Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Seriphyn]

Right, straight to it with little intro. Currently, the PF about EVE politics follows a very contemporary model (ie. Federation, Minmatar tribes, Amarr Privy Council etc), or, at most, it seems to be that they APPEAR like contemporary models WITHOUT taking two critical things into account...

1) Technology - How does technology influence governance, bureaucracy and administration? (e-democracy? where is e-democracy?)
2) Interstellar scope - How can a single Senate control hundreds of worlds, with differing ecologies and stellar anomalies each? (answer: decentralization)

But the problem is, is that whenever you have PF about the Senate, it just lumps in RL terms that are currently used in RL Senates. How the hell does a welfare system exist for an empire that is decentralized over hundreds of worlds? Was there any consideration for how a planet with a greater likelihood of natural disasters will require welfare support? How does this 'welfare system' even work? Is it by planet, or by individual? If it's the latter case, good luck getting in touch with disconnected colonies.

Another thing is e-democracy. If we have FTL technology, capsules, virtual reality and so forth, why isn't there more e-democracy? Paperless voting, frequent referendums on certain planets thanks to integrated communications.

Just seems you have EVE Fiction Technology on one hand, and EVE Fiction Politics on the other, with no integration between the two.

[Verone]

Applying modern political models to futuristic nations

My response to this one is simple. Don't.

Look at how far we've come in the last 10,000 years, since 8000BC, which was effectively the end of the last major glacial period for Earth.

Then imagine how much social evolution would have occurred in the period of time between the collapse of the Eve Gate in 8061AD, until current day in Eve, YC113, or 23349AD. That's 15,288 years.

Bear in mind that the period is 1.5 times the length of the time it's taken us to get to where we are now from the position of most of humanity barely being able to work out how to farm correctly and fashion durable enough tools to be able to work the land, let alone set up solid social and political structure in society.

Also bear in mind that there was effectively, for want of a better word, a hard reset on technology and knowledge after the Eve Gate collapsed.

I understand that former nations are referenced sometimes as examples of where people's blood originates, but in my eyes this is only to give people who play Eve a basic reference for setting.

Personally, I don't treat any of the political or social models of any entity in Eve as resembling anything we have here on Earth today in even the remotest and most sense.

I can't see any logic whatsoever in applying today's politics to a group of entities based in a hyper-capitalistic, world set 21 thousand years from now that spans a cluster of starts hundreds of light years wide.

They're completely different animals, in a completely different setting, evolved in completely different worlds and under completely different conditions as to what we currently live in today.

[Shae Tiann]

You're saying there's a problem with Eve "politics"(I use the term loosely because it's little more than an IC talking point) using contemporary terminology and systems. Honestly, I can't see the problem here. Sure, a futuristic society may be nothing like what we have today and the political structures would be very different, but Eve isn't trying to predict that future. It's using a "KISS" approach (aka, "Keep It Simple, Stupid") to build a world for players to interact in.

There are many reasons for this. The most important two are:

Firstly: Nobody can predict the fucking future 

Secondly: Ease of translation. If a company wants players to feel involved and attached to a presented scenario, they need to build it using social structures with which the players are familiar, or which can be explained on familiar terms.

There is no "problem" with the PF: it was written that way deliberately. They have to be vague because it allows us to do what we want with our characters, rather than forcing us into a solid mould that would take them years and years and a political historian and a trend-spotter to work out. I hear hiring trend-spotters as consultants is expensive.

Real-world politics is already too complex to be contained in a single volume. Multiply that by, say, 100,000 to cover every inhabited planet, station, outpost, constellation and region. Good luck!

Your safest and easiest bet for figuring out how Eve political and social structures work is to take current systems, tweak them a bit, and multiply by a hundred to get the scale right. Because if you over-think it, you'll have a nice, head-shaped hole in your desk.

[Bastian Valoron]

Perhaps those two things mentioned in the OP have actually been taken into consideration.

I don't actually think there's much evidence to claim that people of the earlier ages were that much different than we are, if their lack of accumulated wealth and technology is excluded. In organizations of all sizes the actual discussions leading to decisions are still being made in relatively small circles. The basic structure of militias and dictatorships has remained essentially the same through the known history and the idea of democracy has not changed that much since it was invented. Management is more about people than technology and since people don't seem to change, it might be even more immersion breaking to have to deal with some imaginary system of governance that doesn't rely on our basic working principles.

