This is conworlding, not political science, and probably not something I should like to see implemented. There's something freeing about fictional politics: it has to be workable and a little bit dramatic, but you don't have to make it utopian
It turns out I have a lot to say on the subject, and I hope bits of it will be interesting. This post is awfully long, but it's supposed to be the first in a series of installments -- there's a lot more I'd like to cover.
A bit of context.
Before getting into Erdani's political system, it's best to place this society in its general context.
Erdani has about 80 million inhabitants. This is a highly urban society; the largest city is Ash'ashoma, pop. about 8 million. The common language is Erdan; the language of the dominant ethnic group. Names given in a conlang in this thread will be in Erdan unless otherwise noted.
Two sizable minority groups have lived in Erdani for centuries: the Ashkarosi and the Rilrili. Add to this the Saredi who are, in fact, a distinct species of hominid. Erdani used to be a colonial power -- the kind of empire over which the sun never sets. There has been, and still is, a fair amount of immigration and there are sizeable Tarandim, Ba'anta and Guwda communities, especially in Ash'ashoma.
What technologies are available? Erdani is a highly industrialized society -- with automobiles, railways, a highly developped manufacturing sector. There are a handful of highly rudimentary computers. The Erdan understand radioactivity, relativity, and the basics of quantum mechanics. They don't use nuclear power in any way: no power plants and no atomic weapons (they probably know more than enough to build some, though.)
Geography and history
Erdany is at the east coast of the Sea of Anger; it's isolated by mountain ranges to the east and south. There is no obvious natural barrier to the north except for the cold -- these latitudes are inhospitable. The mountains are by no means impassible, but still the Erdans have traditionally turned towards the sea rather than towards the continental interior.
Erdani is part of the Middle Seas cultural complex. ('Middle Seas' referring to the Sea of Anger and the Serene Sea.)
Middle Seas cultures have a long history that I will not detail here. One notable fact is that they've never been good at strong unitary states. Geography and culture more conducive to small city states or semi-feudal clan-based societies. Still, there is, from time to time, an imperial interlude.
The latest of these interludes was called the Second Erdan Empire. It covered much of the Middle Seas area, and a large colonial empire, the kind on which the sun never sets -- a quarter of the planet's surface and 500 million subjects. In 4680 (the current year is 4730) it entirely collapsed.
In Erdani proper this was known as the Liberation (o Miʔvodáme) -- a name that should give you the general idea that people at home weren't terribly happy with their empire either.
I won't get into the specifics here. The general idea was that the Empire was a dysfunctional and corrupt authoritarian regime in its heyday, and ended up as a failed state. Erdani had learned to do without a state -- it could be said it never had liked the idea of having one anyway -- and, in a way, they decided to keep on like that.
With that infodump out of the way, let's get on to the more interesting part and figure out how the stateless society works in practice.
The stateless society.
The basics - arbitration and law.
Let's assume you're an Erdan citizen. And say you're in trouble with someone. Your business partner is cheating you. Some kid in the neighbourhood tried to mug you. How do you handle that?
The first step - as in our society - is to try figure out something on your own. You try to reason your business partner, or track down the kid's parents.
If that fails, you might be tempted to use violence. There is, after all, no police to stop you. That approach has a number of issues. I don't mean to say that violence never solves anything (quite a number of problems in Erdan society have been fixed by asssassination), but it invites retaliation, even a vendetta, and all in all it's probably never worth the trouble.
So the next step is arbitration. You and your opposite number find out someone you both trust enough. It could be a religious authority, a member of your trade union or just someone that happens to be widely known and respected by most everyone in the area.
She figures out some kind of arrangement that seems fair to both parties and gets a little something in return for her trouble.
That kind of makeshift tribunal works out pretty well for most small cases. What code of law is used? For an attempted mugging, common sense may be enough. Otherwise judges may rely on religious law, or precedent, or trade union regulation.
Precedents are compiled, which is why you need a person of learning. For difficult case, of course, you'll pick someone with a law degree. I've mentioned precedent, religious law (there are several competing denominations and sects), and trade union regulations and all of these are safe choices. But judges are entirely free to deviate from these if they feel it's necessary; provided they can get everyone to agree with the decision.
In theory, no one is forcing you to accept the verdict or to abide by it. In practice, there are strong incentives to do so. You have a reputation as a reasonable person to keep. Plus, hey, if you don't accept a fair ruling, your business associates or your neighbours have no reason to be honest with you, either. And as you get on the next, inevitable, conflict, the next arbiter you have to pick may have little patience for you.
Further complications.
