The General Assembly

[Kelssek]

At some point in the past I was asked to produce some information to help people understand what goes on in the World Assembly. Here we go. Feel free to submit relevant questions via PM and I’ll try to answer them.

A bit of an introduction on my credentials: I started with it when I started playing NationStates, back when it was called the United Nations, and well before bothering with other aspects of the game. I’ve since authored four resolutions, two in the old UN and two in the current WA. It’s not a lot, compared to some of the more prolific self-promoters out there, but I take some satisfaction in that they’re very significant bits of international law and people don’t tend to seriously discuss repealing them (for the record, they’re resolution 38, “Convention Against Genocide”, and resolution 57, “Refugee Protection”).

Generally assembling the world: a bit of history
Way back in the sands of time, when NationStates was simply a promotion gimmick for Max Barry to publicise his book, nations were given the option of joining the International Organisation That Must Not Be Named. It must not be named because this international organisation, several years later, sent Mr. Barry a cease-and-desist letter, from actual lawyers. Since then, it has been known as the World Assembly.

Right now, there are two distinct branches of the WA: the General Assembly, and the Security Council. The General Assembly was originally the entire WA. In 2009, the Security Council was grafted on, the result of what one might delicately describe as “a swirling firestorm of controversy” dredging up all sorts of differences in how different players and different communities “play” the game. Nevertheless, here we will be dealing solely with the functions of the General Assembly.

How the General Assembly affects you
Quite simply, if you are a member of the World Assembly, everything that has been passed by the General Assembly is as good as law in your country. There is no optionality and no way not to comply (as is the case with the real United Nations where countries can simply declare “your laws do not apply to me!”). All member nations are bound by the passed resolutions. So, for instance, you do not have any option to legally permit torture in your nation as long as you are a World Assembly member and resolution 9, “Prevention of Torture”, remains on the books. If you’d like torture to be legal, you must leave the World Assembly, or try to get the resolution repealed.

Compliance
That’s how World Assembly people would interpret it. In reality, though, roleplaying nations which are purportedly WA members often disregard the WA resolutions altogether. It all depends on what crowd you’re playing with; if you tried to call someone on violating the Rights And Duties of WA States or for using landmines (a violation of resolution 40) in the International Incidents forum, you’re likely to get laughed at. On the other hand, this is an accusation that might carry some weight in the General Assembly forum itself and probably provoke a bit of debate, or at least someone telling you that you’re wrong. However, this isn’t really the sort of thing you often see in the General Assembly forums, where “RP” is almost exclusively debate on proposals.

As a matter of game mechanics, non-compliance is simply impossible. Upon a resolution’s passage, the “WA gnomes” come into your nation and make it compliant, leaving behind a little telegram as a token of their visit. While there are times when you can select a non-compliant issue option, the general consensus is that the gnomes then come in and make everything compliant again. There is a contradiction here, which is expected to be resolved at about the same time hell freezes over, so one would be best advised to just live with it.

Some players do roleplay non-compliance of a sort: Omigodtheykilledkenny for example, has a Creative Solutions Agency which seeks out and exploits loopholes in resolutions the nation just doesn’t want to comply with. Indeed, there is a certain bit of leeway in every resolution because there is a inevitably room for interpretation. But if you waltz in and declare that some resolution doesn’t apply to you because you’ve redefined “yellow” to mean “green”, all you’re likely to do is provoke eye-rolling. You’ve got to be more subtle than that. For instance, you may not like a resolution that says you must make patent infringement illegal, so you RP that you’ve passed a law making patent infringement punishable by a fine of one dollar. Of course, some still might have a problem with that, but it’s certainly a much more acceptable way to go about it.

I’m an amendment to be, yes an amendment to be
Or, how stuff gets passed, while explaining some basic terminology. Any World Assembly member with two endorsements can make a “proposal”. This goes into the big proposal pile which everyone can see and regional delegates can then approve of. These days the proposal pile is quite small, but in the past it often spanned several pages of blatantly illegal proposals from people who hadn’t even read the rules, poorly-written bits of high school civics class essays, random political screeds from very opinionated people bashing their fists on the keyboard, and inevitably something titled “The Right to Arm Bears” from someone who must have imagined they were the first to come up with that joke.

