Any details about how Dole's term went? What happened in the midterms? Did the US get involved in Kosovo or in the Middle East?
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)
- Status
Lack of polling support, Liddy Dole's candidacy, and disagreements with the Dole administration over tax cuts and immigration.
The 2025 Seattle mayoral election was held on November 5 and was fought between Sculptor Spencer Shay and Disgraced Internet Critic Nevel Papperman.
Shay, having never been interested in politics before, decided to run in the election to stop Papperman, a very unpopular man who happened to be the only candidate running at the time, from becoming mayor of Seattle.
Of course, given Papperman's unpopularity, 98% of Seattle's voters voted for Shay, not because they believed he would do a goob job as Mayor, but because he was the only other candidate besides Papperman.
Shay proved to be a very popular mayor, though he only chose to run for one term, the next election was won by his Main Advisor, Orenthal "Gibby" Gibson.
Shay, having never been interested in politics before, decided to run in the election to stop Papperman, a very unpopular man who happened to be the only candidate running at the time, from becoming mayor of Seattle.
Of course, given Papperman's unpopularity, 98% of Seattle's voters voted for Shay, not because they believed he would do a goob job as Mayor, but because he was the only other candidate besides Papperman.
Shay proved to be a very popular mayor, though he only chose to run for one term, the next election was won by his Main Advisor, Orenthal "Gibby" Gibson.
200 pages down, 300 more to go. That is, under normal circumstances and if the thread doesn't get closed early for some reason.
Although I do like your infobox, @BetterCallPaulson , I am a little confused. In the candidates section, it says that Spencer Shay is nonpartisan. However, in the Elected Mayor section, it says he's a Democrat.
200 pages down, 300 more to go. That is, under normal circumstances and if the thread doesn't get closed early for some reason.
Although I do like your infobox, @BetterCallPaulson , I am a little confused. In the candidates section, it says that Spencer Shay is nonpartisan. However, in the Elected Mayor section, it says he's a Democrat.
I think Seattle doesn't list political parties.
Out of Many, One
In 1786, amid the development of the Constitution of the US, it was advised to Alexander Hamilton by General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben that Prince Henry of Prussia would be an ideal King of the United States. Hamilton concurred to the concept and informs the prince of the idea. Prince Henry, under the knowledge that he could never ascend to become King of Prussia, politely accepted and traveled to America to attend the Constitutional Convention. The thoughts of a monarchy divided the conference in half, in whether or not to have a King. Staunch opponents, including Benjamin Franklin, believed that having a monarchy would be tyrannic much like what he thought was before the revolution. Those who supported a monarchy said that a reigning monarch could make sure the survival of the US.
Soon after the debate of whether or not to have a monarch, the powers of the monarchy where unclear. Alexander Hamilton voiced his support for an absolute monarch with vast a power, whilst others supported a constitutional monarch. George Washington, being a supporter of a constitutional monarch with constrained power, stated that an absolute optionally available monarchy could be more tyrannical and unjust than George III, whilst a constitutional monarchy could make sure stability. Those in favour of a constitutional monarchy quickly outnumbered folks that assisted an absolute monarchy.
And so it was that in July 1789 that Prince Henry was crowned as King Henry I of the United States.
As King, Henry got on well with President George Washington, with both remaining unaffiliated with any party, although both harboured slight Federalist sympathies. The two main parties of post-independence America where the Federalists, de facto led by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democrats, de facto led by Thomas Jefferson. The Federalists where the greatest supporters of a monarchy, and the Democrats called for a scaled down monarchy, with some even calling for a republic.
Although obviously most diplomatically friendly with Prussia, Henry I did make attempts to reconcile good relations with the British, with the Hamilton Treaty being a major stepping stone, and is often credited for avoiding conflict between the two nations during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Under the realisation that he had no heir, Henry, despite his alleged homosexuality, birthed a child with his wife in 1797. There are rumours and evidence to suggest that Henry II was adopted, but no concrete proof has been presented.
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It's May 3rd, the 230th anniversary of the short lived Constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and a national day in Poland - though it's not a national day over here, in Lithuania, I figured I'd make something in memory of the event - a wikibox for an election in a surviving May 3rd Poland.
The election of 1808 in the Polish Commonwealth caught a snapshot of a nation in flux, in the midst of transformation towards its first true "party system" - although such a change had not been envisioned by the founders of its modern constitution in 1791. By the beginning of the 19th century, existential threat to the Commonwealth had ceased thanks to the endurance of the Polish-Prussian Alliance despite its significant concessions to the monarchy in Berlin, the simmering and decay of the French Revolution, and the eventual death of Empress Catherine II of Russia, and her replacement by the much less capable Paul I. A state of national consolidation under the Society of Friends of the Constitution in response to political pressure from the East could finally stand down once this threat died down, and mundane questions of the day take precedence in the political sphere as follows - and there were many questions to answer and debate.
At this moment in history, it is difficult to talk about the existence of "parties" undergoing "competition" - though the path towards the formation of party systems had already been laid. Formal party structures with organizational charters, campaign funding, and national leadership had yet to come about, and the localized nature of elections to the Chamber of Deputies - taking the form of two deputies elected by the sejmiks, or local parliaments, of each powiat in the Commonwealth - meant that any division of the Chamber into factions or "parties" is a mere approximation. More often than not, deputies would be elected with localised campaigns and responding to local issues in their powiats, proclaim that they will defend the interests of their constituents in the national arena, and only then align with a faction in the lower house once they arrived to Warsaw. Of the factions in the Chamber of Deputies, only the Patriotic Party, or the Society of Friends of the Constitution, had a statute which mandated discipline among its members, but even then, said Statute presumed that the acceptance of new members takes place in the Sejm, rather than in civil society.
The Patriotic Party, on its own, also gathered the most members of any parliamentary club in the Chamber of Deputies after the conclusion of the election. Proudly describing itself as the party which wrote and promulgated the Constitution of May 3rd, 1791, it represented the main current of Polish Enlightenment reformism, and was organized around the Potocki magnate family - Roman Ignacy Potocki was the outgoing Marshal of the Sejm and thus the head of the legislature, while his brother Stanisław Kostka Potocki served as the Minister of the Seal in the Guardians of the Laws, the cabinet of ministers of the Polish Commonwealth. The "mainline" Patriots were the conservative faction of the original Party in the 1790s, who had supported a constitutional monarchy from the beginning and were largely content with the current extent of the Constitution - save for matters of centralization and the strengthening of state power, always a sticking point for both the Party and its successors.
