Initializing a Concept State

The Motivation

Our political institutions (especially in the United States) have atrophied considerably over the last several decades and aren’t accomplishing their purported goals due to being attacked by elected officials, lack of adaptation to new circumstances, and sometimes a combination of both. This has resulted in profoundly negative ramifications such as increased socioeconomic inequality and political polarization. Trying to change these things through reform within the confines imposed by our existing governance structures proves a highly apocryphal path to rectifying our many problems.

Creating a new set of civic and political institutions is a significantly easier task as the founding statesmen and women lack the often inflexible rules that would otherwise bind them in an existing system; it allows us to imagine without bound what the possibilities can be. However, the difficulty of procuring land and willing populace cannot be understated. A bridging solution in the interim is to promulgate the foundations of such a state digitally before implementing in a serious way in a charter city or some other sovereign polity.

Core Institutions

Every state provisions a set of crucial public goods that serve as the underpinnings of societal function and the key to any successful state is to provide said public goods efficiently and effectively to citizens. I’ll state the summaries of each institution the state maintains and I intend to expound further on each in subsequent posts.

Law

Law is the code that powers a state. It descriptively tells the state what it may and may not do as well as all who reside within the governing boundaries of the state. There are two primary styles of legal system that exist

Civil law
Common law

Civil Law is a legal system in which any and all laws are codified in some public ledger. In this system, judges are investigators who reach rulings by finding evidence and applying relevant recorded statute. An important implication of this is that only the legislature can create laws. Most countries use a civil law system, most notably the vast majority of European countries. Common law is a mostly Anglosphere system that holds judicial precedent sacrosanct, though it still makes extensive use of statute. This means that court decisions hold equal weight with laws passed by the legislature. Judges in common law systems fulfill the role of arbiters between parties.

Both systems have merits: civil law is simple, stable, and less prone to judicial “legislating”, while common law is more adaptive to changes in circumstance as well as offloading a lot of excess overhead from the legislature as they don’t need to fully define things likes processes in criminal proceedings for example.

For this state, I choose common law as it tends to have more consistency in the long run over cases as precedence from the high court binds lower courts and is fully equipped to adjudicate matters for which existing statute cannot be clearly applied.

Property Rights

Any good state has robust and well enforced property rights. This state shall be no different in this regard. These rights are to be explicitly enumerated and include strong limiting provisions on eminent domain. Fully severable property rights should be implemented by provinces as to allow people to trade and optimally use each individual right. The distinct unbundled rights could be

Air rights
Development rights
Occupancy rights

All persons purchasing property would receive a fixed amount of each right which they then have the freedom to trade, purchase from others, and sell to others.

Electoral

To enshrine the value of consent of the governed, this state shall use a consensus based model of governance. I’ll opt for a hybridized presidential system equivalent to US contingent elections where the president is elected by the lower chamber via range voting with secret ballot for a fixed four year term, but cannot be dismissed by a mere vote of no confidence: only impeachment will suffice, which shall require a two-thirds majority vote in the lower chamber that will be by secret ballot.

Presidential Powers

The executive in this system is considerably limited in what it may do. This is crucial in any presidential system as neglecting to do tends to lead to the executive branch encroaching further and further on the legislature. Their powers are as follows:

The Commander in Chief of the military who may choose to intervene to protect and defend the nation without immediate legislative approval, with two limitations
- A specific reason for an intervention must be delivered to the lower chamber
- 60 days after and initial use of force was called, an automatic vote is triggered in the lower chamber and the Armed Forces will pull back if they don’t declare war
To make treaties with other nations that shall go into force if ratified by a two-thirds majority in the lower chamber
Conduct diplomacy with foreign nations
Appoint judges to the High Court given two-thirds concurrence in both chambers
Appoint cabinet ministers which shall be approved by the lower chamber by simple majority
Execute and carry out the laws passed by the legislature faithfully as written
Pardon and commutation powers of any individual given three-fifths concurrence of both chambers
Signing and veto power over legislation which can be overruled by the legislature
The ability to carry out emergency powers for 30 days if there is four-fifths concurrence in both legislative chambers, subject to a renewal vote after the 30 day period has ended

