The Massive Divide Between Aspiring Presidents and Aspiring Veeps, WAA Is Not a Stepping Stone, and Other Analysis





The Massive Divide Between Aspiring Presidents and Aspiring Veeps, WAA Is Not a Stepping Stone, Grand Admirals Are Good at Winning Elections, Interiors Is Unpredictable, and Other Fun Numbers
Written by Pland Adanna



Methodology:
This data includes every presidential and vice presidential candidate since the executive remerge except for joke candidates and candidates who withdrew their standing. It only looks at candidates post-executive remerge in an attempt to focus on Europeia’s modern political landscape. The data counts how many times each candidate has held each ministerial position (or some equivalent) before running. People who ran in multiple elections were counted for each election in which they ran because candidates have likely held more positions in between elections, and every time a candidate who has served as, say, Grand Admiral, runs is another time that the region has seen a former Grand Admiral run, regardless of whether they’ve run before. Partial terms were counted the same as full terms. The count of candidates who had held a given position was divided by the total number of candidates.

A caveat of this data is that the Ministries of Radio and World Assembly Affairs are newer than the others, so they have a smaller sample size. They were still included and compared with other positions because, regardless of the number of opportunities available to serve in a position, a candidate has either held the position or not. The purpose of this article is to examine the experiences of candidates before they run for president or vice president, so all positions are compared to one another despite the limitations of this view.

Notes about some terms throughout this article:
  • “Justice” refers to the former ministry, not the judicial position
  • “elected presidents” refers to people who were directly elected to be president (a.k.a. victorious presidential candidates), excluding vice presidents who were elevated to the presidency
  • ”Other” refers to any position that doesn’t fit very well within the eight other categories, including Director of the Government Accountability Office, Minister of Employment, Councillor of External Engagement, Councillor of Coordination, and Minister without Portfolio.

Results:
Percent of Candidates Who Led...png
Percent of Winning Candidates Who Led...png
Percent of Losing Candidates Who Led...png
Percent of Presidential Candidates Who Led...png
Percent of Vice Presidential Candidates Who Led...png
Percent of Winning Presidential Candidates Who Led...png

Key Takeaways:
There is a massive divide between the experiences of presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates:

Among its candidates for high executive office, Europeia has a gap in ministerial experience between its aspiring presidents and aspiring vice presidents. Presidential candidates have much more frequently served as Minister of Communications or some equivalent (a 22% gap between presidential and VP candidates), Grand Admiral (an 18% gap), and Attorney General (14%), while vice presidential candidates have more frequently managed Radio (14%), Foreign Affairs (11%), and World Assembly Affairs (11%). Former leaders of Interior and Culture have been much more evenly split, with a 4% and a 0% gap, respectively.

WAA is not a stepping stone:

At least since the executive remerge, holding the office of Minister of World Assembly Affairs (or some equivalent) has not led to the pursuit or attainment of higher executive office in Europeia. Only 9% of presidential and vice presidential candidates since the executive split have served as Minister of World Assembly Affairs (or some equivalent) prior to running. This position was the lowest by far, with the Minister of Interior position (and its equivalents) coming in as the second-lowest with 24%. Additionally, candidates who had already been Minister of World Assembly Affairs (or some equivalent) disproportionately ran for vice president rather than president. 15% of vice presidential candidates since the executive remerge have handled Europeia’s World Assembly Affairs, while only 4% of presidential candidates have done so. No presidential candidate who has led the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs has ever won a post-executive remerge election. However, Skygreen24’s brief presidency after Lime’s resignation gave Europeia its first and only former-MoWAA president, at least since the executive remerge. While, at first glance, this may seem to be a product of the relative novelty of the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs, the Ministry of Radio, which was established at about the same time and actually has had even fewer unique ministers, does not see similar results.

Grand Admirals win a lot of elections:

The opposite of WAA, serving as a Grand Admiral appears to be a strong stepping stone for high executive office. In fact, 55% of winning candidates since the executive remerge have served as Grand Admiral, compared to 33% of losing candidates, a 22% gap. The closest gap to that is 13% for Minister of Foreign Affairs or some equivalent, where 43% of losing candidates have held the position compared to 30% of winning candidates. Not only that, but 80% of all our elected presidents since the executive remerge have served as Grand Admiral before taking office.

Interior is unpredictable:

The position with the fewest patterns is the Minister of Interior and its equivalents. Former holders of that office were pretty evenly split between both winning and losing candidates and presidential and vice presidential candidates. 25% of winning candidates have led Interior, while 27% of losing candidates have done so. Additionally, 22% of presidential candidates have led Interior, while 26% of vice presidential candidates have done so. The Minister of Interior has the second fewest number of former officeholders running for higher executive office, so it’s possible the smaller sample size makes patterns less visible– or there’s a legitimate (and mysterious) lack of pattern.