In truth, the Patriots were not the largest faction in the Chamber of Deputies at all - however, the Pro-Administration Party was hardly a party or a faction at all, but rather a label for members of the Sejm, both in the Chamber of Deputies and the appointed Senate, whose primary concern was the support of the executive of King Frederick Augustus I. Though loyalist members of the Sejm were always present, the faction grew significantly upon the passing of King Stanisław II August in 1798. The authors of the Constitution of May 3rd, despising heavily the old institution of royal election and viewing it as one of the causes of the Commonwealth's woes, wrote in an article outlying the succession of the throne after their current King's passing, decreeing that it will return to the Wettins of Saxony after his death. Though Frederick Augustus I was hesitant to accept, he was eventually convinced by a Polish delegation and soon proved to be more active than his predecessor - thus, the faction of his supporters grew. In theory, Pro-Administration was the largest faction in the Chamber of Deputies, and the King's delegate, Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, became the next Marshal of the Sejm - however, the line between Pro-Administration and the Patriots was blurry, and the two factions heavily overlapped. The Patriotic Party were supporters of greater royal power and centralization - a surprising thing, perhaps, when compared to their counterparts in France, the Netherlands or Britain, but it can be explained with the Commonwealth's unique situation before the promulgation of the Constitution. To the ideologues of the Polish Enlightenment, it was not a lack of liberty which was the cause of problems in their nation - it was a deformation and mutation of existing liberty, leading towards so-called "Polish anarchy". Seeing the absolute monarchies surrounding them, all of which were far more powerful than Poland itself, Polish reformers thus pursued a system which, though still democratic, would bestow the central government with much more power, and viewed this pivot towards royal power as the nation's salvation. The Great Sejm of 1788-1792 established universal taxation, replaced pospolite ruszenie mobilization with a large standing army under the control of the King, abolished numerous features of Golden Liberty (such as the right to confederation, liberum veto, and even the religious freedoms of the Warsaw Confederation) and imposed property qualifications for voting, disenfranchising almost a million petty nobles. A committed Patriot would thus find himself agreeing quite often with the King's loyalists.
The Cardinal Law Party, meanwhile, was in opposition to this state power pivot. Named after the Cardinal Laws, a proto-constitution enacted under Russian dictate in 1767 which sought to protect the rights and freedoms of Polish nobility from the early reform attempts led by Czartoryski's Familia, it united the faction of the nobility which were opposed to the Constitution of May 3rd, one way or another. In the late 18th century, this faction was nigh-treasonous, conspiring with Russia and hoping for their intervention to restore Golden Liberty, but as this threat receded, the party changed. As the Constitution now appeared permanent, their magnates sought accommodation with the system, all while criticizing it from one approach or another. The growth of royal power orchestrated by Patriot-led governments were attacked as tyranny and used by Cardinal Law to invoke images of absolutism in Russia or in the German states, which a Constitution supposedly designed to emulate the Enlightenment ideals should avoid, crafting a conundrum for the reformists. Others turned towards populism, aiming to tap into the plight of hundreds of thousands of petty nobles who were supposedly still equal to the rest of their peers under law, and yet could no longer express their voice due to the Constitution's property qualifications. As time passes, this ideological approach will mutate further, especially as the generation of old magnates dies out and is replaced by a generation of new politicians who grew up in the post-Constitution arena and have no attachment to Cardinal Law, yet still campaign for the rights of the lesser citizen. At this time, however, it is still just an opportunistic move made by Polish and Lithuanian magnates to frame their opposition to the Constitution and a desire for a return to the old days.
From the left side, however, the political consensus was challenged by the Solecians, sometimes also referred to as the Forge or the Huguenots. Offically a faction of the Patriotic Party, it was born around the same time as the party itself - from a group and unofficial think tank of radical activists and intellectuals centered in Warsaw, "Kołłątaj's Forge". As the man who gave this group their name, Hugo Kołłątaj, moved on to politics in the Warsaw city arena and became a long time plenipotentiary from the city, the name eventually faded away, replaced by the name of the Warsaw neighbourhood in which this faction originally organized. Unwilling to accept that the development of the Constitution is concluded, the Solecians pursued radical objectives, namely the abolition of serfdom, the equalization of rights between all social classes in a manner similar to the Bill of Rights in the United States, the separation of the Catholic Church and the state by abandoning the Catholic Church's institutional role in the Commission of Education, and even greater expansion of state power - while several proposals were floated about, the nationalization of property were frequent, and in rare cases, even the abolition of the monarchy. Influenced by Kołłątaj, numerous Solecians were also physiocrats, believing land and human labor to be the most important factors in creating value, and employed this economic thought as justification for the abolition of serfdom - as a means to maximize the number of people living off their productive labor, rather than for their lords. The abolition of serfdom, a prospect considered since the end of the 18th century, was toyed with by Patriots of every ideological strain - although the Solecians were by far the most committed, whereas their more conservative peers were more interested in negotiation and accommodation with the magnates before pursuing such a reform.
The counterparts of the Solecians among the plenipotentiaries - representatives from each of the Royal Cities, an important step towards the enfranchisements of the non-noble classes - were the Republicans. Despite their name, they were generally not open monarchy abolitionists - as contradictory as it may seem, Poland both before and after the Constitution was seen as a Republic, or in another form, a Commonwealth, and the "Republican" name indicated their support towards the May 3rd regime. Largely echoing Solecian ideological beliefs, though with more emphasis towards the interests of the urban population, they formed the plenipotentiary delegation with Pro-Administration representatives, independents, and delegates aligned with the Confraternity of Merchants - a faction seeking to represent the interests of the cities and their Polish merchant population in the national arena, and named after the various Confraternities of Merchants present in the Commonwealth's cities. Of them, the Warsaw Confraternity was the most powerful, although it lost its seat to Kołłątaj.
Among the issues already mentioned throughout the summary, numerous others were debated in the national arena, drawing wedges between all of the competing factions.
At this moment in history, it is difficult to talk about the existence of "parties" undergoing "competition" - though the path towards the formation of party systems had already been laid. Formal party structures with organizational charters, campaign funding, and national leadership had yet to come about, and the localized nature of elections to the Chamber of Deputies - taking the form of two deputies elected by the sejmiks, or local parliaments, of each powiat in the Commonwealth - meant that any division of the Chamber into factions or "parties" is a mere approximation. More often than not, deputies would be elected with localised campaigns and responding to local issues in their powiats, proclaim that they will defend the interests of their constituents in the national arena, and only then align with a faction in the lower house once they arrived to Warsaw. Of the factions in the Chamber of Deputies, only the Patriotic Party, or the Society of Friends of the Constitution, had a statute which mandated discipline among its members, but even then, said Statute presumed that the acceptance of new members takes place in the Sejm, rather than in civil society.
