World Assembly News #4

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WA Rules Face A Shake-Up?


Admin Throw A Curve Ball

Thursday, 1st March - 2012 the following statement was made by GameAdmin SalusaSecondus:

I am considering creating a new type of WA Resolution (General Assembly) which will permit a Repeal resolution to be joined with a New resolution. They would go up as a single proposal, reach quorum, and pass (or Fianna Fianna Fail) as a single proposal. The effects would be identical to them passing independently.

Further notes:

• The proposal would consist of two different sections. One for the repeal, and one for the new resolution.
  
  
• The text in the repeal section would be bound by the existing standards and rules for repeal proposals.
  
  
• The text (category, effect, etc.) of the new section would be bound by the existing standards and rules for new proposals.
  
  
• The two sections do not need to be related in any way (including category or strength)
  
  
• This would not impact the existing ability to simply repeal a resolution.
  

I think permits a few new (interesting) use-cases:

• When the WA does not want there to be a time between a resolution being repealed and it being replaced (or risk it not being replaced).
  
  
• When there are two groups (one desiring to repeal a resolution and one desiring to pass a resolution) who cannot muster sufficient votes by themselves to pass either resolution independently.
  

Now, I'm not promising anything (or even that it will be possible). I am very interested in the Pros & Cons though and seeing what the players who use the WA more commonly than I think of this.

Which met some initial support and many readers approached it going - why not? That is until Sedge' made the following comments:

I don't think it'd be a good idea. Part of the appeal of the current system is that you get people supporting repeals for loads of different reasons - some are anti-WA, others don't want a resolution on that topic on the books, others want to replace with a blocker, and others want a stronger or weaker version of the resolution.

And this made people stop and think.... that while the World Assembly cannot amend its legislation and cannot INSTANTLY repeal-and-replace - is this actually a bad system when you have so many voices that make up the votes of the World Assembly? Although it is not the perfect system, it is a system that seems to be working. In Europeia if our City Council had over 1,000 members all making their views heard and voting - we'd have to adapt to an imperfect system or we would never see anything coming from the Council.

Others asked if a repeal-and-replace would actually improve legislation or would just see to it that grammar and other small parts are updated. Also does - everything - that is repealed have to be replaced? If the ability was there... we'd see so many more repeal-and-replaces being proposed. Is this a good thing? Not at all! This is further backed up by a comment made by [violet]:

This situation is very common in real-life, though. Voters & lawmakers frequently have to choose between imperfect legislation or nothing. That's politics.

I suspect that if you could amend resolutions, WA votes would be far more rubber-stampy, because almost every proposed amendment would be a clear minor improvement. It would also encourage rough first drafts to be put up as resolutions, and passed with the thinking that it can always be improved later.

And that is likely true - with the ability to 'amend' laws granted okay legislation would make it onto the books and the real hard work of starting from scratch and seeing it through would be lost to getting it in, getting it worked on while on the books.

Nevertheless.... GameAdmin seem to be looking to make sweeping reforms across NationStates.

Authored By Vinage

 

[hyanygo]

An interesting development. What are your views at the moment?

 

[Vinage Vinage]

As soon as I saw this I went - "YES PLEASE!"

Then read through the rest of the thread [Link here] and gradually started to agree with the view that we will probably see poorer quality legislation making it through just because we can replaced it at a later date. So, on that basis, I'm leaning on the side of no thank you.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

I'd rather see it.

I don't like repeal-replaces that don't give us the promised replace. I'd rather have them together. if you just want a straight up repeal, you can do that to.

 

[Anumia]

I am very much for it.

 

[PASD]

Oh man, that would be awesome.

 

[Common-Sense Politics]

I am very much for it.

As am I.

 

[unibot]

I like the change, actually. I think it'll change things up.

I'll note many of the opposition to the change is very ideological; but you have to pay a little attention to their posts -- especially with someone like Mousebumples. They don't want the replace-repeal system because they're NatSovs who frankly want to be able to repeal then either offer a replacement later that they know will not be passed (a "lemon" proposal) or no replacement.. they'll just promise someone else will do it in the future.

My response to them is that they've successfully fooled people into falling for these tactics and the creation of a "replace" proposal will not take away the opportunity now.