Alternate Ideologies

[Alexander the Average]

National Democracy.

A synthesis between the writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau that hold that a true democratic republic is only possible on a small scale with the emerging nationalism that placed the democratic subject within the context of a nation-state. In contrast to the centralising and unifying tendencies of many liberal nation-building projects which sought to centralise power, standardise languages and assimilate regional minorities and cultural differences into a single unified national identity, National Democrats supported the preservation and maintenance of cultural and linguistic differences, devolving power to local and regional levels and maintained the ideal of small democratic republican nation states that would be free to enter or leave federations. In contrast to many romantic nationalisms that see their nationality as an essential and organic entity that exists outside and above history or is grounded in some objective racial basis, National Democrats tended to take a more historicist and non-essentialist view of national identities, seeing them as pragmatic social constructs around which political agency and subjectivity can be built.

 

[Chillvillain]

Ludocracy

What is the ideal elite ruling class? Ludocrats argue that most elites whether by the nature of their birth or their owned wealth will fall into corruption once they start thinking of ways that their policies can influence their wealth or start fearing the very people that they are supposed to rule. Therefore an ideal elite ruling class has to be literally impossible to remove (even by death or revolution) and completely incapable of turning their positions of power into any kind of personal wealth. The only way to get that is to completely remove the elites from the circumstances the country that they rule over so thoroughly that they are convinced that they are playing a game. Players are scouted from Model UN summits, mock courts, and online forums and introduced to the Game. On the surface the Game is just an elaborate RPG where players regularly meet to act out the lives and careers of their chosen characters, however hidden from the players' view are avatars that act out their players' actions on the real world political stage. Avatars hold actual titles of power but are incapable of taking autonomous action while players hold all the authority but are only paid in intrinsic enjoyment or extrinsic points (points are not transferable into any form of currency and only exist to encourage friendly competition and boasting between players).

 

[Alexander the Average]

Gamers rise up.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I had the random idea to write a proper Cosmicist Basic Law for my Power Without Knowledge TL and next thing I know I'm up all night looking over constitutions and working on the structure of the damn thing instead of sleeping. I'll link it here when it's ready 😂

 

[Born in the USSA]

Anyone who really wants to dive into the nooks and crannies of their imagined ideologies should definitely try out this constitutionalist kick, I'm still working through it and it's an enormous amount of work but it's really helping me to explore aspects of my ideology "in practice" that I'd be the first to admit were underdeveloped, if only to fend off the challenge of imaginary reactionaries trying to undermine my Basic Law with passive aggressive bourgeois legalism!

 

[Neoteros]

Anyone who really wants to dive into the nooks and crannies of their imagined ideologies should definitely try out this constitutionalist kick, I'm still working through it and it's an enormous amount of work but it's really helping me to explore aspects of my ideology "in practice" that I'd be the first to admit were underdeveloped, if only to fend off the challenge of imaginary reactionaries trying to undermine my Basic Law with passive aggressive bourgeois legalism!

For my NationStates country (basically, a hybrid between the Lombard League and the Old Swiss Confederacy) I came up with a system of government that looks like something out of the 14th century, but that is actually made up of bits and pieces of 21st century systems of government, even alternate historical ones like the one of Malê Rising's Tolstoyan Russia.

Basically, there are 6000+ rural villages and urban districts in the country, that run on direct democracy in a manner not unlike Appenzell Innerrhoden or Glarus; they are grouped into progressively bigger subdivisions, up to the national level. Every district and village nominates a representative to the government of the subdivision above it, since direct democracy can only work in small areas if you don't want to rely on the internet but, since there's only so many seats available, a process of alternate election and sortition is used to select the delegates, that end up being bound to their constituents by an imperative mandate.

The economy is dominated by small businesses that cooperate and share their resources inside one of the country's many guilds but, unlike their medieval counterparts, there's more than one guild for every possible line of work, a measure implemented to try and prevent monopolies from arising. Basically, after a Chinese civil war-like clusterfuck that saw everyone gang up upon a Futurist regime fronted by someone who totally was not Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the surviving factions on both sides of the political spectrum agreed on a compromise between tradition (Tolkienesque distributists) and innovation (Orwellian syndicalists) founded on a mutual distrust of big business and big government alike.

 

[Born in the USSA]

For my NationStates country (basically, a hybrid between the Lombard League and the Old Swiss Confederacy) I came up with a system of government that looks like something out of the 14th century, but that is actually made up of bits and pieces of 21st century systems of government, even alternate historical ones like the one of Malê Rising's Tolstoyan Russia.