The Patriotic Party, on its own, also gathered the most members of any parliamentary club in the Chamber of Deputies after the conclusion of the election. Proudly describing itself as the party which wrote and promulgated the Constitution of May 3rd, 1791, it represented the main current of Polish Enlightenment reformism, and was organized around the Potocki magnate family - Roman Ignacy Potocki was the outgoing Marshal of the Sejm and thus the head of the legislature, while his brother Stanisław Kostka Potocki served as the Minister of the Seal in the Guardians of the Laws, the cabinet of ministers of the Polish Commonwealth. The "mainline" Patriots were the conservative faction of the original Party in the 1790s, who had supported a constitutional monarchy from the beginning and were largely content with the current extent of the Constitution - save for matters of centralization and the strengthening of state power, always a sticking point for both the Party and its successors.
In truth, the Patriots were not the largest faction in the Chamber of Deputies at all - however, the Pro-Administration Party was hardly a party or a faction at all, but rather a label for members of the Sejm, both in the Chamber of Deputies and the appointed Senate, whose primary concern was the support of the executive of King Frederick Augustus I. Though loyalist members of the Sejm were always present, the faction grew significantly upon the passing of King Stanisław II August in 1798. The authors of the Constitution of May 3rd, despising heavily the old institution of royal election and viewing it as one of the causes of the Commonwealth's woes, wrote in an article outlying the succession of the throne after their current King's passing, decreeing that it will return to the Wettins of Saxony after his death. Though Frederick Augustus I was hesitant to accept, he was eventually convinced by a Polish delegation and soon proved to be more active than his predecessor - thus, the faction of his supporters grew. In theory, Pro-Administration was the largest faction in the Chamber of Deputies, and the King's delegate, Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, became the next Marshal of the Sejm - however, the line between Pro-Administration and the Patriots was blurry, and the two factions heavily overlapped. The Patriotic Party were supporters of greater royal power and centralization - a surprising thing, perhaps, when compared to their counterparts in France, the Netherlands or Britain, but it can be explained with the Commonwealth's unique situation before the promulgation of the Constitution. To the ideologues of the Polish Enlightenment, it was not a lack of liberty which was the cause of problems in their nation - it was a deformation and mutation of existing liberty, leading towards so-called "Polish anarchy". Seeing the absolute monarchies surrounding them, all of which were far more powerful than Poland itself, Polish reformers thus pursued a system which, though still democratic, would bestow the central government with much more power, and viewed this pivot towards royal power as the nation's salvation. The Great Sejm of 1788-1792 established universal taxation, replaced pospolite ruszenie mobilization with a large standing army under the control of the King, abolished numerous features of Golden Liberty (such as the right to confederation, liberum veto, and even the religious freedoms of the Warsaw Confederation) and imposed property qualifications for voting, disenfranchising almost a million petty nobles. A committed Patriot would thus find himself agreeing quite often with the King's loyalists.
The Cardinal Law Party, meanwhile, was in opposition to this state power pivot. Named after the Cardinal Laws, a proto-constitution enacted under Russian dictate in 1767 which sought to protect the rights and freedoms of Polish nobility from the early reform attempts led by Czartoryski's Familia, it united the faction of the nobility which were opposed to the Constitution of May 3rd, one way or another. In the late 18th century, this faction was nigh-treasonous, conspiring with Russia and hoping for their intervention to restore Golden Liberty, but as this threat receded, the party changed. As the Constitution now appeared permanent, their magnates sought accommodation with the system, all while criticizing it from one approach or another. The growth of royal power orchestrated by Patriot-led governments were attacked as tyranny and used by Cardinal Law to invoke images of absolutism in Russia or in the German states, which a Constitution supposedly designed to emulate the Enlightenment ideals should avoid, crafting a conundrum for the reformists. Others turned towards populism, aiming to tap into the plight of hundreds of thousands of petty nobles who were supposedly still equal to the rest of their peers under law, and yet could no longer express their voice due to the Constitution's property qualifications. As time passes, this ideological approach will mutate further, especially as the generation of old magnates dies out and is replaced by a generation of new politicians who grew up in the post-Constitution arena and have no attachment to Cardinal Law, yet still campaign for the rights of the lesser citizen. At this time, however, it is still just an opportunistic move made by Polish and Lithuanian magnates to frame their opposition to the Constitution and a desire for a return to the old days.
From the left side, however, the political consensus was challenged by the Solecians, sometimes also referred to as the Forge or the Huguenots. Offically a faction of the Patriotic Party, it was born around the same time as the party itself - from a group and unofficial think tank of radical activists and intellectuals centered in Warsaw, "Kołłątaj's Forge". As the man who gave this group their name, Hugo Kołłątaj, moved on to politics in the Warsaw city arena and became a long time plenipotentiary from the city, the name eventually faded away, replaced by the name of the Warsaw neighbourhood in which this faction originally organized. Unwilling to accept that the development of the Constitution is concluded, the Solecians pursued radical objectives, namely the abolition of serfdom, the equalization of rights between all social classes in a manner similar to the Bill of Rights in the United States, the separation of the Catholic Church and the state by abandoning the Catholic Church's institutional role in the Commission of Education, and even greater expansion of state power - while several proposals were floated about, the nationalization of property were frequent, and in rare cases, even the abolition of the monarchy. Influenced by Kołłątaj, numerous Solecians were also physiocrats, believing land and human labor to be the most important factors in creating value, and employed this economic thought as justification for the abolition of serfdom - as a means to maximize the number of people living off their productive labor, rather than for their lords. The abolition of serfdom, a prospect considered since the end of the 18th century, was toyed with by Patriots of every ideological strain - although the Solecians were by far the most committed, whereas their more conservative peers were more interested in negotiation and accommodation with the magnates before pursuing such a reform.
