Making a confusing, overly-complex political system

Dude, the Chinese Parliament is so large that they only meet for 2 weeks every year- and they spend the entire year preparing their agenda for that time.
The Chinese Parliament has 1,900 more members than the total population of the smallest country on earth,
It's bizarre to think of the implications of these things. I was already aware the Chinese Parliament has about 2000 members and that this is much larger than the Holy See. I'm also aware they meet for 2 weeks a year, and there's a standing committee of legislatures the rest of the year. I was not aware they spend the rest of the year preparing their agenda. My question was on whether the national politicians are elected by the regional politicians, who are elected by the local politicians.
 
And China aside, what about other dictatorships, like North Korea and Iran? I understand Iran has a Supreme Leader and all the positions that you'd expect a democracy to have, but a flow chart of Iran's organization system shows all sorts of groups of people whose purpose is a total mystery to me.
And is it true that the Chinese National Assembly is elected by members of the regional assemblies who are elected by local politicians who are elected by the people, who are only allowed to vote "Yes" on whoever the party nominates?

Here's my understanding:
Officially, the CCP can select candidates at the lowest (village) administrative level to stand for election, and so can other political organizations, plus anyone who has 3 people backing them. In practice, since the CCP is responsible for approving organizations and also has free reign over law enforcement, 100% of candidates are party-approved. Each village representatives then serve in the People's Congress of the local towns. Each town's People's Congress elects from among its members a representative to represent the Town Congress in the County/City Congress (I think Counties and cities are more or less functionally identical in China; cities just have more people and are subdivided into districts rather than towns.) Then the County-level Congress elects from among its members a representative to the Prefectural Congress, and the Prefectural congress elects members to the Provincial Congress, and the Provincial Congress elects members to the National Congress.
From what I've read, there's little actual consequential voting that takes place; discussions among Congress members are consensus-building rather than adversarial in nature.
At every level, the Party appoints a secretary that the executive answers to. For example, the Party Secretary of Guangdong is appointed by the National Congress, and the Governor of Guangdong, who is elected from the Guangdong Provincial Council, is subordinate to the Party Secretary but still is in charge of the day-to-day functions of provincial government.
In addition to the People's Congress, there is also the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which is not elected. Officially, the Conference is an advisory body, but in practice it acts as an upper house.
Politicians at the provincial level are infamously corrupt. Every politician in China engages in some form of graft or corruption, but if someone does something that's beyond the pale, the National government removes them and sends them to a different provincial government, but (in theory) doesn't let them get promoted further. Since local politicians are still interested in representing their constituencies, and the worst of the worst don't get promoted to national offices, this means the officials both above and below the provincial level are less corrupt.

The system, in my opinion, can be modified to function as an actual, if very indirect, democracy. For example, if the Party exerted less control over candidates, did away with the appointed Party Secretaries, modified the role of the CCPPC, clamped down on corruption and so on,

I do know for a fact that the local candidates then elect provincial candidates. Provincial candidates are infamously corrupt, since the Party likes to
Conceptually, I think that system is workable enough to eventually produce a system that behaves like a democracy. For example, if the CCP abandoned all ideological gatekeeping and decided as a matter of policy to guarantee each constituency at least two candidates,

Tsochar, the whole lower house should be called the Parliament. Its members are officially split into the House of Representatives and the House of the People, but they all meet in the same house and vote together as one body. The upper house + the council of elders should be called Congress. The upper house without the council of elders is called the Popular House. The council of elders is called the Senate. The supreme court is called the senate, in lower case.

Ooh, having two senates differentiated by case! That's a special level of confusing, I like it!

Additionally, I've gotten some ideas from Hong Kong's unique history to make a more complicated seat allotment system for a House of Representatives:
Each electoral district votes for one representative,
Each state votes on electoral party lists, which are then allotted proportionally,
Some subnational units maintain an old system where they provide a list of candidates to the King and he can either appoint one or make them write a new list.
Additionally, approved political and ethnic organizations are each granted one member, selected by their own methods, and can gain more members if approved by the voters.

So, using the US as an example, Virginia's 12th district has a direct election for their candidate, but Richmond City makes a list of five people and the King chooses one of them. Or, if the city picks five socialists, which the King doesn't like, he sends the list back, and they're forced to put someone more moderate on the list. Or, if the King just doesn't like Richmond, he can just keep sending lists back in theory forever but this has never happened before and it's not really clear what would happen if he did. Then, the State of Virginia gets a number of proportional representatives which are assigned by party list. The Chamber of Commerce has five representative in Virginia because Virginia voted to recognize them as a registered political group and then subsequently voted to grant them extra seats. By the same token, the Communist Party gets two seats even though it only has a couple of members because it's unconstitutional to take seats away from any organization (though this rule only applies to Virginia).

