The nation has a tridecacameral legislature, with thirteen National top-level Sequence Commissions. Each Sequence Commission deals with a particular aspect of national management. To be eligible to vote for commissioners in any committee, an individual must have a degree from an accredited educational institution and some amount of work experience in the same or a similar field which is related to the work of the committee in question - though the particular requirements vary by committee and occupation.
Some commissions, most notably the Service Sequence on Public Health, weight votes by experience or level of education. Although it is possible for an individual to qualify for more than one committee, they can vote only once in total. In the last election, 18.4% of the citizen adult population was eligible to vote in at least one sequence election, and 99.4% of those did so.
Candidates are similarly restricted, and usually have higher barriers to entry, though again the specific requirements vary heavily, as do the specific election mechanism. Each commission elects a Director to manage its Sequence, and confirms second-level officials nominated by said Director. Again, the mechanism varies by committee. Since the abolition of the Continental Control, and by proxy the office of Continental Director, these Sequence Directors have been the highest level of authority in the nation - if any 'national leader' can be identified, it would be either the Director of Foreign Affairs, who is seen as the face of the nation from abroad, or perhaps the Director of Urban Management, whose speeches and reports after major disasters or at the beginning of regional revitalization projects are the best-watched in the nation.
Special Sequence of Foreign Relations: By far the smallest sequence by voting-eligible population, represents diplomats, foreign policy analysts, and a handful of categories of foreign area experts, such as translators and political economists. Handles diplomacy and trade. Has sole power to make treaties and agreements, and has the power to regulate imports and exports.
Special Sequence of the Armed Forces: Represents military officers and certain analysts and academics. Handles the nation's military, and manages military installations both inside the country and abroad.
Special Sequence of National Research: Represents mathematicians, certain engineers and practically all experimental researchers, though most are also eligible to vote in other sequential elections, and as such the SNR technically has the lowest turnout rate. Provides research grants, and manages most non-military national research installations, including the space program.
Functional Sequence of Economic Management: Represents economists and accountants. Handles macroeconomic management. Issues currency, adjust interest rates, and collect all taxes bar import and export duties. Also conducts the national census and collects most other national statistics.
Functional Sequence of Land Management: Represents almost exclusively its own civil servants, as well as certain environmental researchers. Administers any land not used for other purposes, such as parks and unproductive land.
Functional Sequence of Agricultural Production Represents agricultural managers and specialists. Produces national plans for agricultural production, and administers the lease of agricultural land to private firms.
Functional Sequence of Industrial Production: Thanks to in compromises made with powerful syndicates (which many continue to bemoan as a betrayal of the concept of technocracy), the SIP has much broader conditions for voting eligibility, and is currently the largest sequence by VEP, a title it ceded to the SPH only in the last few decades. Represents industrial managers, most kinds of engineers, construction & extraction specialists, and skilled industrial workers. Produces national plans for non-agricultural, non-infrastructure related production,
Functional Sequence of Urban Management: Represents civil engineers, urban planners, and architects. Plans and zones residential areas, and administers the construction and lease of residential areas. Responsible for basic utilities and social services. Has broader powers in specially-designated metropolitan areas.
Functional Sequence of Infrastructure and Transportation : Represents infrastructure-related engineers and bureaucrats, as well as senior construction specialists and even some operators. Manages and constructs the nation's roads, railroads, ports, and other infrastructure, and produces plans for transportation-related production, such as the car and airplane industry.
Functional Sequence of Energy Production: Represents energy-related engineers, bureaucrats, and extractive and construction specialists. Manages the nation's energy production and regulation. Directly oversees nuclear power installations, and provides leases and permits to private firms for most other sources. Also controls the nation's nuclear arsenal.
Service Sequence of Public Health: Represents healthcare professionals and some biologists. Administers the nation's health-related facilities and research, and is tasked with preventing the spread of disease in time of epidemic.
Service Sequence of Social Relations: Represents lawyers, judges, senior law enforcement personnel, and some media professionals. Sets criminal law, and enforces it along with civil regulations set by other committees, with full control over the police and nominal control over the judicial system (though each committee has its own corps of legal experts, which preside over court cases relevant to their area). Also manages the nation's communications infrastructure, provides permits to private media firms, and oversees semi-independent national media, such as public radio.
Service Sequence of Education and Training: The third-largest sequence, represents most educational professionals and social scientists. Manages the nation's public education system, provides accreditation to private institutions.