The counterparts of the Solecians among the plenipotentiaries - representatives from each of the Royal Cities, an important step towards the enfranchisements of the non-noble classes - were the Republicans. Despite their name, they were generally not open monarchy abolitionists - as contradictory as it may seem, Poland both before and after the Constitution was seen as a Republic, or in another form, a Commonwealth, and the "Republican" name indicated their support towards the May 3rd regime. Largely echoing Solecian ideological beliefs, though with more emphasis towards the interests of the urban population, they formed the plenipotentiary delegation with Pro-Administration representatives, independents, and delegates aligned with the Confraternity of Merchants - a faction seeking to represent the interests of the cities and their Polish merchant population in the national arena, and named after the various Confraternities of Merchants present in the Commonwealth's cities. Of them, the Warsaw Confraternity was the most powerful, although it lost its seat to Kołłątaj.
Among the issues already mentioned throughout the summary, numerous others were debated in the national arena, drawing wedges between all of the competing factions.
A wonderful tribute, all in all.Hum. So the Polish-Russian War of 1792 resulted in a Polish victory. Does Paul I get assassinated as per OTL?
Also did the French Revolution proceed as per OTL, or is the PLC the sole great republic in continental Europe?
In three decades or fewer, the PLC might end up having a populist general in charge.
Oh yeah!
What's the state of Ruthenian (and Russian) population in the PLC?
On the contrary, the Polish-Russian War of 1792 does not come about due to Prussian assurances and support, as well as a Polish transfer of Danzig and Torun, and though tensions between them and Russia continued up until the death of Catherine II, they do not escalate into war, and by 1808 Poland is firmly in the Prussian sphere. I could see Paul I still getting assassinated, though at that point the situation in Russia is different enough from OTL that anything can happen.
My personal idea was that the French Revolution never escalates to the Revolutionary Wars and ends with a constitutional monarchy established. The First Coalition against France happened right before the Second Partition and inadvertently caused it.
At this point in history, Belarusian and Ukrainian nationalism is still extremely embryonic and so the main issues in Right-bank Ukraine are the continuation of serfdom, ever relevant for the region, and the more or less successful conclusion of the Union of Brest as the last Disuniate churches finally accepted Greek Catholic rite in the late 18th century. There is something bubbling up here and there which may develop into a new cleavage in time, however. The National Education Commission in Poland, established in 1773, was uncharacteristically nationalist, replacing former Latin language teaching with Polish language only, including in East Slavic regions - and as it is constitutionally controlled by the Primate, i.e. the Catholic Church of Poland, this situation is not going to change for a while.
The 19th century is a century of nationalism and it's pretty likely that it will affect the Ruthenian population as well.
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The Ottoman Empire was the Sick Man of Europe, and Bulgaria was the Prussia of the Balkans. But no one had expected this. Not so quickly. Especially as Bulgarian forces in Macedonia were beaten to Thessaloniki by the Greeks. But in Thrace, in Thrace the Bulgarians went from strength to strength. The Ottomans were defeated at Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, while Adrianople was placed under siege. Despite Ottoman reinforcements and the stretched supply lines of the Bulgarians, the armies of the Tsar would score one last victory at the Çatalca, just 30 kilometers from the Porte. The defensive line was smashed, and the road lay open.
The actual capture of the city itself was anti-climactic. The Ottoman Government fled quickly, while a simultaneous coup by the Young Turks broke out en route to Ankara. Sporadic firefights, not a great siege or grand battle, marked the fall of Constantinople. In 922 the Bulgars had been denied entry to the city. Now 990 Years later, victory had come. Muslim symbols were torn from the Hagia Sophia, the Patriarch of Constantinople paraded through the streets. But only the Bulgarians rejoiced.
The Serbs were more concerned with getting a favorable settlement in Macedonia, but the Greeks resented the success of their “Ally.” Britain was horrified to see their longstanding propping up of the Ottomans fail to a Russian ally. But St. Petersburg was no more friendly. The conquest of the straits had been an overarching ambition of the Russians for generations, and now some Balkan upstart had stolen the glory. In a stunning volte face, Tsar Nicholas went from backing the league to issuing ultimatums. The Austrians have no great love for the Ottomans, but the expanding ambitions of Serbia were worrisome. In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm must pick a side between his Bulgarian and Ottoman meddlings. It is the French, against their better judgement, playing peacemaker, calling for a general European Conference to address the Constantinople crisis...
The actual capture of the city itself was anti-climactic. The Ottoman Government fled quickly, while a simultaneous coup by the Young Turks broke out en route to Ankara. Sporadic firefights, not a great siege or grand battle, marked the fall of Constantinople. In 922 the Bulgars had been denied entry to the city. Now 990 Years later, victory had come. Muslim symbols were torn from the Hagia Sophia, the Patriarch of Constantinople paraded through the streets. But only the Bulgarians rejoiced.
The Serbs were more concerned with getting a favorable settlement in Macedonia, but the Greeks resented the success of their “Ally.” Britain was horrified to see their longstanding propping up of the Ottomans fail to a Russian ally. But St. Petersburg was no more friendly. The conquest of the straits had been an overarching ambition of the Russians for generations, and now some Balkan upstart had stolen the glory. In a stunning volte face, Tsar Nicholas went from backing the league to issuing ultimatums. The Austrians have no great love for the Ottomans, but the expanding ambitions of Serbia were worrisome. In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm must pick a side between his Bulgarian and Ottoman meddlings. It is the French, against their better judgement, playing peacemaker, calling for a general European Conference to address the Constantinople crisis...
soviet_killer
Banned
WIP wikibox, from my timeline. The current date on that reign thingy is 18 August 2077, because I don't think Wikipedia can count backwards lol.
For all intents and purposes, the informations presented there are false. If you'd go to Angers in this TL and ask about her being born in any hospital, the answer is there ain't any record of her. But not like anyone inside the empire would try to find about that anyway.
Until I make a better pic/somehow manage to make a render of her, you gotta contend with the anime pic. I'll make a wikibox about the country sometime probably.
I will answer some of the most likely questions to receive, if any.
Q: Why the halo around her head?
A: Given she's the leading deity in the Empire's religion, equivalent to a God-Empress, she has a halo. Its a hologram, and in later variants of my art it got turned into a normal halo.
Q: Why the fake information?
A: When your ruler is a deity, you don't really want there to be actual info about them, lest their political opponents try to make the subjects think they are actually human.
Q: OK, what makes them a deity?
A: Immortality.
Q: OK, how are they immortal?
A: Alien space ship crashed sometime around when the dinos got destroyed by an asteroid. She/her husband (for lore purposes it isn't stated whom found it) found it, made a clone that ended up being their partner, and then modded their genes into immortality.