The House of the People, as described earlier, is decided by lottery. In most jurisdictions, every law-abiding resident adult citizen is eligible, but in some jurisdictions such as the independent monasteries they have religious or gender restrictions. In cases where a selected candidate cannot sit on a seat (for example, if a farmer is selected who doesn't have any family that can maintain the farm while he is away), he may select a substitute.
Because the House of the People members are selected randomly every two years, there are thousands of former members each of whom may sit in the House of Elders. For this reason, only House of the People members who cast at least one vote per year may keep their seat. Many members just show up once per year when it's time for an uncontroversial bill, like authorizing the King's honorees in that year's medal ceremony for civilian honors that are not knighthoods (knighthoods go to the House of Royals and the House of Nobles), vote yes, and then collect their stipend for another year.

The ratio of House of Representatives to House of the People is set to a certain range by law. Some laws and acts require only an outright majority of members, some laws and acts require majorities of both groups. Together they make up the House of Commoners. Together with the House of Nationalities, which is much smaller, they make up Parliament, which acts as the lower house in a more sensible system. The dynamic between the two is usually with the House of Commons dominant and the House of Nationalities almost inconsequential, but occasionally the Administrative House declares that a law is of significant interest to the Nationalities and therefore that house becomes more dominant.

The upper house changes in composition. It is made up the House of Nobles and one of the other Houses, depending on the nature of the bill being passed. Usually the text of the bill will designate the necessary houses, but to confirm the bill, leaders of each house gather together to vote on which houses will be required to pass the bill in question. This is called Congress. Usually, for labor laws it's the House of the Hammer; for finance laws it's the House of Gold; for laws concerning the military it's the House of the Sword (very rare), and so on. If a House feels cheated (like a bank reform bill that goes to the House of the Hammer instead of the House of Gold), they may appeal to the Administrative House, but this rarely happens.

The House of Nobles only casts votes for approval or disapproval for bills that come up through Parliament. However, they can also introduce legislation by themselves and send it to the Lower House. The other house, generally, makes changes to the bill and sends it to each house for approval. Each house may approve, approve with recommendations, or reject the bill in question; each of these comes with a certain number of points, which vary from House to House depending on the House's relative power. The House of Commoners has the most points, while the House of the Sword has the fewest, but none of them have a majority. So if the House of commoners no longer likes the bill and rejects it, but almost all the other houses like it and pass it, it still passes if it gets enough points. If it doesn't have enough points to pass but still clears some lower threshold, it can go back to the upper house (whichever it is, and it isn't always the same as the one that passed it in the first place) for changes based on the other Houses' recommendations. Once it has enough points, it goes to the Office of the King for passage.

The Office of the King is distinct from the Person of the King. The Office is the name of a gilded rubber stamp bearing the current King's signature.

Once the King's Office signs the bill, it is sent to the Royal House, which passes everything without actually voting on it but could still technically veto it if they wanted. Thus, the bill becomes a law.

For decisions that would be overseen by a Supreme Court in a typical government system, the Administrative House sets up an arbitration committee out of members of the House of Laws. However, in certain cases according to a power-sharing agreement that dates to the 18th century, the House of Laws may set up its own arbitration committee in certain cases without the Administrative House's input. In either casse, the arbitration committee in the House of Laws is appointed on a case-by-case basis, and each one is called a congress, lowercase.

IOTL, the French Constitution of 1799 was extremely complex. But, oddly enough, it was based on an even more complex draft. A graphical model of this draft, written by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, is below.

View attachment 426377
The core part of this constitution is the College of Conservators, a pseudo-aristocratic body which coopts new members through the right of absorption, whereby it could name a citizen to serve as a Conservator against their will (thus preserving the republic against the ambitious). This body plays numerous roles - it annuls unconstitutional laws, it names the members of parliament, the Grand Elector, and the judges from the lists of notability, and it amends the constitution every ten years. The other core part of the constitution is the lists of notability, where citizens whose names are in the civic register name candidates for the government to choose from. Note that the College of Conservators has the power to strike one tenth of the names off each list. The idea of lists was that by 1799, many French revolutionary moderates felt that elections would cause radicals or reactionaries to win, and so by only giving the people the power to nominate functionaries, moderates could always be chosen. Also, notably, this plan advocated aggregating communes into larger communes of similar size as an arrondissement would later be.