What if, then, your judge can't find a satisfactory solution for both parties? Can you appeal from the decision? What if you can't agree on a judge?
If you can't agree on a judge, the accepted solution is for each party to pick up his own judge; then both judges will find a third judge, acceptable to them. If the two judges you picked can't agree on a third, repeat the process until a suitable panel is selected.
It's not uncommon to have a panel of ten judges. Having a large panel is not necessarily a sign that both parties are adverse to mutual agreement; it may simply be that the case is complex enough to warrant a few extra pairs of eyes. A judge will quite often bring a colleague on for assistance.
Can you appeal on the decision? Yep. You bring on your case again to a larger, different panel. You're entirely free to ask for appeal as many times as you want, provided you can find a judge to review your case again. Customarily you can appeal once or maybe twice. Three times is really pushing it and four times is unheard of.
Bringing on some muscle
The whole system relies on everyone playing by the unspoken rules. What if your business partner or that neighbours' kid you have trouble with simply denies there's a problem in the first place? What if they refuse to abide by the results?
I should emphasize that most of the time people do play by the rules. It's to the collective benefit to do so. There's a certain amount of social pressure -- having the reputation of a person that flouts the law has a costs.
Judges are supposed to have no means of enforcement. A legal saying, that they will repeat quite often, is that they have no troops at the ready.
In practice, they have the necessary contacts to keep order in the courtroom or bring defendants to court.
Taking an example, if that kid that mugged you refuses a trial -- you personally, know people who will drag him in court. If you know no such people, the judge will. Enforcers are available.
Is it police? A security force? Hired goons? All of the above. There is a strong incentive against unnecessary violence; because enforcers can and will be tried as well.
Punishment and legal fees
I'll start by clarifying one point: Erdany do use money and currency. Judges are compensated. So are enforcers.
When one party is considered in the wrong, it's customary for the defendant to pay for any costs incurred.
The main form of punishment, besides, is restitution (if you stole thing, of course you give it back) plus a monetary compensation.
For petty robbery, paying the legal fees is enough of a deterrent!
It looks like the obvious result would be the rich given free reign over the poor. The system has defense mechanisms against that:
- It's understood that restitution and punishment should be proportional to wealth, and supposed to hurt a bit. Judges will request heavy legal fees and compensation for richer people.
- As a result, taking on a rich defendant is a sound proposition for enforcers and judges alike.
- Wealthy people can pay for enforcers; poor or middle-class people have the benefit of being more numerous and organized. As a mutual aid society, they can afford lawsuits as well as rich people.
- A wealthy, well-connected person can make good money by taking on cases on behalf of poor people and collecting legal and enforcement fees.
The natural objection is what I described so far would work best in a tiny, homogenous community where people all kind of know each other. As we've seen, Erdani is a large country with a large number of communities that differ in ethnicity, culture, language and religion. How do things work out?
The answer to that is networking. One of the ways in which Erdani organizes itself is a set of networks. The Erdan word is evúše (pl. evúši), a route, or a road/rail network -- and by extension a clandestine one (think 'Underground Railway' for a similar English metaphor.)
The Erdan networks, in fact, were clandestine networks prior to the Liberation.
Erdan society features hundreds or thousands networks, most of them active only at the town, city or province levels. A few of the best know one include extended "families" such as the Karneshgha, the Alwe'ashe or the Mesagha, specific denomination of the Ashkaroshi religion (such as the Kansim or the Marghas), the Temple at Yerdus (the most important religions, in terms of followers, that is), the Metal Union, the Worker's Federation (both trade unions), the Mutual Aid Society, the Land Reform Organization, the newspaper Erdangha Dovodi -- Erdan Freedom, Sashu ('fighter') - a concurrent newpaper, the Heron clan, the Wolf clan and the Turtle clan (all three traditional Rilril extended lineages.)
Going back again to one of our first example; for argument's sake you have a disagreement with your business partner: that judge you both pick will be affiliated to one of these networks; say, the Karneshgha. If you happen to need arbitration in a dispute with someone from out of town, or a different province, you'll ask advice from a Karneshgha judge; the Karneshgha network will have the necessary contacts in the distant province.
Should you have trouble getting your opponent to court, the Karneshgha network can provide you with the necessary services.
Networks are both concurrent and complementary. As hinted by the list above, they're a very diverse set of organizations, wildly different in origin and purpose. The Karneshgha I mentioned above are a traditional group with deep roots in Erdani's feudal past. The Temple is an organized religion. The Mutual Aid Society is essentially a socialist organization. So is the Metal Union. The Karneshgha are not as rule, fervent supporters of socialism. The Metal Union isn't necessary very interested in feudal tradition.