If enough regional delegates approve, a proposal reaches “quorum” and goes to the floor where it is voted on by the entire membership. It has now become a “resolution” - if it passes. If it fails, it becomes known as a “failed resolution”. See, this WA business isn’t that complicated.

[Kelssek]

Welcome to the festering snakepit! How to (mostly) survive the General Assembly forum
Unless otherwise stated or patently obvious, posts in the General Assembly forum are assumed to be the in-character statements of your nation’s WA ambassador or other relevant government official. The main activities taking place there are debates over proposals and a sort of collective drafting and vetting process, whereby you put up your proposal and others make suggestions for improvement, argue over its general principles, or declare it illegal and make fun of you. In order to meaningfully participate in the discussions, therefore, it is necessary to have some basic idea of the rules and general conventions as far as proposals go. The stickies in the General Assembly should tell you what you need to know. Also, it is inadvisable to linger near windows where there is a known risk of defenestration.

One thread of particular note is the Strangers’ Bar, where the ambassadors let their hair down and order any drink conceivable from the infinitely wise and dry-witted barman, Neville. One of the longest-running RP threads in the entire game, it abides by its own https://forum.theeastpacific.com/invision-404

The line between IC and OOC in the General Assembly can be blurred somewhat, however, as it is often necessary to debate proposal legality, which requires reference to the proposal rules existing entirely in the OOC world. Often, too, data or facts from the real world are drawn on as evidence or the basis for argument. While it is generally acceptable to, for example, reference real-world incidents or scientific studies, one should not take it too far. By the same token, however, one is unlikely to score any points for producing statistics from your own rear end as an argument (e.g., “well, 98% of my nations’ scientists disagree with your statement, and have also concluded that you are a big poopy-head!”). This can be considered a form of http://nswiki.net/index.php?title=Wank and is just as poor etiquette as it is in other roleplaying circles.

What not to do
Besides the obvious, there are some pitfalls you should avoid in drafting or discussing proposals.

1. This isn’t Earth
   This means that, for example, proposing greenhouse gas emissions caps isn’t likely to get you anywhere because there is no assumption that all of NationStates is located on a single planet which has the same atmospheric characteristics as Earth. Proposals declaring the Moon or Antarctica to be neutral territory will be dead on arrival; someone will pop up to ask “which moon?” or to object because their territory is entirely located on the Moon or Antarctica. And don’t even try to ban weapons in outer space or the interstellar empires will come get you. Likewise, setting up an international space station is an endeavour best left to other RP forums.

2. Contentious topics
   World Assembly regulars are, by now, sick to death of particular topics such as the death penalty, abortion, legalised drugs, and gun control. They keep coming up again and again, and rarely with anything really new. Not saying don’t even try, but probably best avoided; because of how contentious they are, we’ve agreed to disagree and the general consensus is that they should be more or less left to member nations to decide.

3. Tech-wanking
   Don’t enforce technology onto other members, particularly future tech. Don’t, for example, establish holographic screens in every nation running off cold fusion reactors. There was once a resolution which did something like this: The Global Library (UNR 86), which is mostly remembered now as a classic What Not To Do. It created holographic wristbands for everyone, which must have confused the hell out of the inhabitants of nations being roleplayed in the ancient era. Going the other way, there’s no point proposing joint research on hydrogen cars when many nations will simply assert that they’re advanced way beyond this ground transportation business.

4. We’re not all human
   You shouldn’t write proposals assuming all the universe is made up of humans. This is why you often seen resolutions and proposals referring to “sapient rights” or “sapient beings”. The word “people” is generally okay. Beyond the matter of word choice, don’t assume that inhabitants of NationStates are humans, and avoid referencing specific ages (saying member nations should reduce the voting age to 16, for example). Many proposals attempting to regulate abortion are tripped up by this; they start going on about trimesters and foetuses and ambassadors will ask just how that applies to their species, which hatches from eggs.

