia – March 3, 2020) - On Monday, March 2, Xecrio abruptly announced his resignation as minister of communications to focus on real life obligations. Shortly afterward, First Minister Sopo nominated Istillian, a veteran of the post, to the role. Despite six senators holding office, it was more than 24 hours after the nomination was posted before any senator acknowledged the nomination.

Speaker of the Senate Lloenflys acknowledged the nomination and apologized for the delay. The senator asked a sole question, which while meaningful in its formulation and purpose, underscored the lack of interest in the confirmation by the Senate as he also announced his intention to move the nomination to a vote within just a few hours. At time of press, it is very possible that the Senate will have voted on a nominee with only the speaker performing a perfunctory confirmation hearing consisting of a single question.

To be clear, this is not an indictment of the Senate at all. Rather, this is an observation that the role of the Senate in confirmations has become rote and nearly meaningless. With the implementation of the executive split, there are now 14(!) executive officers. With three of these officers being directly elected, 11(!) of these positions are left to be confirmed by the Senate. With the dearth of qualified candidates to fill the bloated executive, the Senate has rightly come to view the confirmation process as more of a chore than a meaningful oversight duty. A review of recent confirmation hearings betrays a lack of interest and meaningful participation by the Senate in the now rote chore.

Simply put: the executive split has diluted the prestige and importance of cabinet posts to such an extent that the region is simply filling the positions with anyone who is willing, with minimal experience and qualifications. Such a tenuous and untenable situation is not healthy for the long-term health and viability of the political side of our region.

For the political side of our region to prosper, we must have competitive elections (since the executive split, we generally haven’t) and ministers and cabinet positions should be earned through exceptional and outstanding service in a particular ministry and vetted through meaningful confirmations. While we generally do continue to place individuals with some degrees of experience and success into positions, we are also generally searching for able bodies to fill roles rather than selecting from multiple, highly qualified individuals interested in the same post.

Looking back at my term as president, which occurred shortly before the executive split, I nominated a total of eight individuals for initial cabinet posts. This number was largely consistent with other administrations prior to the split. Even so, that was a lot, and could likely have had some ministries combined to increase efficiency and reduce bloat. Expanding this pool from eight to 11, with the additional 2 executive officers created by the split (though this has been somewhat mitigated post-split by modifying the role of the second minister), simply reduces the opportunity of the executive to identify and select the best and brightest to perform the most important roles in an administration.

The issue is clearly illustrated by the forum itself. Note that the header for the forum section housing the various ministries is titled “Ever-Expanding Bureaucracy.” While I believe HEM made this note in jest, there is also significant truth to it.

There is no question that the political dynamism of the region has dwindled since the executive split. We have created a region where the most important positions aren’t competitively achieved – to such a degree that the Senate has, largely, become ambivalent about confirmations and performing them in a routine manner. This isn’t a value judgment on that as much as it is a reflection and call for us to evaluate what we want Europeia to be.

If we value our traditions and roots as the preeminent political region in NationStates and harbor a desire to return to what we had in the past, we need to return to the governmental infrastructure that allowed for that dynamism to foment political activity while also motivating many to achieve status and prestige by earning positions over their peers. If we don’t have a desire to return to being a region driven by politics and setting the political standard in NationStates, perhaps we end the charade and become a social region.

Either way, the current path is unsustainable.

 
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I think this is an interesting take on the situation. I think it's harder to argue for more competitive elections when there aren't large pools of people wishing to fill the position. The alternative is to let a ministry go unled for however long it takes for the position to be filled. Or, I guess, for the ministry to be swallowed up by another. I don't think you're entirely wrong in your assessment, but I feel it may be a bit too disingenuous to blame the Senate for trying to keep the ministries running. And in this particular instance, Istillian has actually run the ministry before, so I would hardly say he has "minimal experience and qualifications."

That's not to say I think your analysis is completely off the mark. We do seem to have a bit of a quick turnaround with these candidates. But perhaps it isn't totally the fault of the Senate.
 