National Assembly

The legislature shall be bicameral: The lower chamber shall be called the National Assembly and the upper chamber shall be called the Provincial Council. The National Assembly shall elect its members every 4 years via a system of reweighted range voting; there will be multi-member districts with no fewer than 5 seats and no greater than 7 seats. This system also guarantees roughly proportional outcomes (i.e if 10% of votes go to faction A, faction A should receive roughly 10% of the seats). The rationale behind using reweighted range voting over other proportional systems is that it is based on arguably the best single winner voting method (plain range voting) and doesn’t necessitate the existence of political parties, giving independents complete fairness. Here is how reweighted range voting (RRV) would work for National Assembly elections:

Voters will score the candidates in their assembly district from 0-9
- Each ballot is given a weight of 1
The weighted scores are added and the candidate with the highest score is awarded the first seat in the district
All the ballots of the winner are “reweighted” to a new weight: 0.5/(0.5+SUM/9), where SUM is the total of the scores a particular ballot gives to all the winners so far
Steps 2-3 are repeated until all seats in the district have been filled

Some people will object to not having hyper-localized districts for the National Assembly, but there are a couple mechanisms at play that I believe adequately address these concerns. For one, instead of just a single representative you can go to in your district, you can go to multiple and speak with one that may better hear your concerns and is more similar to you politically. Furthermore, I have a provision below to ensure that even these multi-winner districts would still be smaller than current US Congressional districts.

To ensure that representatives of the National Assembly retain close ties to their districts and effectively serve them, there shall be no less than one representative per 100,000 people. Each province is entitled to at least one district as well. The drawing of districts shall be done by an independent commission and shall be drawn in a way to prevent gerrymandering.

Provincial Council

The Provincial Council shall be composed of Senators appointed by each provincial legislature and will serve 4 year terms with no instruction or other bindings by the province they represent. Senators can only be removed by two-thirds vote of Senators or by appointing another individual to serve once the current Senator’s term has expired. Each province will be allowed to appoint two members to the Provincial Council and the provinces shall not be deprived of this representation in any way. The Provincial Council’s powers will be constrained to the following enumerated duties:

In matters in which there is concurrent, shared power vested in both the provinces and national government, they will be given suspensive veto.
- A suspensive veto by the Council will require a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly to override
They may propose amendments to bills originating from the National Assembly on matters pertaining to concurrent shared powers
Constitutional amendment votes (which will require two-thirds majority vote in both chambers as part of the process)
Votes for the High Court (which will require a two-thirds majority in both chambers)
Presidential pardon approvals (three-fifths majority required in both chambers to green light a pardon request)

Federalism

Federalism is the notion of devolving many aspects of government to semi-autonomous subunits. It strikes a good balance between a unitary all powerful central government and a confederation where it’s often the case that the federal government has no ability to reasonably act in common national affairs or protect the rights of minorities whatsoever.

Similar to the US and Germany, I will opt for a 10th amendment style provision in which all powers not specifically enumerated by the constitution are reserved by the provinces. On top of this, powers shared by both provinces and the national government will be explicitly enumerated as well. Unlike in most systems of federalism, we’ll specifically opt for a tripartite federation composed of a central federal government, provinces, and municipalities. The provinces will have the same three branches of government that the federal government has: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The provinces will be permitted the flexibility of organizing these branches. For example, one province could organize itself in a parliamentary style system, another gubernatorial, semi-gubernatorial, semi-parliamentary, etc.

Municipalities will also have their own legislature, executive, and constitution, but not their own judiciary. Municipality formation will not be obviated by any provinces constitution, nor shall they be deprived of their autonomy by them. They’ll be granted some specific areas of sovereignty that provinces may not encroach upon.