Other Fun Numbers:
Candidates Have More Commonly Led: ERN (39%), Radio (37%), AG (37%), Foreign Affairs (35%), Communications (33%), Culture (30%)
Candidates Have Less Commonly Led: Interior (24%) and WAA (9%)

Winning Candidates Have More Commonly Led ___ Than Losing Candidates: ERN (55%-33%), Comms (40%-33%), WAA (15%-7%), Culture (35%-30%)
Losing Candidates Have More Commonly Led ___ Than Winning Candidates: FA (43%-30%), Radio (43%-35%), AG (37%-30%), Interior (27%-25%)

Presidential Candidates Have More Commonly Led ___ Than VP Candidates: ERN (48%-30%), Communications (44%-22%), AG (44%-30%)
VP Candidates Have More Commonly Led ___ Than Presidential Candidates: Interior (26%-22%), WAA (15%-4%), FA (41%-30%), Radio (44%-30%)
Culture Tied Between Presidential and VP Candidates (30%-30%)

Elected Presidents Have Most Commonly Led: ERN (80%), AG (60%)
Elected Presidents Have Somewhat Commonly Led: Foreign Affairs (40%), Radio (40%), Communications (40%), Interior (30%), and Culture (30%)
Elected Presidents Have Never Led: WAA (0%)
 
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*checks resume, sees Councilor of WA Affairs*

*checks election results, sees losses*

Yeah, that tracks.
 
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This is really interesting! It's nice to quantify the lack of WA experience in Presidents, I think a lot of modern tickets have that as their spot with less expertise/experience, that was certainly true for my ticket this time around.

I wonder if it's because the WA is so technically demanding/challenging that people who are really interested in WA tend to spend a lot more of their time in that area, vs being able to do things like participate in the Navy or plan big integration problems. It's also one area that doesn't really get a break, there's always new proposals, IFVs that need to be written, etc.
 
I wonder if it's because the WA is so technically demanding/challenging that people who are really interested in WA tend to spend a lot more of their time in that area, vs being able to do things like participate in the Navy or plan big integration problems. It's also one area that doesn't really get a break, there's always new proposals, IFVs that need to be written, etc.
Honestly, I don't think WA is more technically demanding than something like comms - deciding proposal stances is also a very collaborative process so as long as you think critically about the text you're reading, after a while you become used to proposal norms etc. Although you are right that the minister job itself is a little bit relentless due to the pace of the WA.

Maybe that perception prevents people from wanting to put the time investment in to become WA leadership, preferring to spend time in other areas of the region which seem like they offer better opportunities for upward advancement? A self-perpetuating cycle ...
 
I wonder if it's because the WA is so technically demanding/challenging that people who are really interested in WA tend to spend a lot more of their time in that area, vs being able to do things like participate in the Navy or plan big integration problems. It's also one area that doesn't really get a break, there's always new proposals, IFVs that need to be written, etc.
Honestly, I don't think WA is more technically demanding than something like comms - deciding proposal stances is also a very collaborative process so as long as you think critically about the text you're reading, after a while you become used to proposal norms etc. Although you are right that the minister job itself is a little bit relentless due to the pace of the WA.

Maybe that perception prevents people from wanting to put the time investment in to become WA leadership, preferring to spend time in other areas of the region which seem like they offer better opportunities for upward advancement? A self-perpetuating cycle ...
I disagree with that and I think it really is a function of “what is the Minister actually doing”. To use a couple of examples that I’m aware of, I’d hesitate to say Seva had a more difficult go of things than, say, yourself or GC. Now, that’s not because Seva did less or because he was “worse” at the job, I think that’s down to what Seva was primarily known for and is primarily known for inside WAA—which is more of the internal drafting, threads, and what not—that a candidate like yourself or GC—who are more invested in active drafting AND your duties (thus contributing in another way to WAA)—isn’t as strongly identified with.

Put another way: I think WAA doesn’t lend itself to the Presidency partially for the reason Monkey cited: people who are deeply involved in the WA are often reticent to spread their wings and participate elsewhere. (It also doesn’t help that relatively few WA Ministers come into the job with much experience and few do seek major involvement in other Ministries during their tenures as Minister.)
 
I feel like part of the reason WAA gets that perception is because pretty much all of our MoWAA have been WA experts so naturally people believe that you have to be an expert in all things WA to become MoWAA when I don't think that's the case. I'm absolutely not an expert in the WA but I have a basic understanding of it, I've worked in WAA and served as Deputy and feel like I could successful serve as Minister, and indeed I've been told by a former MoWAA that I could serve in role and do fine.

I don't think WAA lends itself to the Presidency, partly because as Inishmaan said, people who are active in WA don't tend to become majorly involved in other areas, and secondly because I don't think we view experience and/or knowledge in WA as necessary for a President to have and perhaps even we don't view it as "good enough" experience. If you're an ambitious player who wants to become President why would you get involved in WAA when it doesn't seem required to become President. Spending a term as MoWAA is a "wasted" term if instead you could be serving as MinComm or MoFA which we tend to view as important areas for a President to have experience/knowledge in. I also think we tend to view someone who's served as MoFA or Grand Admiral as having more foreign policy experience as someone who's served as MoWAA. So again we just don't really incentivise MoWAA as a good Ministry for someone to launch a successful career from.
 
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