Evelopedia stuff:
The Chief Executive Panel is a political entity jointly owned and run by the Caldari megacorporations. The CEOs of the mega corporations sit on the board of the Panel and make sure the mega corporations don't go overboard in competing with each other, smoothing over potential conflicts before they escalate out of control. The Panel also handles the foreign policy of the Caldari State. It is the closest thing to a Caldari government as there ever will be.
The Chief Executive Panel is the main bureaucratic apparatus through which the Caldari megacorporations rule the State. The Panel's primary purposes are to determine the budgets for the State's few government agencies, such as the Navy and the Tribunal, and to act as a way for the State's corporate powers to coordinate national policy, such as foreign relations, customs and trade regulations, and inter-corporate business laws.
The Panel itself consists of the major megacorporate CEOs and a non-partisan director. In reality, the CEOs usually send a delegation of trusted executives, corporate lawyers, or board members to represent the corporation's interests on the Panel, and the director is nothing more than a figurehead, a pawn of the most influential political bloc at the time.
Though the State Executor and the Caldari Providence Directorate exert a great deal of influence over the Executive Panel since its creation in 110YC, the CEP must endorse the policies of both groups in order to make them law. So far, however, there have been few substantive challenges to proposed initiatives.
The Caldari Business Tribunal is the inter-corporate justice system of the Caldari State.
The Caldari are not wont to bicker over lost deals or ruthless competition, but when they do, this is the place they come to. The tribunal is the only organization within the Caldari State authorized to cancel deals or agreements made between companies.
The Caldari Business Tribunal is the only non-corporate justice system and police agency in the Caldari State, tasked with policing the megacorporations and their disputes. The main function of the Tribunal is to provide a nonviolent means for corporations to resolve grievances, as outright inter-corporate war tends to do significant damage to corporate bottom lines. Tribunal justices are appointed by the Chief Executive Panel, and many appointees are corporate lawyers or security executives prior to their nomination. Additionally, Tribunal investigators are among the few people in the State who are ostensibly free of corporate loyalties.
The Tribunal's courts are modeled after the Raata Code, an inquisitorial system where the court's goal is to determine the facts of the case, not the prosecution of an individual or corporation. Tribunal agents have the authority, in theory, to enter any corporate facility and confiscate corporate property, provided that a warrant is issued by a Tribunal justice; in reality, agents are often delayed by corporate legal teams and stymied by corporate security. This situation varies depending on how much political power the corporation driving the investigation can wield.
The Tribunal does not generally deal with crimes against the person and is not the “Supreme Court” of the Caldari State, as many outsiders assume. Most criminal prosecutions, such as those for murder or embezzlement, are handled by megacorporate justice systems, and they cannot appeal to the Tribunal. The only time the Tribunal deals with such cases is when they are committed by or against government officials, or when asked to resolve a question of jurisdiction.
What's your status if you're employed by an organization that's not (directly) one of the Big Eight? Say you sign on with the Mercantile Club or the House of Records.
This is an area where my character's backstory is centered, so I've dug around a few times over the years.
As to your specific examples: The Mercantile Club seems mostly just like an "old boy's network" type social club (especially with its history as more of a "gentleman's club"), in my skeptical mind, I tend to see the kind of place where those in power plan out among themselves how to slice the pie up. However, that's just my take since my dorm in college was right next door to The Chicago Club in the south loop and I had a friend who worked there that fed me all kinds of dirt.
The House of Records seems something like a cross between the Library of Congress and a giant accounting firm along with a dash of Congressional Budget Office (offers testimony and analysis of decisions being mulled over). The CBO is theoretically maintained as a nonpartisan agency, though of course this doesn't stop politicians from praising their impartiality one week and then dismissing them as unreliable the next depending on whether their reviews align with some policy position they have.
The Tribunal is certainly a legal body, but remains limited only to civil disputes rather than criminal prosecution. Its justices seem to have a similar authority to a judge who is overseeing a suit or other matter being settled by arbitration, conciliation, mediation, etc. As the Evelopedia states, justices are appointed by the CEP, though it doesn't mention any term lengths or method of recall/impeachment.
I imagine something of a hierarchy as follows: Senior Justices assign matters to Associate Justices, deciding how many will sit on the case and which specific personnel. This involves a lot of political consideration in terms of appointing impartial oversight (or a broad range of opinions to achieve such), even the number of Justices involved can be taken as a subtle statement of importance. The Associate Justices then authorize subpoenas and warrants for testimony or evidence. These are acted upon by investigators who are assigned to a given matter as needed. Each investigator has a team of agents at their disposal. I'd think there would be a degree of specialization among these investigative units as to what kinds of disputes they are most suited to focus on along with some more complicated matters having an occasional "detail" put together to address the specific mixture of issues on larger or more scandalous cases that may have more public spotlight.
My thinking behind all of this is that an incentive structure is in place where advancement, being dependent on appointment from the CEP, is based (at least in part) on not being too partisan. Say a former SuVee Executive Counsel or KK Chief Security Officer are appointed as justices, if they remain loyal to their former employers and rule in their favor frequently, they'll likely never get a nod from the representatives of other corporations at the CEP. They may also find themselves bogged down in undesirable minutiae-laden casework, insulated from cases involving their former mega, censure or outright removal from office (whether any of these things exist or not...unknown :9).
Anyways, those are some of my views on the State-wide bodies.
As far as contracts go, I'd imagine one of two things:
At-will employment without contracts. My reasoning being that corporations tend to benefit from this arrangement as it keeps the populace divided and competing amongst each other for labor. This has an overall depressive effect on wages. Obviously the exceptions start coming as you reach beyond middle management or certain work sectors when no-compete, non-disclosure and other agreements start to become important.
Use of contracts, but a widely accepted practice of corporations "buying" contracts out when they want certain personnel. An employee might convince another mega to buy them up so they can move over or perhaps a mega is abandoning a given market initiative and puts whole blocks of employees up for other megas to make use of.
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Topic: [Draft] Caldari Corporate and State Structure (Read 17949 times)