What is the dominant economic ideology of your first government? Bear in mind that these are the ideologies as they exist in Victoria Falls, not a true-to-life representation of their aims in modern reality. Decouple your assumptions. The non-dominant ideologies will remain significant and powerful forces in government, but the winner will have a majority government at game start.
[ ][IDEALS] Social Democrat: Centered around the idea that it is the state's responsibility to ensure a bare-minimum standard of living, the Social Democrats add to the New Capitalist agenda with a push for a government guarantee of adequate housing, food, and water to all citizens -- itself a fairly titanic task. It
remains rooted in the fundamental ideal of private enterprise. The Social Democrats have some interest in the potential of democratized workplaces and are willing to support them in an experimental measure.
- Legitimacy+
- Pisses off Communists.
- Appealing to a wide international audience, although the shift may prompt some minor caution. Foreign investment is going to like the market, given its similarity to most of the markets from which they'll be coming; if you have something worth their time, they will come. You are less of an obvious soft economic target to begin with, here.
- Select democratized businesses from a selection of industries gain government subsidies in order to give them a head start and see how they play.
[ ][IDEALS] Socialist: Having come to refer to a specific political movement rather than an entire branch of ideology, modern socialism is focused on giving the state the power to care for
all citizens, and claims that the modern Social Democrat platform does not go far enough in pursuit of this. It also calls for a massive investment into healthcare in order to revitalize the field and make sure that there are enough medical professionals to go around (long-term, they want free healthcare, but there needs to be
enough of it first). They also grant unions extensive privileges over private employers. They are fervently in favor of democratized workplaces, and openly campaign in favor of granting them special concessions.
- Legitimacy-
- Pisses off New Capitalists.
- This is a radical shift for a nation claiming descent from the old United States and will concern many. Furthermore, the state of your market will make you deeply unattractive to foreign investment. This has the advantage of serving as a kind of protectionism during your economy's weak phase.
- Democratized businesses are explicitly favored in law over private businesses.
How much legal authority does the central government have to suppress dissenting viewpoints?
[ ][CRUSH] Some of the central tenets of the founding government's ideology are written into foundational law, making it difficult for even violently opposed successor governments to fully roll them back without immense popular support.
- Legitimacy+
- Slightly hypocritical, but can be creatively interpreted as demanding the people's united voice on these critical issues
- Minority parties realize how you view them and aren't neutered
- Even losing doesn't roll back all of your gains unless you've fucked up in spectacular fashion
- People may find...creative...ways of effecting change
How centralized is this thing?
[ ][POWER] You are a devolved unitary state with subordinate governments formed or dissolved by central governmental decrees according to need
- Maintains centralization while improving your ability to manage local affairs
- Gives concessions to subordinate polities while maintaining power in Chicago
How closely does this congress cleave to the text of the original Constitution?
[ ][TEXT] The Constitution was utterly bereft of any kind of legal, political, or ethical merit and shall be cast into the trash heap of history where it belongs. We shall start anew from a blank slate.
- Legitimacy--
- Absolute freedom to draft new foundational legislation
- Traditionalists are insulted by the attitude towards the nation's history, but this strongly invokes the Revivalist movement's spirit of reforming the old ways
Current inclinations here: I think that repeating the mistake of unfettered capitalism (and especially if people ignorantly pick the worst possible constitutional option which is to retain the US constitution, which survived for 250 years largely because most of the things people think are actually in the constitution... weren't, really) is not great. Communism is probably a bridge too far because of its unpopularity, unless people are willing to back maximum authoritarianism-simply because if you start losing people will basically go and roll back and turn you not-communist. So that leaves two ideological options.
There is a very significant chance that we will be engaging in both conventional and unconventional warfare, which means that a strong security state is at least temporarily necessary.
@PoptartProdigy I'd suggest for the legal authority against dissent we have another option:
[ ] CRUSH: Emergency Powers-The founding government is normally heavily democratic but gains significant powers to suppress dissent during times of emergency. When an emergency can be declared is dependent on the other choices but at the very least includes a state of war.
- Nominally combines the best parts of the most options (fully democratic + fully authoritarian)
- Is extremely unstable and can easily swing into either making a declaration of emergency politically non-viable or become fully authoritarian in an eternal state of emergency. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail...
- Less popular than full democracy because of the state of emergency Sword of Damocles...
- Might encourage scorched-earth tactics from opposition parties to take control of the emergency lever.
I think decentralization is tactically suboptimal because well,
we're going to end up fighting a war, probably. You want some level of clear command organization to do exactly that.
And my thoughts on the original Constitution have already been said. It's a creature of the times, it almost certainly doesn't say what you think it says, the drafters were basically space aliens compared to modern or 2070s-era people, and the United States has largely gotten to where it is because of aggressive reinterpretations of the US constitution by the judiciary in response to popular demand, which means that really, it's not the original document which has been relevant.