The executive branch consisted of a Grand Elector, a figurehead whose tenure for life, on the confidence of the College of Conservators. The Grand Elector is sort of like the president of a parliamentary republic, with no role other than as head of state and naming the cabinet. The top of the cabinet consisted of two Consuls, one of the Interior, directing internal affairs, and one of the Exterior, directing foreign policy and the military. These Consuls in turn name the other members of the cabinet, and the Consul of the Interior in particular has the power to name local administrators. Both Consuls name a Council of State, bodies which serve as administrative courts, draft regulations, and propose laws to be adopted (more on that later). Also, the selection process for a Grand Elector was very bizarre - the College of Conservators would, every year, hold an election for a potential new ballot, and contain the ballots from each of its elections in urns. The oldest urn was to be emptied every year, to ensure that there were always only six urns (for six years). Upon the death or absorption of a Grand Elector, the Senate would choose an urn, and the candidate with the most votes would become Grand Elector. If the leading candidate was dead, they were to be skipped over and the next highest candidate would be chosen. It was hoped such a procedure would ensure that the Grand Elector would be chosen without the intrigue of an election.

The legislative branch consisted of two bodies to propose laws, one the Councils of State representing the government, and the other the Tribunate representing the people. Each had the power to propose laws to the Legislative Body, a body which merely decided what proposed laws to ratify without speaking, and each body would send three of its members to argue their cases. In this way, the legislature is sort of like a court - two bodies proposing that their views be adopted by a silent body. And, of course, the College of Conservators can annul unconstitutional laws.


IOTL, Napoleon threw most of this draft out, but retained some of its institutions in a manner that ensured that he would have far more power a First Consul than the Grand Elector that this post replaced. Without Napoleon, perhaps more of this draft could be retained and we could see gradual democratization of this system.

My ultimate goal is a system where creating a chart like this is both an invitation to madness and an exercise in futility.
 
Last edited:
A good way to have a really complex political system is to have a system that has been updated over the centuries countless times without ever being overhauled. So let's see how much of that we can have!

1. We start something like an even more bloated Holy Roman Empire. Kingdoms, Principalities, Duchies, Free Cities, Marches, Republics, Bishoprics and lord knows what else exist side by side.

2. The Thirty Years War ends with a Habsburg victory. Rather than Catholic fanaticism winning the day, the Habsburgs consolidate rule by introducing a certain measure of tolerance into the situation. Some regions have guaranteed rights for Catholics - some for Lutherans, Calvinists, etc. Some regions even have guaranteed freedom of religion (or at least, what would be considered freedom of religion at the time). Some regions remain under the principle of cuius regio, eius religio. However, there is a significant level of advantage for Catholic members of the Empire - some of this advantage is properly codified under law, but some of it is due to unwritten rule and tradition.

3. The Holy Roman Empire is starting to become a Westphalian-style state, but a dynastic split between the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs leave the Low Countries and parts of Northern Italy in dubious legal standing within the Empire. In order to quell the situation, these regions are given complex autonomies, responsibilities and privileges within the Empire.

4. As proto-industrialisation and the Enlightenment occur, many citizens move around to growing cities - and many become secularised. This means that many of the cities and principalities with unique religious rules no longer even reflect the population that live there. However, many of these laws are tied up in numerous other (still relevant) laws and agreements, so they are very rarely changed/removed to reflect the new realities.

5. Also around this time, there is a growing push for Liberal and Democratic reform. Sometimes, this results in top-down reform of the Empire itself, in a somewhat holistic, satisfying manner. However, most of the time these reforms occur by constitutional feudalism occurring in the various statelets within the Empire. On rarer occasions, dynastic populists attain power in the nominally republican statelets. This means that on top of a layer of liberalism being lacquered on top of an already byzantine system, the Empire is now filling up with principalities/bishoprics/republics in name only. This process continues into the early 20th century, when an Imperial edict guaranteeing universal suffrage at both the Imperial and Federal level puts an end to the increasingly convoluted process.

6. Throughout the 19th century and 20th century, agitation by the working classes results in a similar process happening as the above - only this time for social reforms and labour rights. This results in reform happening at both the Imperial and regional level, once again with all the same exceptions, privileges and contradictions.

