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.