Another unwritten rule: The Reasonable Nation Principle
Basically, this means that while resolutions must be universally applicable, there is no need to accommodate or entertain objections based on highly unrealistic and/or unreasonable scenarios. Also known as the DemonLordEnigma Rule, after a player notorious for roleplaying highly unusual circumstances within their nation to argue against any given proposal, usually having to do with how future-tech and vast his interstellar empire was. In my personal experience, someone tried to argue against my resolution “International Emergency Number” by inventing a telephone system for their country which only became more ridiculously convoluted as the debate went on; it was clearly being deliberately made up to make the proposal inapplicable to it. Doing this is extremely poor etiquette. I also once had a very testy argument over a proposal regulating time travel, of which I won’t say more than that it’s best to assume the laws of physics as we know them apply.

Now, square this with the demand that you should make allowance for the (very reasonable!) fact that nations here are populated by merfolk, elves, and sapient bears, and you might begin to think a lot of people are just a few cards short of a full deck. But you ain’t seen nothing yet. Next time: National sovereignty, an ongoing debate.

[Kelssek]

If you find my use of the words “nation” and “state” mystifying at all, please read the terminology note at the end.

National sovereignty
Now we get into some contentious territory as far the the World Assembly is concerned. But first, a primer on the real world, since its existence there is why we even are talking about it here in the first place.

The whole idea of sovereignty has existed in the real world for about 350 years; it is a concept which, we are taught, originates in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Sovereignty means exclusive power (or according to Max Weber, “the monopoly on the legitimate use of force”) within a given territory, and is the basis of modern diplomatic relations. It also means that all states are considered to have equal legal standing; while there is a big difference in power between the United States and, say, Kiribati, in the realm of international law, they are equals. No state can dictate to another state what it can or cannot do or what laws it can or cannot pass, within its own territory. It can vociferously disapprove, of course, but to take direct, uninvited action to affect another state’s internal matters would be considered a violation of that state’s sovereignty - and even a de facto act of war. Sovereignty has also come to be tied up and equated with national self-determination to some degree, especially given the rise of modern nation-states and the decline of imperialism (considering Algerians to have sovereign rights not to be ruled by France if they didn’t want to, for example).

In NationStates, however, sovereignty is given up when a nation becomes a member of the World Assembly, because members must comply with all resolutions and the all-powerful Compliance Gnomes ensure this. In theory and in fact, your fellow World Assembly members can, by passing a resolution by majority vote, force things on you. Actual examples, as of this time, include things like legal same-sex marriages and legal abortions, and bans on torturing people and using landmines. Where are the limits to this? Aha. this is one of the biggest, ongoing, raging debates in the General Assembly. Two warring camps have evolved at present: “international federalists” (IntFeds) who argue that all national sovereignty is ceded to the WA and the General Assembly can pass resolutions on anything it damn well pleases, and “national sovereigntists” (NatSov) who tend to resist any resolution substantially restricting state powers, and often also seek to pass resolutions which “block” further legislation on a given issue. The resolution “WA General Fund” can be described as an example of what are known as blockers in that among its active clauses is something that explicitly sets aside an area to be under national jurisdiction - meaning the World Assembly cannot pass anything further on the subject without repealing that resolution first.

Do not touch
Generally speaking, member nations jealously guard their sovereignty over things issues such as criminal justice, education system, immigration policy, and economic policy (to an extent). Dictating to nations what sentences they should impose for armed robbery, or that they should or shouldn’t apply the death penalty, or what their rate of sales tax should be, is likely to be a non-starter. In general, unless you wish to provoke another episode in the NatSov/IntFed saga, it is best to avoid proposals chiefly dealing with such areas of national government policy.