Basically, there are 6000+ rural villages and urban districts in the country, that run on direct democracy in a manner not unlike Appenzell Innerrhoden or Glarus; they are grouped into progressively bigger subdivisions, up to the national level. Every district and village nominates a representative to the government of the subdivision above it, since direct democracy can only work in small areas if you don't want to rely on the internet but, since there's only so many seats available, a process of alternate election and sortition is used to select the delegates, that end up being bound to their constituents by an imperative mandate.

The economy is dominated by small businesses that cooperate and share their resources inside one of the country's many guilds but, unlike their medieval counterparts, there's more than one guild for every possible line of work, a measure implemented to try and prevent monopolies from arising. Basically, after a Chinese civil war-like clusterfuck that saw everyone gang up upon a Futurist regime fronted by someone who totally was not Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the surviving factions on both sides of the political spectrum agreed on a compromise between tradition (Tolkienesque distributists) and innovation (Orwellian syndicalists) founded on a mutual distrust of big business and big government alike.

That's kickass, this site is an awesome resource for finding hypothetical social and government structures that can inform a thorough alternate political theory. I'll be the first to admit my Cosmicism imports a cultural diversity axis from Look to the West and as for the actual Basic Law the Martian Constitution from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy gave an interesting framework for including a flexible engine for creating an empowering economy and a proper check on environmental damage and the Organic Laws of Reds! provide a well developed set of individual and collective rights to fill out my preexisting list. Add in some procedures to decentralize decision making and create consistent churn in the makeup of the political class and a few other innovations of my own design and I'm off to a solid start.

 

[Emperor of Pennsylvania]

Alright, here's a batshit insane idea I just had: Neoreactionary Constitutional Monarchism. Basically, a cross between constitutional monarchism and the Dark Enlightenment.

Here's my take on what a government following this ideology would look like:

-There is a corporation which is nominally in charge of the government. Every citizen automatically gains one stock in the corporation at birth or upon being naturalized. But, it is possible for people to buy and sell stocks, so some people will have more stocks than others.

-The stockholders elect the Board of Directors. Each stock is equivalent to one vote, so some people get more votes than others in Board elections.

-The Board of Directors exists for the sole purpose of electing and removing the Monarch. The Monarch serves either for life or until the Board of Directors votes to remove him.

-There is a Parliament. All citizens get an equal number of votes in elections for Parliament (or at least in elections for the lower house of Parliament) regardless of how many stocks they have.

-There is something akin to a constitutional monarchist arrangement between the Monarch and Parliament. However, the Monarch is more powerful in this system than a standard constitutional monarch. The Monarch can remove the Prime Minister at any time and has veto power over legislation.

 

[suul'ken]

Alright, here's a batshit insane idea I just had: Neoreactionary Constitutional Monarchism. Basically, a cross between constitutional monarchism and the Dark Enlightenment.

There is only one problem:
This is basically a corporatocracy and other standard Cyberpunk shenanigans.

 

[Emperor of Pennsylvania]

This is basically a corporatocracy

Dark Enlightenment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The corporate monarchy stuff is what neoreactionaries actually support in real life.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Inspired by a thread on whether it's necessary to replace the US Constitution (and given my own project writing a Basic Law for my timeline), I decided to create this thread! Create amendments and constitutions (or at least parts of ones) for your AH projects and ideologies, talk shop over the art of constitutional framing, discuss innovative mechanisms and features of real life constitutional documents (or even the rare fictional ones 🤔), describe government structures, whatever takes your fancy! I know it's a bit in the weeds even by the usual standards of the site but I can speak from firsthand experience that it's an interesting and enlightening field of the hobby.

 

[Alexander the Average]

Democratic Feudalism

An attempt to carve a Third Way between the extremes of hyper-rational and iconoclastic enlightenment revolutionaries and ultra-reactionary traditionalists the proponents of Democratic Feudalism sought to create a synthesis that would combine the egalitarian civic ideals of the former with the organicism and respect for local custom and community that the latter espoused. Rejecting both the centralised constitutional nation-stated of the revolutionaries and the traditional forms of aristocratic and ecclesiastical authority that characterised the old Feudal and Absolutist polities the proponents of Democratic Feudalism sought to reestablish society on the principle of democratic communities, corporate bodies and associations that would be run and controlled by their citizens and members. These institutions would then enter into contracts of mutual obligations and responsibilities with one another, much in the same way that the old Feudal structures were grounded on contracts between vassal and liege. Difficult to place politically, Democratic Feudalism has been classified as an early forerunner to later Anarchistic traditions whilst others viewed it as a romantic throwback to an idealised vision of the ancient Greek Polis and Roman Foederati.