There is also a fourteenth Sequence on Regional Control, which administers the nation's administrative divisions on issues which branch across multiple Sequences. Instead of having its own committee, personnel of Functional Sequences meet quarterly to make decisions in this Sequence.
Annually, or when requested by a majority of any three sequences, the sequences can be combined into a Plenary Committee on Continental Control, which makes symbolic or very broad-ranging law, votes (by committee, not by number) on jurisdictional disputes between sequences, and in rare cases vetoes or reverses decisions made by a committee. This latter power is invoked extremely rarely, both as a question of norms, and because the veto can be overridden with a two-thirds majority, which the vast majority of motions passed by any of the sequences have from the start.
Patriots will proudly tell you that the nation has no organized political parties to interfere with the work of governing, like many other countries do - after all, isn't it ridiculous for an individual's views on vastly different issues handled by completely different administrative systems to have to coincide to effectively participate in politics?
Of course, despite best intentions, no form of government is completely able to dampen individuals' interest in the work of government outside of their specialty, especially when those areas still affect them personally, and even when that government does not deem them sufficiently credentialed to participate politically. Since the structural reforms which separated of the state apparatus from the vanguard Committee on Technocracy in 1970, more-or-less informal organizations have been formed to advocate for particular positions, and continue to grow in influence, much to the dismay of those who were raised to believe in a government above 'politics'. These organizations fund studies, organize public debates, publish lists of endorsements, and otherwise collectively organize for policy. Some operate nationally, while others focus their attention on particular sequences. As one might expect, certain sequences - particularly those with broader suffrage - attract more political activity than others. Those pan-American political organizations who have registered members currently sitting on at least one Sequence include:
Committee for Restoration of the Distribution Sequence: A splinter group of the CoT-NCPR which in addition to a return to a planned economy, advocates for a return to the energy accounting system which was used in lieu of currency in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Like the CoT-NCPR, argue computing makes possible now what led to disaster then.
Committee on Technocracy - National Committee on Planning Reform: A union between the vestige of the pre-1970 ruling vanguard party and a post-1970 group of former CIR members who supported the political reforms of 1970, but thought the economic reforms too radical. Favor a shift back towards central economic planning, arguing that modern computing would resolve the inefficiencies and waste which plagued the economy of the 1960s, but diverse in how far they would go.
Committee on Industrial Restructuring: The nation's largest political committee, initially consisting of from those members of the Continental Control who took power in 1970 and restructured the nation's economy and administration to its current mixed private-lease system. Generally represent the national status quo.
Committee on Circular Production: Originally a subcommittee of the CoT founded by original Technic Alliance members M. King Hubbert and Benton MacKaye before their expulsion from the Continental Control, the CCP split from the CoT soon after 1970, and so could be called the nation's second-oldest major political committee. Advocate for the restructuring of national industry along a circular production model to avoid the resource crises predicted by Hubbart's peak theory.
Committee on Administrative Reform: A relatively new committee which advocates for lowering the standards for voting across the board. At the core of their ideology is Condorcet's jury theorem, which suggests that including a larger diversity of opinion in decision-making, even if underinformed, can improve the odds of a positive outcome. The faction's most radical wing, the 'Subcommittee on Area Restructuring', also calls for a restoration of a region-based system of representation. Fringe and not widely seen as serious.
American Syndicalist Alliance: The political arm of the industrial syndicates, who advocate for devolution of production authority to workplace councils. The ASA has its roots in the underground American Labor Movement, formed from an alliance between the remnants of the AFL-CIO-IWW and the Socialist Labor Party after the purges of the late '40s. The ALM's strike campaign of summer 1970 won them back a major seat at the table of governance after that year's reforms, including guaranteed representatives on some sequences. However, the decline of American manufacturing power has naturally weakened the ASA's influence.
Corporatist Alliance : An alliance of several professional organizations of the managerial class of private-lease state-owned enterprises. Advocate for increased economic liberalization and decentralization, on the grounds that experience with a particular enterprise is a better measure of expertise to measure it than any credential. Fall far outside the American mainstream, but often hold the balance of power between the ASA and the mainstream factions.
Background: I've been thinking for a long time about the fact that there's no reason legislative representation
has to be regionally-based, even though almost all legislatures, both in reality and in speculative fiction, are. This started as an idea for a legislature where representative apportionment was based on employment, and morphed into this form after I read a fascinating manifesto from the Technocratic movement of the 1930s. Its ideas were too autocratic to really fit any kind of legislature, but I thought a 'reformed' version could do so well. Plus, the idea of a tridecacameral system of government just makes me smile.