Q: OK, how does this 'immortality' work?
A: No idea. I got like 5 versions. One of them is that simply, their body does not age. Its like you took a picture of their atoms at that particular moment, and they froze. After some thinking I dropped this idea. Other, more plausible one is that the body has a certain 'system restore point', and whenever something is damaged (say, knife wound from a failed assassination attempt) it regenerates back to that point, often within minutes.
Q: OK I got all that, but what's Elysium?
A: West Africa after its been colonized. Its a nice summer vacation, pretty landscapes and fair people, topped by the residences of at least 20 semi-deities from all around the Empire.
Attachments
1996 General Election
2000 Democratic & Republican Primaries
2000 Democratic & Republican Primaries
The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial American presidential election. Democratic nominee and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts faced off against the Republican nominee, First Lady of the United States Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina. A multitude of issues - from President Dole's 1997 tax cuts, healthcare and social security, to Iraq and Kosovo, were discussed in this election.
Early in his term, President Bob Dole worked with the Republican congressional leaders to pass sweeping tax cuts, keeping his promise of cutting taxes by 15% across-the-board. Quickly however, the national deficit begun to increase. Controversial cuts to healthcare and social security were made in an attempt to balance the budget, though this made little impact. These became key issues of the 1998 midterms, which saw Democrats gain a narrow majority in the House of Representatives (219-215) and control of the Governor's Conference, while Republicans retained the United States Senate (53-47).
In 1999, Banking reform became a key issue as the banking industry decried overregulation in the midst of a banking crisis. Despite his personal opposition to such, Democratic House Speaker Dick Gephardt could not get his caucus to prevent the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act in the House, where it passed the Senate and was swiftly signed by President Dole. That same year, foreign policy became another pressing matter, as the issue involving Kosovan sovereignty was discussed despite Serbian opposition. Dole recommended taking swift military action to protect Kosovan sovereignty in the fall of 1999 to the UN, which such resolution was passed overwhelmingly. Weeks later, Iraq expelled UN bomb inspectors that were there to investigate the validity of claims that the Hussein regime was constructing weapons of mass-destruction. Dole and many of America's NATO allied leaders - most notably UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, proposed a preemptive military intervention, which was also passed by the UN. The issue of managing both Iraq's weapons creation and Kosovan sovereignty remained major foreign policy issues - alongside what to do with Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of many terrorist attacks in America and in allied nations abroad, moving into the 2000 election season.
In September 1999, Bob Dole announced he would not be running for a 2nd term as president - citing health concerns. He then passed the torch to his wife Elizabeth, who became the first First Lady to run for political office in American history. She would easily become the Republican's nominee for President for the 2000 election. After Former Vice President Al Gore's withdrawal of consideration for a 2000 candidacy, the Democratic party faced a hotly contested primary. Ultimately it would be Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts who became the nominee after victories in key contests, such as the New Hampshire, California, and Texas primaries. As the Republicans nominated the first female nominee for President in history, the Democrats knew they had a problem among female voters if they didn't do something to counteract Dole's status. Some of these concerns went away when presumptive Democratic nominee Kerry announced in April his running mate would be a woman. As to who it would be would not be known until July when Kerry made his choice clear - Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. Despite not having a strong liberal record, in fact being a rather conservative Democrat, she was nevertheless well respected among moderate voters. There was also the addition that Feinstein, being Jewish herself, could help Kerry greatly among Jewish voters in Florida, expected to be a make or break state for both nominees. Dole's choice was a bit more expected - Governor George W. Bush of Texas. He had added name recognition, connection to donors, youth and charm, and the bonus of his brother Jeb being Governor of Florida, a job he narrowly won just 2 years prior. Kerry saw a weak spot in this choice and labeled Bush and Dole as "fed by the silver-spoon of big wall street donors".
The campaign was very divisive. Kerry touted his senatorial experience, while claiming Dole lacked any experience. She rebuffed these claims by citing her experience in cabinet positions, to which Kerry remarked at a rally "At least I've won elections." Kerry also often brought up his military experience, having won 3 purple hearts for his service in Vietnam. He claimed this experience would aid him in solving America's military disputes around the globe. Dole campaigned on conservative, family values, lowering taxes and defending her husband's marquee 15% tax cuts from 1997. Kerry campaigned against the Dole tax cuts, calling them "just another handout to wall street" but supported low taxes on the middle class. Kerry also attacked Bob Dole and the Republicans for breaking their promise to not make any cuts to social security, and defended the Clinton administrations approach to taxes, which was still popular, especially among moderate democrats. Despite her best attempts, Dole could not untie herself from the image of an out-of-touch candidate with deep ties to big donors. Numerous gaffes by her and her running mate accentuated this feeling among voters. Though all three presidential debates came with rather inconclusive results, Kerry was generally accepted as having won each of them - albeit narrowly, only hurting the Dole camp. But the final nail in the coffin was the eleventh-hour revelation that George W. Bush had been arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol.
Though Republicans hoped they could score another 4 years, these hopes became less and less attainable as the night progressed. The state that did it in was Nevada being officially called for Kerry at 12:05 AM on November 8th. Dole conceded defeat as America elected the first Vietnam War veteran to be president, and the first Female vice president - 80 years after the passage of the 19th amendment. To add insult to injury, after a recount Florida would be called for Kerry on November 18th, putting Kerry at exactly 300 electoral votes, at least until an elector from DC abstained, putting him at 299 - to Dole's 238.
Early in his term, President Bob Dole worked with the Republican congressional leaders to pass sweeping tax cuts, keeping his promise of cutting taxes by 15% across-the-board. Quickly however, the national deficit begun to increase. Controversial cuts to healthcare and social security were made in an attempt to balance the budget, though this made little impact. These became key issues of the 1998 midterms, which saw Democrats gain a narrow majority in the House of Representatives (219-215) and control of the Governor's Conference, while Republicans retained the United States Senate (53-47).
In 1999, Banking reform became a key issue as the banking industry decried overregulation in the midst of a banking crisis. Despite his personal opposition to such, Democratic House Speaker Dick Gephardt could not get his caucus to prevent the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act in the House, where it passed the Senate and was swiftly signed by President Dole. That same year, foreign policy became another pressing matter, as the issue involving Kosovan sovereignty was discussed despite Serbian opposition. Dole recommended taking swift military action to protect Kosovan sovereignty in the fall of 1999 to the UN, which such resolution was passed overwhelmingly. Weeks later, Iraq expelled UN bomb inspectors that were there to investigate the validity of claims that the Hussein regime was constructing weapons of mass-destruction. Dole and many of America's NATO allied leaders - most notably UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, proposed a preemptive military intervention, which was also passed by the UN. The issue of managing both Iraq's weapons creation and Kosovan sovereignty remained major foreign policy issues - alongside what to do with Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of many terrorist attacks in America and in allied nations abroad, moving into the 2000 election season.