Alternatively you could cut down the number of ministries by combining some of them and getting rid of others,
Grand Admiral
Interior/Culture
Communications/Radio
Foreign Affairs/World Assembly
Attorney General
Get rid of:
Research and Development- What does this do again?
External Engagement- Same as R&D
If they do indeed have uses they could be put into interior and FA respectively.

Then making the Vice Chief of State and Second Minister hold one of the above positions. This would mean a total of 7 cabinet positions.

Edit: Could someone who was around during the split explain the rational of it to me?
 
NationofthePeoples: Do not combine Interior and Culture. Totally different jobs. But yeah, theres a bit of bloat.

The point of the split was as follow:
1. To try something new after having a President for most of a decade.
2. Take a load of the guy at the top. Presidents were overloaded to hell.

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To executive bloat:
But really the executive split didnt appreciatively increase the size of the executive. You used to have the Cabinet and the VP and President separately. Now you have the FM and CoS separately and the Cabinet/Council which combined only needs to be the same size as the old Cabinet used to be. Since Deputy CoS and SM have to also fill a position on the cabinet they dont actually increase the amount of persons needed.

The bloat is essentially R&D and External Engagement. Beyond that we have the same cabinet posts weve had for a while. You could maybe combine Radio and Communications again beyond that and maybe fold WA into FA but whatever. Theres enough reason to keep them apart.

So because of the DCoS and SM having to be nominated to the cabinet those 14 posts really arent 14, they are 12. Of which 2 are solely elected, the CoS and FM. So thats 10 cabinet posts with 12 people total to fill the top of the Executive.

You always had at the very least Culture, AG, FA, GA, and Interior. Thats 5.
Often you had interior split into two, recruitment and integration, but lets keep it as one. Usually you additionally have had communications as its own thing for at least the last half decade. Now you add radio and WA into that and you are back at 8 even with interior as one thing. Thats the norm as its been for years now. So really we are only 2 posts over the usual number pre-split. Thats R&D and EE. Thats your executive bloat. Those two.

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To Senate confirmations:
The Senate is treating confirmations pretty much how theyve always been treated. That is to say, as a routine duty where you give the Executive the benefit of the doubt and dont vote down unless theres something obviously problematic about the candidate. Its never been a really useful oversight tool. Its always been rote. Individual Senators have seen it as more and tried to make it more but its never been more. In large part because you cant really make it about policy, since the Executive pretty much always just won an election on that policy. And you cant make it political or personal. So whether they are individually qualified is the only metric you have. And thats not oversight, its Human Resources. Its rote and its boring. And its always been that and it will always be that. Whether you have three dozen cabinet posts or three.
 
Drecq: I will admit I did not consider the full implications of the Culture/Interior thing. But I still thing that Radio/Comms and perhaps WA/FA should be merged, it makes since to keep the cabinet a wanted position as well as reducing bloat.
 
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We've had so much turnover this term we've nearly cycled out everyone who started with new people.
 
Hez - I think you’ve misinterpreted this. I’m not blaming the Senate or calling the Senate to account on anything. The article is really about the bloated executive we have and how we have, in large part, lost a lot of dynamic politics since the split.
 
The Executive Split started with one simple rationale: We're trying to do too damned much.

We haven't cut down on the amount we're trying to accomplish, we've simply shuffled around who does the work. We're still expecting some form of progress in Radio, Recruiting, Integration, Culture, Articles, Ambassadors, WA, Dispatches, ERN, RMB, NSGP forums... it's a ton of stuff, and we don't have enough experienced, capable people to do it all. We thought that if, say, the NSGP forums was its own Ministry, then great, that makes the FA Minister's job easier, that's good, right? Sure, it lowers the requirements of the individual job, but now we need more people to do that level of administrative work.

I think we, as a region, need to come to terms with the fact that there just aren't enough of us to do all of this consistently, and start trimming fat.
 
Personally, I support folding WA back into the Delegate's Office. But yes, there is some bloat here, especially blatant during these past few weeks.

I was also somewhat in support of removing the 2nd in Command role entirely, I'm not sure they're adding much to our process these days. But again, since they typically double up with a Ministry, that doesn't actually trim the number of required positions.
 
