The Inherent Democratic Deficits of the World Assembly

[Manson]

Written by Glen-Rhodes. Jan 06, 2012. From: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=158717

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The Inherent Democratic Deficits of the World Assembly:
Why You Shouldn’t Penalize Authors for Writing Nondemocratic Policy
It is a common refrain among non-experienced players that citizens of their states should not be under the iron fists of unelected bureaucrats. This is entirely understandable, of course. The notion that international economic policy, for example, should be set by a World Assembly bureaucracy that is not beholden to any member state or subject to oversight, except by other unelected bureaucrats, is a notion that not many people agree with. In a normal situation, democratic deficits such as that should not exist. International policy-makers should indeed be beholden to the people, corporations, and states that their policies affect for the better and for the worse.

But the World Assembly is not normal. I won’t address here my outsider views on the nonsense that is game mechanics, though. Let’s just accept that there are certain limitations placed upon the World Assembly by the technical limitations of the NationStates game architecture. There are two main things I want to talk about though: proposal character limits and the inability of member states to sit on committees. Both of these limitations cause the World Assembly to have inherent democratic deficits that force authors to write proposals in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise write them.

The Proposal Character Limit Requires Vague Policy

Any author that has attempted to deal with even slightly complex policy proposals has run into this problem. There is an arbitrary 3,500 character limit for World Assembly proposals. While this limit can be raised or completely removed with very little negative impact on the game’s back-end, we’ll just accept here and now that the limit will not change anytime soon.

What this means is that authors simply cannot write proposals as lengthy and detailed as real-world law. While we can write broad policy objectives, it is actually impossible to write anything in detail. For example, take a proposal that is meant to regulate the trade of precious stones and gems, to ensure they are collected or manufactured in safe ways that respect human rights law. (In other words, it institutes a regulatory scheme to avoid the sale of “blood diamonds” and other “blood” stones.)

This issue is fairly complex, but the proposal itself is simple and only implements broad policies, which takes nearly all of the allowed characters. (The Gem Trading Accord does this, as well, and is very close the limit.) It establishes World Assembly bureaucracies, who are given certain guidelines and then are tasked to write detailed rules themselves. This is, of course, a democratic deficit, as these officials are in effect non-elected legislators.

But there is really no other way to write the proposal. In the real world, the Kimberley Process is a 16 page document. (source) It, much like the proposal, establishes broad principles and tasks signatories with establishing more detailed law. The Clean Diamond Trade Act, the United States law implementing the Kimberley Process, is a 7 page document, itself delegating the writing of specific rules to various committees. (source, pdf)

So, it takes 23 pages to implement gem trading laws, and who knows how many pages to write the actual, specific rules. Recall that authors are only allowed 3,500 characters to write their resolutions. That should show that the character limit forces authors to write vague, non-specific law. Unfortunately, few realize this and vote against these proposals exactly because they aren’t detailed enough. (By the way, this essay just went over 3,500 characters with those last few sentences.)

If Member States Cannot Sit on Committees, Who Writes The Rules?

Now that we know why authors are forced to write vague policies that delegate specifics to World Assembly bureaucracy, we are faced with a new problem: member states cannot sit on committees themselves. So, not only are member states not given the full details of international law, they are not even allowed to take part in writing the details they’re not given in the first place. This is a huge democratic deficit that not many people enjoy, and rightfully so. But there is nothing that authors can do about it.

Like the character limit forces authors to write vague policy, the inability of member states to sit on committees forces authors to leave all the details to either (a) member states themselves or (b) unelected bureaucrats. While it is sometimes preferable to leave the details to member states, it is not always wise. This is especially true when a proposal is attempting to prohibit certain actions that benefit various member states. If left to make the details themselves, those member states cannot be trusted to act in good faith and write details to the spirit of the guidelines. If member states benefiting from blood diamonds wrote the rules for gem certification, then they would most definitely ensure that blood diamonds would be certified.

This also brings up a second reason why leaving it to member states is often a poor idea: most international law seeks to standardize policies. Leaving details to member states invites a checkerboard-like policy, where the detailed rules of one state are different in another, negating the entire purpose of passing the international law in the first place.

This leads to only one answer. Authors are oftentimes left with no choice but to assign World Assembly bureaucracies with writing the details. Somebody needs to provide details, since proposals are required to be vague. And you don’t want to assign that duty to somebody who has interest in bending them to their gain.

Conclusion

The entire purpose of this essay is to educate non-experienced players about why many proposals offer little detail and leave things to committees. I cannot count how many times I have seen players profess their distaste for a proposal because it’s vague and has a committee. While it is completely understandable that they don’t want vague law and don’t think unelected bureaucrats should wield all the power, the game simply does not lend itself well to democratic principles. If I could change this, I would waste no time doing so. But I can’t. So the least I would like to do is to try and get others to not penalize authors who are forced to write their proposals this way. It’s not their choice; they’re limited by the rules of the game.