In September 1999, Bob Dole announced he would not be running for a 2nd term as president - citing health concerns. He then passed the torch to his wife Elizabeth, who became the first First Lady to run for political office in American history. She would easily become the Republican's nominee for President for the 2000 election. After Former Vice President Al Gore's withdrawal of consideration for a 2000 candidacy, the Democratic party faced a hotly contested primary. Ultimately it would be Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts who became the nominee after victories in key contests, such as the New Hampshire, California, and Texas primaries. As the Republicans nominated the first female nominee for President in history, the Democrats knew they had a problem among female voters if they didn't do something to counteract Dole's status. Some of these concerns went away when presumptive Democratic nominee Kerry announced in April his running mate would be a woman. As to who it would be would not be known until July when Kerry made his choice clear - Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. Despite not having a strong liberal record, in fact being a rather conservative Democrat, she was nevertheless well respected among moderate voters. There was also the addition that Feinstein, being Jewish herself, could help Kerry greatly among Jewish voters in Florida, expected to be a make or break state for both nominees. Dole's choice was a bit more expected - Governor George W. Bush of Texas. He had added name recognition, connection to donors, youth and charm, and the bonus of his brother Jeb being Governor of Florida, a job he narrowly won just 2 years prior. Kerry saw a weak spot in this choice and labeled Bush and Dole as "fed by the silver-spoon of big wall street donors".
The campaign was very divisive. Kerry touted his senatorial experience, while claiming Dole lacked any experience. She rebuffed these claims by citing her experience in cabinet positions, to which Kerry remarked at a rally "At least I've won elections." Kerry also often brought up his military experience, having won 3 purple hearts for his service in Vietnam. He claimed this experience would aid him in solving America's military disputes around the globe. Dole campaigned on conservative, family values, lowering taxes and defending her husband's marquee 15% tax cuts from 1997. Kerry campaigned against the Dole tax cuts, calling them "just another handout to wall street" but supported low taxes on the middle class. Kerry also attacked Bob Dole and the Republicans for breaking their promise to not make any cuts to social security, and defended the Clinton administrations approach to taxes, which was still popular, especially among moderate democrats. Despite her best attempts, Dole could not untie herself from the image of an out-of-touch candidate with deep ties to big donors. Numerous gaffes by her and her running mate accentuated this feeling among voters. Though all three presidential debates came with rather inconclusive results, Kerry was generally accepted as having won each of them - albeit narrowly, only hurting the Dole camp. But the final nail in the coffin was the eleventh-hour revelation that George W. Bush had been arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol.
Though Republicans hoped they could score another 4 years, these hopes became less and less attainable as the night progressed. The state that did it in was Nevada being officially called for Kerry at 12:05 AM on November 8th. Dole conceded defeat as America elected the first Vietnam War veteran to be president, and the first Female vice president - 80 years after the passage of the 19th amendment. To add insult to injury, after a recount Florida would be called for Kerry on November 18th, putting Kerry at exactly 300 electoral votes, at least until an elector from DC abstained, putting him at 299 - to Dole's 238.
Here's another infobox for a country dramatically different to OTL in my China TL.
Even though the modern Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did not come into being until 1991, functionally it was born almost a decade earlier, when the death of Josip Bronz Tito, functionally its ruler for 36 years, created sizeable unrest. The seven Slavic nations that comprised the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia- Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia (now known as North Macedonia)- might well have fractured and gone their separate ways if it hadn’t been for the intervention, ironically enough, of one of Tito’s old adversaries- Milovan Đilas.
Đilas had been a prominent dissident after being deposed as Prime Minister in the 1950s, and was eventually freed in 1966 and allowed to live in Belgrade. He was quiet on the state of the federation until 1980, when after Tito’s death he noted the severe fragmentation of the country without him and posited that without adapting to the desire for regional autonomy and accountability of government, Yugoslavia could not survive. When he put himself forward for the Presidency late that year, he knew the Yugoslav central government would never accept him, but by building up his popularity with the Yugoslav public he sparked massive protests from Ljubljana to Skopje.
The potency of Đilas’s message for how to reform Yugoslavia was down to a number of factors; firstly, Yugoslavs were drifting away from communism in this period, particularly when its main figurehead was ailing hardline Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. Secondly, despite his reformist attitudes Đilas was an unabashed democratic socialist, and the country already differed from most of the Eastern Bloc due to its market socialist economy and relative neutrality in the Cold War, meaning he wasn’t as out of step with his people as (say) Gorbachev in Russia. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Đilas’s advocacy for democratizing Yugoslavia emphasized a continued focus on what he called ‘the Republic’s founding principles’- pan-Slavism and socialism. Consequently, unabashed separatist and capitalist parties were not allowed to register themselves in the first Yugoslav elections, though autonomists and mixed-economy advocates were.
In 1982, the first provincial elections were held, with that summer seeing the first Yugoslav federal election with any form of multi-party competition since 1938. Opposition parties were protected from intimidation or threat (so long as they did not advocate for separatism or capitalism), but were disorganized enough that the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ) retained power with ease. Its grip on power was steadily weakened as the Prime Ministers of the constituent republics (despite the confusing-to-foreigners name, they are closer to the Premiers of Australian states or Canadian provinces in terms of their roles) sought to diverge from federal and party policy.
When Đilas announced his retirement from politics prior to the 1990 election (the last to be held under the Socialist Federal Republic), the floodgates opened. With the rest of the Eastern Bloc rapidly abandoning communism, the Yugoslav government was forced to remove its restrictions on party ideologies, and the Prime Minister of Croatia and leader of the largest opposition party, the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party (Jugoslavenska Socijaldemokratska Partija, JSP), Stjepan Mesić immediately reformed its platform to advocate for a more neoliberal economic system (but kept its name, presumably because Yugoslav politicians admire the systems of Brazil and Portugal where the biggest right-wing party's name extols a left-wing principle for no good reason). In response, the new leader of the SKJ, Kiro Gligorov, renamed it the Democratic Socialist Party of Yugoslavia (Demokratska Socijalistička Partija Jugoslavije, DSPJ), and despite Đilas’s endorsement, Mesić’s JSP was swept to power and proceeded to reform Yugoslavia’s economy to a full-blown neoliberal one.
