Elections

On one hand, we know rather little about how elections work in the Solarian league. However, there are a lot of planets, so even if they all follow the one planet-one government trope, in any given week at least a few of them -- from among the ones that have elections -- might be expected to be having elections. There will then be differences about league activities with respect to Manticore, and at some point the Mandarins might have to notice -- purely unofficially -- that their elected minions are not doing so well.

On the other hand, perhaps Manticore has elections and the league is a dictatorship that has evolved beyond any need to have elections.

One thing that we're told is that the short average life of an SL cabinet is largely due to the fact that ambitious politicians like to get the "Solarian League Cabinet Minister" ticket stamped before heading home to contend for an elected office that wields genuine power. They get away with it because the current identity of the Cabinet members is pretty much irrelevant to the running of the League, but it leads one to infer that that is not the case for most member systems.

phillies wrote:On one hand, we know rather little about how elections work in the Solarian league. However, there are a lot of planets, so even if they all follow the one planet-one government trope, in any given week at least a few of them -- from among the ones that have elections -- might be expected to be having elections. There will then be differences about league activities with respect to Manticore, and at some point the Mandarins might have to notice -- purely unofficially -- that their elected minions are not doing so well.

On the other hand, perhaps Manticore has elections and the league is a dictatorship that has evolved beyond any need to have elections.

phillies wrote:On the other hand, perhaps Manticore has elections and the league is a dictatorship that has evolved beyond any need to have elections.

It's not dictatorship. It's a proletarian paradise guided by the most politically evolved and progressive members. Who of course are appropriately rewarded for their sacrifices.

phillies wrote:... [A]t some point the Mandarins might have to notice -- purely unofficially -- that their elected minions are not doing so well.

No, they don't, actually. They're not elected, they're not appointed. Think US Supreme Court bypassing Advise and consent, but merely nominating and electing replacement members themselves. An oligarchy sits laterally to them, but as long as the trough is filled and the hogs are not turned out, there is no pressure on the Mandarins to pay attention to anything. Their only "constituency" is the mjor corporations, The individual planets can go wherever and do whatever, the great Chamber is nothing but a glorified United Nations with all members having veto power instead of only the 5 permanent members of the Security Council.

I think you missed the point WW.

The Mandarins, purely as a matter of circumstance you understand, have their own personal favorites in elected positions of planetary governments.
Controlling a federal purse in an SL style federal government must allow an awful lot of influence peddling in purely planetry governments.

So if those people are looking like taking a hit in the elections ...


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Annachie wrote:I think you missed the point WW.

The Mandarins, purely as a matter of circumstance you understand, have their own personal favorites in elected positions of planetary governments.
Controlling a federal purse in an SL style federal government must allow an awful lot of influence peddling in purely planetry governments.

So if those people are looking like taking a hit in the elections ...


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Maybe, maybe not. Their pet delegate, Tyrone Reid, was representing Sol.

I think the Mandarins' favourites would get juicy sectors or sub-departments. Lots more pork from a multi-system organisation and more easily concealed, rather than a single system with a relatively open democratic process.

I got the impression that the Mandarins regard elected officials and ministers with veiled contempt. They probably work better with the less democratic League members, but for the most part probably do not interfere in Core Worlds' internal affairs.

They reguard the league elected officials as wastes of space.
We haven't really seen how they treat core system governments.
That is what I think the thread is getting at. They'll have pets at the planetry government level, some of them must be facing elections, and if those elections are going badly, how would the Mandarins be feeling.

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Annachie wrote:I think you missed the point WW.

The Mandarins, purely as a matter of circumstance you understand, have their own personal favorites in elected positions of planetary governments.
Controlling a federal purse in an SL style federal government must allow an awful lot of influence peddling in purely planetry governments.

So if those people are looking like taking a hit in the elections ...

To some extent. But remember that the League government is chronically starved of income. Due to the League's shear scale that still means that enough money passes through the top bureaucrats hands to allow them to skip or divert enough to satisfy pretty most anybody's greed. But on the scale of core world governments the amount of money they can manage to throw around isn't necessarily all that impressive.

So it's not like the US Federal government being able to influence states by threatening to withhold, say, federal highway funds.

They could probably graft off enough money to tip a few elections, but I tend to think things would have to be pretty precisely balanced for their influence buying to cause major shifts.

phillies wrote:On one hand, we know rather little about how elections work in the Solarian league. However, there are a lot of planets, so even if they all follow the one planet-one government trope, in any given week at least a few of them -- from among the ones that have elections -- might be expected to be having elections. There will then be differences about league activities with respect to Manticore, and at some point the Mandarins might have to notice -- purely unofficially -- that their elected minions are not doing so well.

On the other hand, perhaps Manticore has elections and the league is a dictatorship that has evolved beyond any need to have elections.

Of course, we have not advanced in time a lot beyond the Massacre of Manticore, Admiral Filareta being blown to smithereens.

Also, election laws typically have ballot access time delays. If we are in America in September of some hypothetical future election year, and the hypothetical future bipartisan war with Zenda has managed to get a third of the Navy sunk and incidentally demonstrated that the rest of the navy is about as effective as its oldest ship, that being the US Constitution (armed with cannon, firing solid shot), the earliest you could get a new party on the ballot in opposition is two years from now.

Nonetheless, thanks to computers, some places may have short ballot access times or short instructional referenda "The Solarian League Representatives are bindingly instructed..." times, so there will at some point be indications that at least some people are not being suckered by the Office of Ignorance agitprop, and at some point there will be feedback into the League Assembly or active Secession Parties being formed. At some point, news of this will start filtering upward toward the Mandarins.

It is very likely that each member world is allowed to chose their representative by what ever method they want.
I have felt that a good portion of the Solarian League Assembly members where given the job as a way getting them away from local politics.