The networks are there for mutual aid among their members, which entails a certain degree of specialization. The trade unions are good at labor laws. The Meshagha or the Alwe'ashe are good at protection services. The Rilril extended lineage cater mostly to the Rilril; the Ashkaroshi religious sects help out the Ashkaroshi, mostly.
Your average Erdan citizens will have ties to several of these groups, going to the Karneshgha for protection, the Temple for education, and the Metal Union for health insurance.
Then there are the unlikely alliances. The Land Reform Organization supports agricultural reform and resource redistribution. The Meshagha network was founded by feudal landowners and counts landowners and industrialists among its members. Both networks are actually friendly and deeply entwined one with the other. The Karneshgha are very similar to the Meshagha in history and makeup; both groups have a long standing feud, whereas Land Reform and the Metal Union, both supposedly socialist, deeply distrust each other.
Some formal arrangements of convenience can be suprising. If a Meshagha associate has trouble wiht a Metal Unionist, the judging panel may include members from the Heron clan, with security of the trial provided by Ashkaroshi. The benefit of this is that an Ashkaroshi religious scholar or an elder of a Rilril clan can be expected to be as neutral as possible with respect to the Meshagha-Metal Union/Karneshgha-Land Reform feud.
The organization of a network
The above may suggest that networks are very formal, hierarchical organizations. It's not quite that simple. Let's look at the workings of a specific network, say the Karneshgha.
Say you live in Odashlas (that's a remote, small town in Diwisus province.) The honor of liberating the town at the downfall of the empire falls to the Nonodi, a small network of mainly local importance. The Nonodi are affiliated with the local chapter of Karneshgha in Diwisus province.
This does not mean that the Karneshgha chairman over at the provincial capital gives orders, on a regular basis, to the Nonodi chairman in Odashlas. What happens is that the Nonodi network can refer to the Diwisus Karneshgha whenever it's out of its depth, or if it needs helps out of town. This also means that if the Diwisus Karneshgha ever need a service over in Odashlas, the Nonodi will grant it as a matter of course.
The local chapter of the Karneshgha has a similar relationship with one of the Karneshgha divisions over at Ash'ashoma, the capital. In turns each of the Ash'ashoma will turn to the Karneshgha network head if necessary.
There can be any number of unexpected alliance at each level. The Karneshgha are generally at odds with the Meshagha, but it's perfectly possible that the chairman of the Karneshgha at Diwisus has relatives in the Meshagha network. The Karneshgha are typically allied with Land Reform but it may happen that the Nonodi chairman and the Land Reform representative over at Odashlas can't stand each other.
The average Erdan citizen does not formally belong to a network, in the sense of paying dues or having a membership card. You're "affiliated" to Land Reform, the Nonodi or the Karneshgha in the sense that you'll turn to them for help. The networks do have formal members; typically the same people that act as judge but not necessarily so.
Formal members are asked to pay a share of their income to the network (in turn the network is expected to aid them in case of need). They get to vote on the local, provincial or national chairmans and members of the administration and can be asked for their input on important decisions.
Typically consensus, or even unanimity is sought on a vote, especially so on a leadership vote. The leader of a network is appointed for a long time, perhaps for life, and he or she is expected to have the entire support of his base. Network are supposed to act on consensus, with full agreement of all members. Conversely, it is entirely normal and expected that networks will split from time to time. Especially so if the leadership changes; this is entirely expected. The newly formed network will keep ties with its parent organization, depending on how deep the disagreement were.
Most networks have elected leaders; it used to be that the position was hereditary. The Karneshgha see themselves as a large family; 'Karneshgha' is a surname, that of one of its leaders (though not the most memorable one) -- but it's not technically one, not in the sense of a kinship group.
Conversely, trade unions and socialist organizations which had delegates and representatives with restricted terms rather than chairpeople and leaders have converged towards the same model of an elected leader-for-life. Rilril kinship groups or Ashkaroshi religious sects have some extra requirements (you have to be Rilril, of the correct clan/moiety, or Ashkaroshi of the right denomination) but otherwise adopted the same model.
How is a network financed? Typically formal members pay a share of their income. To help with that, they're helped in setting up businesses or serving as judges. A network will offer the average citizen services, judicial or otherwise, for free, with the understanding that they'll help out in the network business, or serve as ad-hoc security.
Finally, networks will offer protection to business; for a small fee, you get to put up a notice on the storefront to the effect that you're under Karneshgha protection.
Their most reliable form of funding turned out to be lotteries. The Erdan are enthusiastic gamblers. Plus it's good form to support a network that might help you someday by buying lottery tickets.