As in much of Eastern Europe, initially voters ate this up, but by 1994 the bubble neoliberal economics had brought to European economies was bursting, and when Yugoslavs made Kiro Gligorov of Đilas’s Democratic Socialist Party of Yugoslavia (Demokratska Socijalistička Partija Jugoslavije, DSPJ) the new Prime Minister, he moderated these reforms, though his government was badly undermined by civil unrest emerging in Kosovo and a hardline stance on the constituent nations’ autonomy.
When Mesić returned to power in 1998, he did so by campaigning on a more moderate ideology. Mesić’s second and third terms did prove quite productive, though, as he initiated more moderate liberalization of the economy, easily won the 2002 election against divisive DSPJ leader Slobodan Milošević, negotiated Yugoslavia’s entry into the EU and won a federal referendum to have its membership ratified.
Since Mesić left office in 2006, Yugoslavia’s federal leadership has received the nickname of ‘the revolving door of Europe’, as no Yugoslav Prime Minister has won re-election since 2002. Furthermore, a level of unrest in the constituent nations to rival Spain has emerged at numerous points (most recently in 2019 in Kosovo), and support for minor parties in lieu of the DSPJ and JSP has grown; in 2018 the two main parties did not even capture 60% of the vote between them. The minor parties are largely coalitions of different interest groups which, like the two main parties, are known as ‘pan-Slavic’ parties for this reason.
Ultimately, while the election was very close, as expected the opposition DSPJ was on the up, as it nominated North Macedonian Premier Zoran Zaev for his resolution of the dispute over the country’s name with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras just prior to the election being called, while the JSP was on the down, as Tomislav Karamarko had a very public falling out with his centrist allies in the agrarian and centrist Croatian Peasant Party (HSS- despite the name, it runs across the Federal Republic, though Croatia is its main base of support) and centrist Christian Democrats (KD) in order to try and convince former musician and right-wing populist Miroslav Škoro, who had returned to the political scene for the first time since he quit the JSP in 2007 with his own party the Homeland Movement (DP), to support him, which Škoro refused to commit to.
Ironically, if anything Karamarko’s pandering stymied the until-then meteoric rise of the DP, and it surprisingly only managed to come third to the continuity SKJ, which since advent of the Federal Republic has been a Eurocommunist, steadfastly anti-neoliberal and soft Eurosceptic party, currently led by the relatively young left-wing populist Luka Mesec.
Zaev’s party won a small plurality of the vote across the federation, but the tiny size of his plurality convinced Zaev to make clear his desire to ‘bury the hatchet’ between the DSPJ and the nationalists, and gained their (begrudging) support to found a new government in which the DSPJ, Greens (Zelena) and nationalists all had cabinet positions, with the centrist parties and SKJ (due to the popularity of European cooperation in Yugoslavia as a bulwark against totalitarianism, Zaev was unwilling to outright invite a Eurosceptic like Mesec into his government) expected to support them in confidence motions.
(Incidentally, something noticeable from the map is that each autonomous republic controls how its electoral districts are allocated. North Macedonia and Slovenia allocate members based on statistical regions, Croatia uses historical regions, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina both divide by regions and have a separate district for their capitals (the Sarajevo district, as the federal capital, is the only one the existence of which the Federal Republic’s law legally mandates) and Kosovo and Montenegro have one national constituency (partly due to their small size). On top of that, 14 of the 350 seats are allocated to national minorities in each constituent country (like the Albanian minority in North Macedonia), at a rate of 2 members for each country, and elected separately, a little like the Maori seats in New Zealand. As with most things in Yugoslav politics, it’s a complex system.)
Zaev’s term has, as with most European leaders contemporary to him, been decidedly polarizing. The Yugoslav reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has been heavily dictated by federal responses, and in a particularly controversial move Zaev saw fit to force Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić to lock his nation down when he refused to do so until more than a month into the pandemic (something Vučić claimed to be a partisan move since his federal alliance is with the JSP). Following this, a fight between Vučić and new JSP leader Andrej Plenković brewed up that has badly undermined the party, and there have been rumbling for months about Vučić and Škoro doing a deal to depose Plenković as JSP leader.
Meanwhile on the left, Mesec resigned the leadership of the federal SKJ to run in the Slovenian provincial election, claiming he would ‘put his money where his mouth is’ with regards to the party’s principles after months of trying to push Zaev to the left. He won, and has not only been making a name for himself as a more interventionist PM in Ljubljana, but has been using his protégé Jože P. Damijan, the new party leader, to wring concessions out of Zaev, much to the alarm of the centrist parties. The public, however, is warming to this embrace of ‘neo-Titoism’, and it’s very possible the DSPJ will not be able to keep its feet in the two worlds of unabashed pro-Europeanism and democratic socialism much longer.
Even though the modern Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did not come into being until 1991, functionally it was born almost a decade earlier, when the death of Josip Bronz Tito, functionally its ruler for 36 years, created sizeable unrest. The seven Slavic nations that comprised the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia- Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia (now known as North Macedonia)- might well have fractured and gone their separate ways if it hadn’t been for the intervention, ironically enough, of one of Tito’s old adversaries- Milovan Đilas.
Đilas had been a prominent dissident after being deposed as Prime Minister in the 1950s, and was eventually freed in 1966 and allowed to live in Belgrade. He was quiet on the state of the federation until 1980, when after Tito’s death he noted the severe fragmentation of the country without him and posited that without adapting to the desire for regional autonomy and accountability of government, Yugoslavia could not survive. When he put himself forward for the Presidency late that year, he knew the Yugoslav central government would never accept him, but by building up his popularity with the Yugoslav public he sparked massive protests from Ljubljana to Skopje.
The potency of Đilas’s message for how to reform Yugoslavia was down to a number of factors; firstly, Yugoslavs were drifting away from communism in this period, particularly when its main figurehead was ailing hardline Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. Secondly, despite his reformist attitudes Đilas was an unabashed democratic socialist, and the country already differed from most of the Eastern Bloc due to its market socialist economy and relative neutrality in the Cold War, meaning he wasn’t as out of step with his people as (say) Gorbachev in Russia. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Đilas’s advocacy for democratizing Yugoslavia emphasized a continued focus on what he called ‘the Republic’s founding principles’- pan-Slavism and socialism. Consequently, unabashed separatist and capitalist parties were not allowed to register themselves in the first Yugoslav elections, though autonomists and mixed-economy advocates were.
