Global Senate

[mahaadoxyz 9]

So, I just played through my first run-through of the Senate campaign, and I'm thinking about trying to create a global Senate type of scenario. The premise is that there's a world government one of whose most important institutions is a Senate with one representative from each nation. Set in roughly 2012 or so, I'd say. I'm thinking I probably want it to be set up so that the candidates in each nation are, like, their leaders, but I could be talked out of that idea. So, ideas for parties? Should there be a separate Islamist/Islamic Party? Should I let undemocratic nations send their leaders in unopposed? (Leaning yes, but does that give the undemocratic nations too much of an advantage?) Does the C4E engine allow for coalition offers, which I might want to have in a complex situation like this?

[Patine 470]

I was actually planning a futuristic, somewhat scifi, scenario with fictitious candidates kind of like this, initially for PM4E, where the UN had been scrapped as an inefficient body and a tighter, more empowered body had been created. It's General Assembly had two members for each nation; one elected by the population, and one appointed by it's government (essentially running unopposed) that WEREN'T required to vote together. The majority party (or coalition) selected it's leader as Secretary-General.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

Meh, I'm not the hugest fan of fictionalized candidates, at least in scenarios I make. My assumption was that this global Senate thingy was a sufficiently important institution that elections to it would play out a lot like national leadership elections, which makes setting the scenario up easy. It also makes it easy to account for undemocratic countries: they either have their leaders run unopposed or effectively unopposed (90% or so).

[mahaadoxyz 9]

I've got my constituency data all planned out. I've got the Liberals leading in 28 seats, 8 of which are "safe;" the Conservatives lead in 74, 32 of which are safe; the Socialists have 65 seats in the lead, 27 safely; the Communists lead 8 seats, 6 safely; the Islamists have 20 seats led, 18 safe; and the Greens lead 2 seats, 1 safely. Unweighted averages of popular vote (i.e., considering each country to have the same population) yields LIB 20.4%, CON 32.4%, SOC 30.7%, COM 4.8%, ISL 9.3%, GRN 2.4%. The initial setting is really, really hung: without some sort of "Grand Coalition" between the Conservatives and one of the two major liberal parties, you'd either need LIB-SOC-GRN-COM, a full-blown left-wing coalition, or CON-ISL-COM. Either would be odd: the Communists aren't particularly friendly to Liberals, I'd estimate, and I don't think western Conservatives and Islamists get along too well......

[Patine 470]

I must ask, what two countries do the Greens lead in? As far as I know, the Green Party has never formed a government as a majority party or a senior partner in a coalition in any country.

[mahaadoxyz 9]

False, there was once a Green head-of-state. I assume it's the same as one of the two countries, either Latvia or Lithuania. The other is Monaco, whose king has been active about environmental issues. I decided to make him a Green, even though, obviously, there aren't parties in his country since he's a king.