Welcome to the Holy Roman Empire, where you can go from a Free City that functions as a small Liberal Democracy even though the same family gets to be figurehead mayor due to a constitutional amendment back in 1756, go out to the countryside around the city which is a Municipalist series of workers co-operatives managed by the local Catholic clergy (in a province that is 40% secular, 30% Protestant, 25% Catholic and 5% Other), and then (after a 30km drive) end up in a Duchy that is managed by a council of Presbyterian Elders, Mayors, Guild Leaders, Professors and one Imam which is subject to veto and recall power by any referendum that can garner a certain percentage of the popular vote.
 

Vuu

Banned
Nazi Germany sort of tried to do something but it resulted in pretty much every institution being doubled and overlapping.

Another thing I can't wrap my head around are the UK's administrative divisions, and any Anglo country divisions in general

It's not that hard to get a HRE tier situation in a feudal state, tho. It was basically the result of the Emperor saying "since you're not behaving nicely, my boys x, y and z now answer to me personally" over the years.

So theoretically you want a central figure with a high amount of powers, but many layers below. Over time, this leader will pull up certain positions, extending their powers and responsibilities "vertically", while having them keep all their previous stuff
 
Last edited:
Tsochar, I just thought of something. The House of the People can be called the People's House, and the House of Nationalities can be called the Peoples' House.

Tehshudge, that system sounds entirely plausible.

And using the same names for multiple things, while not always making the situation more complicated, certainly makes things more confusing. Things that often have multiple meanings: minister, magistrate, consul, mayor, lord mayor. And a country can have an enormous amount of variety on whether a lord mayor is the same thing as the mayor, or a mayor of a larger area than the mayor (like in Germany), a smaller area (like in London), and it can be a completely symbolic role with no meaning (like the town in Ontario where Wayne Gretzky's father is Lord Mayor), it could be an elected, apppointed, or hereditary role, and it could be an elected person who gets to sit on the House of Lords.
A magistrate can be a judge or an elected or an executive with real or imagined power, or somebody with a mixed role.
And I can imagine a state with a Council of Ministers who are the executives in a parliament, and the neighboring state has a council of ministers who are state senators, and all protestant preachers.

Vuu and Miranda, I want to hear more of your thoughts.
 
This might run the risk of being too implausible, but what if we made our overly complex state a world-spanning state? It could start out as the Mongol Empire or the Ottomans or Habsburg Spain, and expand to cover most of the world by the 1800s through political genius and good luck? As the state expands, it ends up co-opting all the legal systems and power structures it encounters, instead of abolishing them. There could still be some areas outside the state's control, and some areas where it is a matter of debate if they are really inside the state. Then after the world state is established, you could have an attempt at democratization that doesn't abolish the old autocratic power structures but adds democratic structures on top of it. To prevent separatism, the central government could be constantly cutting special deals with various nationalities, with these deals often contradicting each other. The whole thing could be constantly on the brink of collapse, but just barely holding together through charisma, backroom deals, and fear of war.
 

Md139115

Banned
The government is run by direct democracy, with constant computerized referenda (say, 1-2 votes on issues per day with a 24-hour time limit) that citizens can vote on with their mobile phones. Machine learning is used to train a neural network model of everyone's political views by repeated votes over time. Each option in a referendum is given a secret "political compass" score on a number of different opinion axes. These act as the inputs to each person's neural net, and the hidden layers between it and the output are adjusted each time a vote occurs. Eventually, the machine learning model is so well trained that it can vote perfectly for you and get your opinion correct on almost any issue. This would simulate a free and fair government while being confusing and overly complex.

Problem with such a system in real life is that people change their opinions all the time, so while a machine can accurately vote the way person X at 25, did, they cannot when X turns 35.

For our purposes though... it would just make everything too quick. Where’s the fun in a complex government unless legislation can be lost in a black hole every now and then?

IOTL, the French Constitution of 1799 was extremely complex. But, oddly enough, it was based on an even more complex draft. A graphical model of this draft, written by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, is below.

If I can understand it, it’s too simple.



ANNOUNCEMENT:

While eating a potato pancake outdoors in temperatures barely above freezing, I beheld the Glory of Creation. Such an experience has left me in awe (and without feeling on my face) such that I am now compelled to create of my own. A work of beauty that shall never be equaled in complexity, insanity, or hilarity. One that surpasses all understanding and leaves all who deal with it more awed than frustrated.

Before I am done, there will be five different heads of state, countless legislative bodies, people elected on the basis of their first names, and the Almighty shall technically be subordinate to a fruit grower's cooperative.
 