Regarding the inner workings of the Senate, I would assume that most of the legislation must be dealing with some kind of general frameworks, standards and requirements. The decisions probably trickle down though the hierarchy of local authorities on the practical level at slow pace, and their application might actually vary a lot from place to place. There are examples of colonial empires in the history and I don't see any reason why a galactic empire would be fundamentally different from those (apart from the multiplicative factor 100).

When it comes to the e-democracy, I personally tend to think that the idea has been omitted in favour of narrative points. In a fictional setting, e-democracy probably doesn't lend itself to as flashy election fraud and manipulation as the traditional system. Moreover, using paper ballot requires people to show up at the voting outposts, makes it clear that the administration is incapable of making even small reforms and generally smells like inefficiency and waste of time.

From my perspective, the EVE fiction technology and politics are quite well integrated. Or maybe I didn't understand the question? 

[Senn Typhos]

Archetypes, maybe. But consider the span of time, as well.

Let me put it another way;  1940's America and 2010's America. Is there really any comparison, despite it being the same place, and the same basic governmental structure? Now multiply that on the scale of multiple millennia passing, and the amalgamations that would occur... you get the idea.

[Matariki Rain]

What Shae said.

EVE isn't a future 'world', it's a contemporary science fiction world shaped from contemporary archetypes with a spicing of speculative technological change for us to explore. This gives contemporary players/payers hooks into it.

[orange]

1) Technology - How does technology influence governance, bureaucracy and administration? (e-democracy? where is e-democracy?)
2) Interstellar scope - How can a single Senate control hundreds of worlds, with differing ecologies and stellar anomalies each? (answer: decentralization)

I think you answered your own question with your second point.

Most of planets/communities are really more concerned with themselves than interstellar politics.  We lack insight into how each world performs its governance.  Some may be practicing E-Democracy, others iDemocracy, and yet others good old townhall democracy (those routers are expensive and the local school is all of a 30 minute walk and meeting day lines up with market day).

The reason to have representatives for the non-local stuff is so the majority do not have to become experts on each "national" item.  They can focus on local concerns and hopefully be well represented by their representative.  The local mayor of a farming town on a newly terraformed world worries about making sure local services are set up and lets the world representative make sure the constellation representative will make sure they have the military base which buys food and keeps the enemy/pirates away.  Why should the farmer & mayor have to get smart on voting for funding this or that military research program or what the trade restrictions are half a region away?

[Lyn Farel]

1) Technology - How does technology influence governance, bureaucracy and administration? (e-democracy? where is e-democracy?)
2) Interstellar scope - How can a single Senate control hundreds of worlds, with differing ecologies and stellar anomalies each? (answer: decentralization)

But the problem is, is that whenever you have PF about the Senate, it just lumps in RL terms that are currently used in RL Senates. How the hell does a welfare system exist for an empire that is decentralized over hundreds of worlds? Was there any consideration for how a planet with a greater likelihood of natural disasters will require welfare support? How does this 'welfare system' even work? Is it by planet, or by individual? If it's the latter case, good luck getting in touch with disconnected colonies.

Now then, in Eve, you have entities covering hundreds of planets, with their own ecologies, traditions, social specificities, etc. Be it the Gallente Federation, the Caldari State, the Minmatar Republic, or the Amarr Empire, they are far, far from being monolithic. This is not even possible in terms of realism unless EVERY citizen of each is able to instantly "teleport" himself/herself on any planet of their choice, in any location they want, thus being able to constantly live with EVERY other citizen. This is not possible. There is huge gaps between planets, and even regions on planets, even with technology. Everything we read in the PF indicates that most people live in their colonies/cities/whatever without traveling on an everyday basis. The average mannar citizen does not visit Intaki everyday. What technology allows is for culture to spread and be shared (quafe being everywhere, that kind of things...), but geographical barriers remain very present and as long as people are not omnipresent and capable of interacting with everyone constantly, you can not get any kind of uniformity.