This state shall also fully respect fiscal federalism. This is the idea that the subunits of a government and not the central government will have discretion in setting its economic policies. A natural tendency of many federal systems is to tend away from this by virtue of the national government exercising more and more power and then leveraging grants with many strings attached to constrain the ability of states to have flexibility in their own decision making. To avoid this, it must be stated in unequivocal terms what the national government is permitted to do and constrain it to those powers (looking at you Commerce Clause). The express purpose of this is to limit the national government’s ability to weaponize grants against the provinces to do their bidding.

The enumerated powers exclusive to the National Assembly that it may legislate on are as follows:

Provide common defense, the creation of an Army and navy, and foreign affairs
Freedom of movement, immigration law and citizenship rules
The borrowing of money on the public credit of the nation and payment of debts of the nation
The creation, regulation, and any other laws around currency, money, and coinage
Setting a standard of measures, weights, and time
Customs and border patrol
The regulation of trade between the nation and foreign entities and the imposition of import and export duties
Intellectual property law
Declaring war
The Census and the collection of statistics for the purposes of bettering public policy
Laws on explosives, radioactive substances, and other hazardous materials
Postal services
Air transit
Cooperation between the national government, provinces, and municipalities with respect to
- Protection of the Constitution
- Protection against activities that threaten the sovereignty and/or pose a danger to the external interests of the nation
- Protection of democracy
The time, manner, and other regulation concerning elections pertaining to the National Assembly
Banking and the incorporation of banks as well as stock exchanges
Bankruptcy and insolvency laws
Setting salaries of public officials and other government officers
Unemployment insurance
The establishment of a national pension program
Navigation and shipping
Direct cash payments to persons of the nation
A system of federal taxation that shall be applied uniformly across provinces and municipalities for the purposes of raising revenue or imposing Pigouvian taxes regarding functions enumerated here
Other laws necessary to execute the aforementioned powers

In a subsequent post, I will draft a full constitution of this state that will include all the shared powers and exclusive municipal powers as well. They will be constructed in such a way to ensure that the national government may not impede a state’s ability to make its own decisions, sans those that violate human rights and disregard equality before the law.

Tiebout Migration

This is the pinnacle of competitive federalism. Tiebout Migration is the notion that “voting with your feet” will allow for the optimal provision of local public goods by allowing competition in governance. There are a number of underpinning assumptions that must be met for this to fully work. One of the most important of these is the ability for people having the economic means to migrate; impecunious people typically have serious restrictions on their ability to migrate. To address this, either an explicit system of relocation subsidies or an implicit system (i.e basic income) should be implemented to ensure that people aren’t at the total mercy of a jurisdiction they don’t want to live in.

Horizontal Equity

Horizontal Equity is the principle that those who receive a certain bundle of public goods and services from the government should face approximately the same rate of taxation. This requires the use of fiscal transfers to offset variations in a subunit of government’s fiscal capacity; this is mainly due to the fact that some regions of a nation are bound to be wealthier than others. While plenty of nations do have intergovernmental transfers, it’s sometimes the case that they don’t ensure horizontal equity and even exacerbate regional inequality in too many cases. This is the current state of affairs in the United States.

To address this as well as to preserve the aforementioned principle of fiscal federalism, a system of unconditional fiscal transfers should be created by the federal government to ensure that states who have varying levels of fiscal capacity, but raise the same level of tax revenue have the ability to fund the same things. To have fairness and to ensure the stability of a fiscal union, this is imperative; provinces should have the incentive to fund their own initiatives and make their own policies without asking for permission. This isn’t even a radical idea as Canada already does it and it accounts for about half of their federal government’s total grant spending.

Drafting a Mock Constitution

In a future post, I’ll draft an entire national constitution for this state. It will highlight things which I’ve said so far and all things that I haven’t expounded upon thus far. If there is a question left in your mind after reading this, it’ll almost certainly be answered in the future post.