Karrde's Analysis of the Congress Changes
Talon Karrde
My Friends,
As you may be aware, the admins are introducing some new rules for the upcoming congress elections, and all subsequent congress elections in the future. These rules can be found here if you want to read the original source material.
Basically, instead of voting for individual candidates in constituent regions, you simply vote for the party of your choice on the day of the election. This is quite a change to what has been an eRepublik constant for many years, and it remains to be seen just how big an impact this will have to the state of politics across the eWorld. In this article I’ll examine some of the implications, and make some predictions about the election here in the UK.
So, a glance at the wiki page tells us that, essentially, our new system of democracy is proportional representation. In PR, seats are awarded to all parties proportionately to the number of votes they receive. This is different to our previous system of first past the post, and could well prove to be a boon for smaller parties in that they will often be guaranteed at least one seat and thus voice in their countries’ congress. On the other hand, if some parties are substantially bigger than others and attract significantly more votes, this could lead to some parties dominating their country.
This also makes life difficult for parties outside the top 5 to get any voice at all. In previous months, I’ve noticed some parties run their members under the banner of a larger party, due to space being available in some regions. The dynamic of this has now been changed; with party leaders able to rank their candidates, it will be a difficult choice for them to include outside candidates, potentially excluding their own.
We can also take some lessons from real life when looking at PR. A famous example of PR failing spectacularly was in Weimar Germany, in which PR led to increasingly fractured governments built upon fractured parliaments; eventually contributing to the rise of the Nazi party. Thankfully, there is not risk of a similar occurrence in eRepublik, as governments are not built based on having a majority in congress, but rather on who is elected to be Country President. The fact that so much of that map is shaded in some way is a good indicator that there are plenty of successful implementations of PR.
This map shows all countries in the real world that use PR in some form. As you can see, there are many variants of this system of voting, but all the countries shaded in green use exactly the same system that we now have in eRepublik; namely the party list. Under this system, you vote for your preferred party, then the leadership of that party picks the (in theory!) best and brightest from their ranks to take up the seats granted to them. I suspect there will be a decent amount of this going on in eRepublik, along with promoting new players and encouraging them to get involved with politics; counterbalanced by the old politicians getting safe seats every time too. Under this system it is possible to have ‘safe’ seats, whereby some players are guaranteed a congress seat and medal, simply due to the number of votes each party attracts.
There are also some pretty big implications for ‘PTOs,’ an oft used acronym meaning ‘Political Take Overs,’ in which external or hostile forces gain control of congress seats in order to manipulate events, accept citizenships from more enemies, and eventually gain enough votes to take over the country entirely. As a concept it rarely works outside of the smallest of countries, as the leadership of anything bigger will normally organise their resources to defeat all but the most insidious of PTOs.
This change does mean, though, that rogue candidates cannot simply attach themselves to a party and hope to be on the ballot; Party Presidents now have much more control over who will get elected from their party. The only trouble will come when PTOers control one or more of the top 5 parties in a country.
If, then, a top-5 party falls to PTOers, they are virtually guaranteed congress seats. They can then use these to accept more citizens into the country and snowball the problem. Month to month the problem would then increase until a tipping point is reached, and the PTOers can exert their influence. A good example of this already happening is in the USA just now, where a lot of their citizenry were originally accepted in from allied countries to take advantage of bonuses or for political reasons, but have since garnered colder relations with the hierarchy and government. They and other groups in America have the votes to potentially cause serious problems, made much worse by this game change.
What could this mean in terms of seats?
During the last congress election in the UK, the following seats were gaine
😛
The Unity Party: 12
The UKPP: 10
Every Single One: 11
PCP: 3
UKRP: 3
Since then, the PCP have been replaced in the top 5 by New Era, but since they have a similarly sized member base we’ll treat them the same statistically.
Under PR, and based on the number of votes in both the last congress and PP elections, we’d expect the following number of seats to be awarde
😛
So that’s
TUP +1
UKPP no change
ESO -2
NE +1
UKRP +1
So it shouldn’t change the outlook a great deal. In reality this change will just make it harder for individuals out of favour with the party to get in, as well as discouraging rogue candidates who will be unlikely to be elected. Comparing this to the risk of losing control of one or more top 5 parties, I’d say for most countries this is a positive change.
Of course the jury is still out on that, and while I find that statistics often prove to ring true, any number of things could happen in the runup to the elections. And of course, we simply can't discount bugs or issues preventing things from working quite as we expect them to!