“Micromanaging”
There used to be a specific rule regarding proposals “not worth the Assembly’s time”. While it is not on the books anymore, in general there is an expectation that any proposal is going to be dealing with issues of an international scope. Therefore, while there isn’t a particular rule about proposing parking be banned within 10 metres of a fire hydrant, expect flat-out opposition to making a proposal to this effect.

It is not enough by itself to object to a proposal by just tossing out the word “national sovereignty”. Almost by definition, all WA resolutions compromise national sovereignty in some way since it really is other state telling your state what it should or should not do. At the same time, just because members of the WA have in fact agreed to comply with whatever resolutions are passed is not itself a reason to pass any and every regulation a majority can agree on. The main issue, as I see it, is just when the good achieved justifies infringing national sovereignty; there have to be good reasons and the infringement minimised where possible.

Finding the balance is going to be an ongoing struggle, especially because of the visible rift between “NatSov” and “IntFed” and the unfortunate tendency of people with opposing views to yell at each other. The power to decide this balance ultimately rests with the masses of the General Assembly.

Individual rights and state sovereignty
This is a significant issue in the real world, as well. The colossal failures of the international political order during the Rwanadan Genocide led to the concept of the Responsibility To Protect, the idea that states were obligated to act against war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity within their borders, i.e., that they have certain responsibilities to their people, and that a state’s claim to sovereignty was forfeit if they allowed such things to occur or worse, were actively engaged in perpetrating them. This is a relatively new idea in global politics and it is by no means uncontroversial, but it is quite a powerful norm and recently has been invoked to justify foreign intervention in Libya - landing military units in support of a rebellion against the existing government is a violation of sovereignty if ever there was one, but the intervening states justified it on the grounds that the government of Libya was attacking its own people and thus violating this prinicple.

However, even before the Responsibility To Protect, there was a certain recognition that national sovereignty was not absolute, and that individuals had rights states should not violate. This an assumption that is in play when, for instance, Western politicians object to political imprisonment of dissidents in other countries. Many constitutions, especially in the Western world, restrict the ability of their own states in this regard, such as French Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, the American Bill of Rights, or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Inevitably, these developments in politics have carried over to the political simulation game of NationStates. The key difference is that restrictions of state sovereignty actually are enforceable and enforced, unlike in the real world. It’s another dimension to the whole national sovereignty debate in the World Assembly, and probably reflects the real-life opinions of the players involved, too. This is probably the reason why it is a highly contentious issue for many WA forum regulars. Broadly most people, here as in the real world, seem to agree that some aspects of state sovereignty do not hold and that states do not have the “sovereignty” to abuse the basic rights of their citizens. Yet just how far we should go without also impacting on national self-determination and for nations to decide what is right to govern themselves - which is what sovereignty also is - remains a hotly debated topic.

[hr]
The words “nation” and “state” are often used interchangably and generally mean the same thing: a collective political entity. In the term “national sovereignty”, thus, it would be more accurate to say we are talking about state sovereignty. Yet, as the word “nation-state” implies, the exact meanings differ in some important ways.

The “state” refers to all the institutions that underly the running of a country: things like the constitution, the school board, Parliament, the judiciary, the healthcare system, or the armed forces . A police officer is an agent of the state, a school board or health authority oversees the running of a particular aspect of a state, we use notes and coins as cash which is issued by the state; and the constitution is the basic law that specifies how politicians can come to hold power in the state and what they can do with it. Quite curiously for the rest of us, Americans often use the word “government” to mean the same thing, but the “state” exists regardless of the government of the day. The analogy is of a car; the state is like a car with a driver (the government) which changes occasionally, and sometimes the driver has it reupholstered or attaches plastic testicles to the back, but the car remains basically the same even when turned over to a different driver. Sometimes the car gets driven off a cliff and written off, or flipped over and burned by an angry mob. This is called anarchy and while the car is being fixed or a new one is built, pirates might often roam the territorial waters hijacking oil tankers.