That said, you will have a colossal variety of people and cultures in the Federation, not even on the planet level, but on the planetary regional level. We all know how the Federation is about this huge melting pot of cultures and mindsets. But for the other 3 ? This is more or less the same, even if in a less exagerated fashion (and for that I am not even sure). The Republic has its seven tribes, each of them with their culture and ideals, each of them with their countless subtribes, each of them with their countless clans. The expactable variety is huge here too. The Empire maybe share something totally monolithic and uniform which is the Scriptures, but other than that, it is a terrible administrative maze based on a big pyramidal social structure, going from the slave to the main Holders and the Empress. They have almost nothing in comon (Scriptures excepted). Even Holders are all very various and different, depending if you take a Holder of a central world or a Holder at the deep end of Aridia. They all have their own local laws, traditions, etc. Considering the huge power each Holder has at his disposal, I would be tempted to say that every land in the Empire has to be totally different from its neighbors. Then, the Caldari State. Probably the nation with the less variety, and yet, you still have different bloodlines and different megas, with their own different rules and traditions.

Maybe there is a huge technological factor to take in account - and there is definitly one, how could such entities be able to remain coherent and not collapse without technological support ? - but the thing is that the Senate you refer to has nothing to do with the RL senates we know. This is 4 or 5 layers above. Take the USA or more specifically, the EU : they are already a layer above the usual nations. For now, we are stuck here and trying to build that layer. Then in the future, maybe will we see another layer appearing that will be more planetary than regional as it currently is, who knows. In Eve, they have regional layers (subtribes, Holders, megas subsidiaries, etc), then planetary layers (governors, planetary administrations, etc), then sometimes space regional layers, but eventually the upper layer that are each of the 4 entities. This is very hard to concieve. What is discussed in the gallente Senate ? What is discussed in a local planetary senate ? Probably not the same things at all.

Technology maybe tends to reduce the scale factor and erase geographical barriers, so maybe in Eve we have less very local layers like earth-like nations, but at the same time we gain several other layers put on top of all this. This is the logical step to do. Our RL ancestors 15000 years back had nothing but their little clan/family as an upper layer. Nowadays, we have our families, then our ethnicity, then our nation, and then sometimes a group of nations sharing the same principles. What will it be in the future ? Probably even more layers, while the layer at the bottom get less and less important eventually (or not...).

[Louella Dougans]

People don't get the nations of EVE.

The complex structure and nature of the Empire for example.

it is a sort-of-feudal structure, across hundreds of star systems, encompassing more than 40% of the total human population of the cluster.

but people think it is explainable in very, very simple terms.

[Matariki Rain]

Now then, in Eve, you have entities covering hundreds of planets, with their own ecologies, traditions, social specificities, etc. Be it the Gallente Federation, the Caldari State, the Minmatar Republic, or the Amarr Empire, they are far, far from being monolithic. This is not even possible in terms of realism unless EVERY citizen of each is able to instantly "teleport" himself/herself on any planet of their choice, in any location they want, thus being able to constantly live with EVERY other citizen.

As a citizen of a real-world Commonwealth nation--mostly the remnants of an Empire, and a long, long way from being monolithic[1]--I don't get the logical connection here. Could you please have another go at explaining it?


[1]  A shared taste for cricket and the widespread use of English as a first or second language do not a monolith make.

[lallara zhuul]

Its the vegemite

[Lyn Farel]

Now then, in Eve, you have entities covering hundreds of planets, with their own ecologies, traditions, social specificities, etc. Be it the Gallente Federation, the Caldari State, the Minmatar Republic, or the Amarr Empire, they are far, far from being monolithic. This is not even possible in terms of realism unless EVERY citizen of each is able to instantly "teleport" himself/herself on any planet of their choice, in any location they want, thus being able to constantly live with EVERY other citizen.

As a citizen of a real-world Commonwealth nation--mostly the remnants of an Empire, and a long, long way from being monolithic[1]--I don't get the logical connection here. Could you please have another go at explaining it?


[1]  A shared taste for cricket and the widespread use of English as a first or second language do not a monolith make.

Isnt it what I said ? They are far from being monolithic entities.