Thanks for reading,
Talon Karrde
Comments
Great! 🙂 Voted
TL,DR
\o/
Netherlands...? No they don't exactly use this system.
However, you do get the option. Theres parties, and you can vote for the seperate party members, however, if you vote for the uppermost party member, and he gets enough votes for 2 seats, the next seat goes to the second on the list. But then again, you are in NO way required to just vote for the top canidate on the list.
Yeah you're quite right in that RL is much, much more complicated than what we have here. In erep everything tends to be taken down to its most simple form.
Good read with a balanced view on both positives and negatives 😁
Hm, that's true. Heh
Excellent article.
Talon, as usual an authoritative and enlightening piece. Let's just see how it goes in practice.
Niko
Great job! : D
Voted!
"A famous example of PR failing spectacularly was in Weimar Germany, in which PR led to increasingly fractured governments built upon fractured parliaments; eventually contributing to the rise of the Nazi party. "
mumbles something about Godwins law
More countries, than those shown, use some form of PR. France, for instance. PR is even used in some UK elections. Btw, giving the Weimar republic as the only example of PR, in your article, displays a somewhat leading bias. ; ) There are far more examples of successful implementation. Even in inter war Germany, there were other much more significant factors at work, leading to the failure of the Weimar republic...
...Devastating worldwide depression, made worse by crippling reparation payments, leading to unheard of levels of inflation (partly through having little control over monetary policy, due to Versailees. Add in resentment over Versailles & the almost successful post war German revolution, leading to political extremism. Add in the connivance of the upper classes, who hated the liberalism of Weimar, as they were mostly of the old Prussian militarist Junker class & PR appears almost irrelevant
Of course DM, that's just an example I happen to have studied. The fact that so much of that map is shaded in some way is a good indicator that there are plenty of successful implementations of PR.
Godwin's law indeed, alas I've fallen into the same trap as everyone else 😛
\o/ Great work babe.
o/
I agree with the article on average.
More important for the game I think is taking away the fun in organizing PTO/ATO and tactical voting in the congress elections. Less fun, less activity, I do not think this will improve the game. Nevertheless we have no other option than accept this and adapt.
Now if only they could think of something for Congress to actually do.
The economic and political modules are wastelands
So that’s
TUP +1
UKPP no change
ESO -2
NE +1
UKRP +1
I'm guessing the reason there is an extra seat is due to the John Bull party who ran under another party would no longer get that seat? But just checking.
Isn't Godwin's Law referring only to attacks on a debates opponent, i.e. calling someone a nazi?
as a former PTO-er i'd say this new system greatly favors the defenders. counter measures are easy to take in congress elections as its the matter of monitoring just one page instead of 10 pages (for a 10 region country) and it removes the hassle of distributing moving funds.
the PP position is empowered (a good thing since until now for a politician it was PP or nothing in terms of rewards) and for some clone masters that previously had a subscription to a congress seat it's a nightmare 🙂
vote! I think this is a good idee!
Good article. But what IS Godwin's Law? As if we didn't have enough laws already. Voted.
Godwin's Law states that the longer an online argument takes, the more likely it is that someone will make a comparison to Hitler/Nazis in an attempt to undermine an opponent's argument. It's usually cited to highlight the 'reductio ad hitlerum' logical fallacy, where such a comparison is used but has no direct relevance to the particular argument (I spend a lot of time on philosophy/politics/religion forums ; ). Talon is putting himself down unfairly, as he didn't use such an argument. : )
I think it makes starting a new PTO harder, but keeping one going against organised opposition easier, as you just have to ensure you get a PP.
@Jordee- quite right, that was a confounding factor in the last election.
Douglas Mckeever:
Actually Godwin's Law is:
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches"
Mike Godwin never actually commented whether or not Hitler or the Nazis had any relevance to the debate in question. Hence any reference to Hitler invokes the rule and not just at times when the debater is trying to deliberately undermine the other person.
Technically, Talon Karrde didn't invoke Godwin's Law as he mentioned the Nazis in the opening post rather than as a response to someone else... It is only once he posted the article that the debate can actually start. Mentioning the Nazis before the debate has started doesn't count.
Since people have only mentioned the Nazis in reference to someone muttering Godwin's Law rather than the original topic, Godwin's Law hasn't actually been invoked.
Of all the stuff to discuss regarding the change, Hitler rears his head...
о/