Md139115

Banned
While eating a potato pancake outdoors in temperatures barely above freezing, I beheld the Glory of Creation. Such an experience has left me in awe (and without feeling on my face) such that I am now compelled to create of my own. A work of beauty that shall never be equaled in complexity, insanity, or hilarity. One that surpasses all understanding and leaves all who deal with it more awed than frustrated.

Before I am done, there will be five different heads of state, countless legislative bodies, people elected on the basis of their first names, and the Almighty shall technically be subordinate to a fruit grower's cooperative.

Bad news. I have gone down a rabbit hole too deep for my liking.

I had started out with laying the groundwork by describing the government of the Roman Republic, intending that to be my base. I stopped five hours later, and my word count was over 3000.

Since I am not going to spend months on this, I think I’m going to abandon it and instead just give everyone the Clifnotes version:


Part 1: Roman Republic (OTL)

Part 2: Roman Empire (OTL)

Part 3: POD. Attila the Hun never turns west. Instead, he lays siege to Constantinople. He gets frustrated, and launches a massive human wave attack that gets himself and 2/3rds of his army killed, but which succeeds in sacking the city and slaughtering the population, including the Imperial family and the Patriarch. Eastern Roman Empire atomizes. Western Empire gains most of Dalmatia and Greece, Illyria, Macedonia, and Thrace are abandoned to the Barbarians, Anatolia and much of Syria establishes a rump Eastern empire under a general acclaimed as emperor by the legions. Most crucially though, Egypt and Palestine come under the control of their respective patriarchs.

4. Although the Western Empire is doing better than OTL (No Catalunian Fields or sack of Northern Italy), it still can’t halt the hordes. Britain and Gaul fall and Berbers reclaim most of Africa outside the present-day Tunisian coast. Visigoths finally get around to storming Italy around 460. After the emperor is killed in the sack of Ravenna, the populace of Rome, thoroughly disgusted with how the empire is collapsing and knowing they’re the ultimate target of the Visigoths, declare the Pope emperor, based on the precedent in Egypt and Palestine. Miraculously, plague rips through the Gothic ranks enough that the exhausted surviving legions can repel them and save Rome.

5. This is where things start to get a bit screwy... Most of Spain and Aquitania come under the control of a puppet emperor like Anatolia, but Egypt and Palestine are willing to recognize Rome if they get to keep a great deal of autonomy (and having the Eastern Romans, Sassanids, Arabs, and Libyans breathing down their necks did not have any impact on this, no sir!).

The pope’s great problem at the moment is legitimacy. So he begins Frankenstein-esque fusing the Church hierarchy into the surviving institutions of the Roman Republic (the archbishops are now all members of the Senate, one of the plebeian tribunes is now a priest, etc.). He also declares that the head of state is the Almighty, not him, he’s merely the sole interpreter of the Lord’s wishes, and all decrees are accordingly made in the Lord’s name.

It also establishes a precedent that due to the omniscience of the Lord, nothing erected in his name can ever be dismantled, thus no government institution can now ever be eliminated, no matter how vestigial.

Since the Pope cannot lead armies (NO HE CAN’T. SHUT UP, JULIUS II!), military commanders are appointed to the various provinces, except for Provence, which becomes a hereditary position with monarchical powers, and Greece, where the military commander is elected by two bodies: a representative democracy and the monks of Mount Athos.

Finally, the Pope becomes captivated with the custom the Patriarch of Alexandria of using a blind boy to pick the Patriarch, so “the Lord” institutes a similar system for his succession. Of course not any old blind boy can be picked, so a new council has to be created for the purpose of picking the boy.

6. Another horde (idk, let’s say the Alans) attack. The system of devolved military responsibility proves completely inadequate, so another horde is hired to be a regular reaction force, with their leader given near monarchical powers and the ability to veto Papal acts. For balance, a “Latin” force is similarly constituted with that general given similar power. Both positions evolve into hereditary monarchies, albeit only holding small amounts of land and dependent on the Imperial budget.

7. Not as fleshed out after this. All I know is that at some point, the following would happen:

A. One of the military leaders I just described would go mad and bequeath his position to Mount Etna, the volcano’s eruptions were this taken as vetos, an act that would screw up a great deal of government activity in the future.

B. A Communist rebellion would institute a worker’s council that would become popular, resulting in it being kept when the rebellion was crushed, and resulting in the Communist Party becoming an organ of government thanks to a loophole.

C. LIBRUM VETO!

D. Somehow the committee for selecting the blind boy would come under the control of the Caliph of All Islam.

E. There would be five different censuses (or is it censi?)

F. Cow worshipping.
 
Top