 

[TheBalkanizer]

Democratic Feudalism

An attempt to carve a Third Way between the extremes of hyper-rational and iconoclastic enlightenment revolutionaries and ultra-reactionary traditionalists the proponents of Democratic Feudalism sought to create a synthesis that would combine the egalitarian civic ideals of the former with the organicism and respect for local custom and community that the latter espoused. Rejecting both the centralised constitutional nation-stated of the revolutionaries and the traditional forms of aristocratic and ecclesiastical authority that characterised the old Feudal and Absolutist polities the proponents of Democratic Feudalism sought to reestablish society on the principle of democratic communities, corporate bodies and associations that would be run and controlled by their citizens and members. These institutions would then enter into contracts of mutual obligations and responsibilities with one another, much in the same way that the old Feudal structures were grounded on contracts between vassal and liege. Difficult to place politically, Democratic Feudalism has been classified as an early forerunner to later Anarchistic traditions whilst others viewed it as a romantic throwback to an idealised vision of the ancient Greek Polis and Roman Foederati.

I could see this ideology being created and gaining popularity in a TL with a failed French Revolution leading to a later wave of revolutions in the HRE

 

[Born in the USSA]

Eutopian Situationism

- A glyph for forging tulpas, mental constructs also known as servitors
​

Eutopian Situationism, also commonly called Mieville-Morrison Thought, is a political synthesis blending socialism and chaos magick that seeks to effect change through a combination of practical and esoteric direct action, with a name inverting the shift in the popular understanding of "utopia"* and directly referencing the situationist methodology of recontextualizing symbols and meaning. Mieville-Morrison Thought focuses almost entirely on the power of symbols as weapons and tools, with practical applications running the gamut from culture jamming to propaganda to coordinating mass action and esoteric methods focused on the production of egregores** and the working of spells through the creation of hypersigils. Critics of the ideology consider it either some new form of satanism or a sort of contagious domesticated schizophrenia.

*If "Utopia"="No Place"=>"Good Place" then "Eutopia"="Good Place"=>"No Place", aka the Ol' Switcheroo
**Collective constructs existing outside of any specific individual

 

[Wendell]

Illyrianism- An ideological current among Slovenes, Croats, and some Bosnian (Serb)s purporting that these groups are in fact a single people separated only by historical circumstances. Compare to OTL Yugoslavism or Czechoslovakism.

 

[Dune]

Eutopian Situationism

View attachment 705296
- A glyph for forging tulpas, mental constructs also known as servitors
​

Eutopian Situationism, also commonly called Mieville-Morrison Thought, is a political synthesis blending socialism and chaos magick that seeks to effect change through a combination of practical and esoteric direct action, with a name inverting the shift in the popular understanding of "utopia"* and directly referencing the situationist methodology of recontextualizing symbols and meaning. Mieville-Morrison Thought focuses almost entirely on the power of symbols as weapons and tools, with practical applications running the gamut from culture jamming to propaganda to coordinating mass action and esoteric methods focused on the production of egregores** and the working of spells through the creation of hypersigils. Critics of the ideology consider it either some new form of satanism or a sort of contagious domesticated schizophrenia.

*If "Utopia"="No Place"=>"Good Place" then "Eutopia"="Good Place"=>"No Place", aka the Ol' Switcheroo
**Collective constructs existing outside of any specific individual

Mieville-Morrison Thought?

I love this.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Mieville-Morrison Thought?

I love this.

Thanks 😂 I figured it wasn't out of the question for a chance meeting (since they both write for DC sometimes) to spin off into a collaboration of a more radical kind. It just now occurs to me it would be essentially a politically active strain of Invisibleism!

 

[Dune]

Thanks 😂 I figured it wasn't out of the question for a chance meeting (since they both write for DC sometimes) to spin off into a collaboration of a more radical kind. It just now occurs to me it would be essentially a politically active strain of Invisibleism!

You seem to have a fondness for speculative fiction writers creating strange ideologies.

 

[Born in the USSA]

You seem to have a fondness for speculative fiction writers creating strange ideologies.

Usually not out of the blue! Lovecraft actually wrote a twenty page paper on what he believed, Mieville wrote his thesis on "Marxism and international law" and Morrison is the odd man out but still a practicing chaos magician.

 

[Dune]

Usually not out of the blue! Lovecraft actually wrote a twenty page paper on what he believed, Mieville wrote his thesis on "Marxism and international law" and Morrison is the odd man out but still a practicing chaos magician.

Indeed. I just think it is a highly interesting and relatively underused source of inspiration. Keep up the good work!