In 1982, the first provincial elections were held, with that summer seeing the first Yugoslav federal election with any form of multi-party competition since 1938. Opposition parties were protected from intimidation or threat (so long as they did not advocate for separatism or capitalism), but were disorganized enough that the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ) retained power with ease. Its grip on power was steadily weakened as the Prime Ministers of the constituent republics (despite the confusing-to-foreigners name, they are closer to the Premiers of Australian states or Canadian provinces in terms of their roles) sought to diverge from federal and party policy.
When Đilas announced his retirement from politics prior to the 1990 election (the last to be held under the Socialist Federal Republic), the floodgates opened. With the rest of the Eastern Bloc rapidly abandoning communism, the Yugoslav government was forced to remove its restrictions on party ideologies, and the Prime Minister of Croatia and leader of the largest opposition party, the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party (Jugoslavenska Socijaldemokratska Partija, JSP), Stjepan Mesić immediately reformed its platform to advocate for a more neoliberal economic system (but kept its name, presumably because Yugoslav politicians admire the systems of Brazil and Portugal where the biggest right-wing party's name extols a left-wing principle for no good reason). In response, the new leader of the SKJ, Kiro Gligorov, renamed it the Democratic Socialist Party of Yugoslavia (Demokratska Socijalistička Partija Jugoslavije, DSPJ), and despite Đilas’s endorsement, Mesić’s JSP was swept to power and proceeded to reform Yugoslavia’s economy to a full-blown neoliberal one.
As in much of Eastern Europe, initially voters ate this up, but by 1994 the bubble neoliberal economics had brought to European economies was bursting, and when Yugoslavs made Kiro Gligorov of Đilas’s Democratic Socialist Party of Yugoslavia (Demokratska Socijalistička Partija Jugoslavije, DSPJ) the new Prime Minister, he moderated these reforms, though his government was badly undermined by civil unrest emerging in Kosovo and a hardline stance on the constituent nations’ autonomy.
When Mesić returned to power in 1998, he did so by campaigning on a more moderate ideology. Mesić’s second and third terms did prove quite productive, though, as he initiated more moderate liberalization of the economy, easily won the 2002 election against divisive DSPJ leader Slobodan Milošević, negotiated Yugoslavia’s entry into the EU and won a federal referendum to have its membership ratified.
Since Mesić left office in 2006, Yugoslavia’s federal leadership has received the nickname of ‘the revolving door of Europe’, as no Yugoslav Prime Minister has won re-election since 2002. Furthermore, a level of unrest in the constituent nations to rival Spain has emerged at numerous points (most recently in 2019 in Kosovo), and support for minor parties in lieu of the DSPJ and JSP has grown; in 2018 the two main parties did not even capture 60% of the vote between them. The minor parties are largely coalitions of different interest groups which, like the two main parties, are known as ‘pan-Slavic’ parties for this reason.
Ultimately, while the election was very close, as expected the opposition DSPJ was on the up, as it nominated North Macedonian Premier Zoran Zaev for his resolution of the dispute over the country’s name with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras just prior to the election being called, while the JSP was on the down, as Tomislav Karamarko had a very public falling out with his centrist allies in the agrarian and centrist Croatian Peasant Party (HSS- despite the name, it runs across the Federal Republic, though Croatia is its main base of support) and centrist Christian Democrats (KD) in order to try and convince former musician and right-wing populist Miroslav Škoro, who had returned to the political scene for the first time since he quit the JSP in 2007 with his own party the Homeland Movement (DP), to support him, which Škoro refused to commit to.
Ironically, if anything Karamarko’s pandering stymied the until-then meteoric rise of the DP, and it surprisingly only managed to come third to the continuity SKJ, which since advent of the Federal Republic has been a Eurocommunist, steadfastly anti-neoliberal and soft Eurosceptic party, currently led by the relatively young left-wing populist Luka Mesec.
Zaev’s party won a small plurality of the vote across the federation, but the tiny size of his plurality convinced Zaev to make clear his desire to ‘bury the hatchet’ between the DSPJ and the nationalists, and gained their (begrudging) support to found a new government in which the DSPJ, Greens (Zelena) and nationalists all had cabinet positions, with the centrist parties and SKJ (due to the popularity of European cooperation in Yugoslavia as a bulwark against totalitarianism, Zaev was unwilling to outright invite a Eurosceptic like Mesec into his government) expected to support them in confidence motions.
(Incidentally, something noticeable from the map is that each autonomous republic controls how its electoral districts are allocated. North Macedonia and Slovenia allocate members based on statistical regions, Croatia uses historical regions, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina both divide by regions and have a separate district for their capitals (the Sarajevo district, as the federal capital, is the only one the existence of which the Federal Republic’s law legally mandates) and Kosovo and Montenegro have one national constituency (partly due to their small size). On top of that, 14 of the 350 seats are allocated to national minorities in each constituent country (like the Albanian minority in North Macedonia), at a rate of 2 members for each country, and elected separately, a little like the Maori seats in New Zealand. As with most things in Yugoslav politics, it’s a complex system.)
Zaev’s term has, as with most European leaders contemporary to him, been decidedly polarizing. The Yugoslav reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has been heavily dictated by federal responses, and in a particularly controversial move Zaev saw fit to force Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić to lock his nation down when he refused to do so until more than a month into the pandemic (something Vučić claimed to be a partisan move since his federal alliance is with the JSP). Following this, a fight between Vučić and new JSP leader Andrej Plenković brewed up that has badly undermined the party, and there have been rumbling for months about Vučić and Škoro doing a deal to depose Plenković as JSP leader.
Meanwhile on the left, Mesec resigned the leadership of the federal SKJ to run in the Slovenian provincial election, claiming he would ‘put his money where his mouth is’ with regards to the party’s principles after months of trying to push Zaev to the left. He won, and has not only been making a name for himself as a more interventionist PM in Ljubljana, but has been using his protégé Jože P. Damijan, the new party leader, to wring concessions out of Zaev, much to the alarm of the centrist parties. The public, however, is warming to this embrace of ‘neo-Titoism’, and it’s very possible the DSPJ will not be able to keep its feet in the two worlds of unabashed pro-Europeanism and democratic socialism much longer.
Less wikibox, more wikipage but this took a million years so I thought I'd show it off here:
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