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Definitely noticed some bloat, personally, but I wasn't quite sure were fat could be trimmed.

Also, I'm going to harp on something I've harped on privately for a while now. I really hate that the ministries are buried at the bottom of the page. I'm not saying that part of our issues with finding - and molding? - qualified individuals is a lack of exposure, but it can't help with that or these discussions when many players ignore the ministries entirely because they're simply not part of the forums regularly checked. I'm biased though, I still browse forums top to bottom; I don't use the new threads/active topics feature; and I'm already inclined to ignore ministry posts so no wonder I'd think they aren't well-exposed.
 
I wasn't here prior to the executive split, so I can't talk to how things were run then, but it's easy to spread yourself quite thin, even now, by taking on a lot of work in different areas, (even in different regions if you're working in FA), and then losing focus on some of your duties in the process.

So tightening up the workload and trimming the fat would be ideal, but it also really seems like finding the right elements of each ministry or council that could be outsourced or assigned to another area that has the staffing and resources is the solution, rather than just combining entire ministries (potentially creating a problem with one person doing a larger amount of work). With an expansive executive staff surely this can be done - case in point: the EECT taking on the dispatches/up-vote squad over the ministry of communications.

I also tend to agree with Lethen here, having people apply for a job in employment central isn't the same as seeing where you could be employed higher up the page (even though I do browse the entirety of the forum now, this can be a little daunting for a newcomer) - I was surprisingly led to the ministry of communications by talking to people through Discord, and this is after a few months of already being a citizen in Europeia.
 
This was an interesting article and not something I had considered from the perspective the article brought up. Regarding the amount of questioning (and I understand it wasn't meant as a criticism, just as an observation), I tend to agree with Drecq that in most situations it is because the Senate is actively trying not to stand in the way of the will of the executive. I think unless there was someone who seemed to not fit a leadership role at all because of some past situation (in which they would probably be asked to account for that situation), there is generally going to be a feeling that the executive should get the opportunity to go with who they want. I tend to view that even more acutely when there's been a resignation and the executive has had to completely go in a different direction and needs to fill the role mid-term.

The Senate certainly *could* be more aggressive in its questioning, but I'm not sure it would be to good effect.
 
What I mean by 'trimming the fat' is that we need to change what our expectations are of what the region can accomplish.

At any given time, we really only have 6 invested, energetic leaders. However, we have enough positions (and enough work) for TWICE that many. I'm not arguing that we need more leaders, though, because we just don't have enough workers to support that many either.

I think we need to take a good, hard look at the region and start to realize that we just can't do everything anymore.

An example:
  1. Premiere - Talking with foreign leaders takes a TON of time, and is a job all in itself. Thankfully, you don't have to do a lot of management of the other leaders, because when there are only 5 more, you can make sure they're rockstars.
  2. Director of Human Resources - Recruiting people into the region is part of 'keeping the lights on'. Integration efforts are nice, but shouldn't really be a requirement at this stage.
  3. Director of Foreign Affairs - We can't just cut ourselves off from other regions, so this work is still vital. That said, if all your DoFA is doing is managing your ambassadors, there's some space to do something with WA and/or ERN (trying to make progress in both is a fantasy at this stage).
  4. Director of Communications - Internally and externally, the goings-on in the region are important to talk about. On the other hand, trying to put out content in multiple media with any sort of regularity is just too much at this point. Roll them together, let each administration choose how they'd like to communicate (radio/dispatches/articles/wuteva).
  5. Director of Interior - Rather than Recruitment, they're instead overseeing the things we, as citizens, do in the region. This is formerly Culture and the Ministry of Justice... in essence, education and day-to-day activities. But, once again, you still only have one Ministry, so you let each administration pick and choose what they're going to focus on.
 
Prim said:
Personally, I support folding WA back into the Delegate's Office.
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I think if we were to go this route, the WAD should be restricted from Cabinet roles. The endotarting program is huge by itself, so then if we add IFVs, dealing with WALL, and all the other stuff CoWAA does, I don't think it'd be good to let them take on another big executive role at the same time.
 
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