A “nation” refers to a group of people who buy into a common identity. It could be based on any number of things like language, history, ethnicity, or way of life. Not all nations have states, and not all states are nation-states. For instance, probably in a bid to defuse separatism and score political points, the Canadian Parliament decided in 2006 to recognise the Québécois as a “nation within a united Canada”, and many of the aboriginals have long been referred to as the First Nations: “Musqueam First Nation”, “Cree First Nation”, “First Nations people”, etc. In Europe, some Basques will declare allegiance to the Basque nation over that of France or Spain, the states of which they are probably citizens. And of course, just try puzzling out just what it all means in the United Kingdom with its “home nations”, and just when you can declare yourself to be Welsh, English, Scottish, Manx, or something in between.

[Kelssek]

Conclusion
There is an underlying tension in the World Assembly, and it concerns the fact that two very different groups of players are in it. While people who purely hang around in the General Assembly debating proposals and having absolute shit-fests about national sovereignty and whatnot often toss out sentences like “well if you don’t like it, you can always quit the WA”, which is quite true for most ordinary RPers, for another very large group of people, this isn’t really an option. This other group of people chiefly make up the extensive off-site communities, usually built around regions, and are known variously as “gameplayers”, “region players”, “invadergamers”, “defenders”, “raiders”, etc. (although this is not to suggest that all these terms refer to the same thing, because the last two are subsets of the broader “gameplay” community)

The General Assembly debate club and the regional forums gangs are like conjoined twins who completely ignore each other’s existence. Despite the potential for underlying tensions, this situation actually went along quite happily until 2009, when the introduction of Commend/Condemn resolutions brought the matter and anti-matter together and lead to a rather public, explosive clash. Using the conjoined twins analogy it was a bit like one of the twins suddenly going in for breast implants and the other twin going “whuh?!?”, resulting in them being separated a little bit so the silicone from one twin wouldn’t get into the other twin’s system too much. The analogy well and truly breaks down at this point, but in any case, that’s kind of the story of how there came to be a General Assembly and a Security Council.

Gameplayers, and especially defenders and raiders, do not really have “don’t be in the WA” as an option because World Assembly membership is necessary in order to endorse people, and control of regional delegacy is an important part of that aspect of the game. There is thus a tendency towards what General Assembly regulars would consider as knee-jerk national-sovereigntism.

The gamplayer is a voice not often heard in the General Assembly, whether due to apathy, because they find it intimidating, or perhaps a combination of both. Even though they aren’t generally that concerned with what passes and what does not, from an roleplaying point of view they are still bound by those General Assembly resolutions. Perhaps more tangibly from their perspective, their nation stats are also affected. Fortunately, since those matters seem generally a sideshow for most gameplayers, there isn’t a whole lot of resentment going on - at least, not that I can tell.

However, they do have the ability to decide what passes and what does not, both in their individual votes as WA member nations, and in how they tell their delegate to vote: in many regions, the delegate’s vote is determined by a vote within the region. And because the number of votes a delegate has is determined by his number of endorsements, active members of large regions command disproportionate voting power. As a member of a very large “feeder” region, when a resolution comes up to vote that I feel strongly about, often the first thing I do after registering my personal displeasure is start lobbying my region-mates to try and sway my delegate’s 200-300 votes. At time of writing, the delegates of the feeder regions (regions where new nations are automatically assigned to, plus Lazarus and The Rejected Realms) command 1,411 votes, enough to determine the outcome of any close vote. Gameplayers thus have a lot of latent power in a General Assembly they hardly participate in; historically, however, only Gatesville comes to mind as an attempt to use this power.

But, dear reader, no matter which clique you belong to I hope this has somewhat demystified the proceedings in the place that occasionally spits out something for you to vote on. And if nothing else, perhaps the next time you do examine the resolution up for vote you will spare a thought for the painstaking process of drafting, debate, and defenestration that has (probably) gone into it.

[Kelssek]

Some editing has been going on, especially to the conclusion - which as you can tell has been reworked for a wider audience. Some WA regulars I showed this to have suggested posting it on the main forums, a step which I plan to take soon. Meanwhile, I’d welcome comments and questions from the gameplayers I have so mercilessly stereotyped