I think more frequent communication helps — I feel like I keep saying it at this point but it’s my fault for just throwing it out on Discord instead of writing it up properly — but I think we’re also developing a pattern of communication mismatches. The flip side of erratic pressure from the Assembly is erratic communication from the Cabinet about policy goals. Telling people what you’re doing is one thing and telling people why you’re doing it — how it fits your long-term vision, how it strengthens our community, and so forth — is another. I think the questions from the Assembly have become too intense because (a) they often don’t ask the subtext directly, which is not so much “are you ticking the checkboxes of your platform?” but rather “are you implementing your vision for the region?” and (b) the structure of our executive means that responsibility is concentrated with the Prime Minister.
I think it’s telling that a lot of the ‘intense’ questions we’re referring to here all started with some variation of “what has the Cabinet been up to?” which, on its own, hardly seems particularly intense. For me, it’s more telling that it needs to be asked or that it can trigger such intense discussion. Even though some members of the Cabinet have probably been providing updates of what they have been spending time on, in the direct and literal sense, I feel that there’s pent-up frustration about not understanding what vision the Cabinet as a whole is working towards. That’s on the Assembly in part for letting that get pent up until it boils over, but at the same time, the relationship between our executive and legislature shouldn’t be a transactional one about ticking off campaign promises, and sometimes it feels like we all lose sight of that.
Looking through the Cabinet category, there are a lot of announcements about what people are doing — events, competitions, articles, and so forth — and fewer discussions about why people are doing those things. I think topics like the Dispatches and Telegrams discussion are a good example of proactively laying out a vision (as opposed to, say, just announcing “we updated our dispatches”) and soliciting public feedback for specific policy plans (which is a whole lot less to unpack than “what has the Cabinet been up to?”). To be honest, even just politically speaking, why not get ahead of the curve and share your ideas with the public on your own terms rather than on the back foot with questions from the Assembly?
On the topic of communication, I’ve had an idea for a little while now and would be interested in hearing everyone’s feedback on it.
In essence, me and anyone else who’s interested on working on this would interview the members of the cabinet and consistent intervals (I was thinking weekly, but every other week is probably a better time frame) to find out how their agenda is coming along, any problems they’ve come across, and updates to their plans. Those interviews would then be published in a bulletin and released to the public to allow everyone to stay informed.
Another thing I’d like to do with that is have an exit poll for any legislators willing to participate after each vote in the assembly. I know it’s been brought up in government-discussion in the context of our elections, but I also think it would be interesting to find out why people vote the way they do on legislature.
Your first proposal is good, and I’d be more than keen on being a part of it (from cabinet or outside cabinet).
Second proposal is interesting. I have a suspicion that most votes tend to go one way or another by a “bandwagon” effect, unfortunately, based on my experience looking at how these public votes tend to go.
Yeah, I know from my time voting in the WA that it’s very easy to go with the bigger number. However, if that is indeed what’s going on here, that’s probably a very important statistic to have.
If someone wants to start a newspaper focused on interviewing government officials, that’s cool, but I wonder if it’s more accessible if we just establish a norm of regularly inviting questions from the Assembly or from citizens rather than focusing everything through a specific interviewer.
You pitched an independent project but it might be more simple if the Assembly actually designates time to question members of the Cabinet. As of now, we have this thread where citizens can ask questions sporadically. I like the idea of delegating time to ask the Cabinet questions for an independent project, but it might be better if the Assembly formally adopts this too. Of course, you’re always free to run your project
The UK Prime Minister takes questions from members of the House of Commons for 30 minutes every Wednesday when Parliament is in session. These sessions can get quite animated, with MPs pressing the PM on what the government is doing and why. They can be quite fun to watch:
Fair enough, but we also keep saying “dang, we should ask our elected officials more questions!” without making any plans to actually do so. I’d also personally consider interviews at consistent intervals a more efficient method of finding out what the government is doing than somebody suddenly asking the question when we’re more than halfway through the term, but I agree that it’d be better if we could get the Assembly to take diffinitive action on that instead of needing a few individuals to do it for everyone. At any rate, something like this would keep the cabinet accountable, and free us up to ask other questions besides “what are you doing?”
I don’t understand how you, a Legislator, asking questions to the Cabinet differs from the Assembly (made up of folks like you) asking questions to the Cabinet. I guess the only difference is one thing is independent and one is officialized.
It’s a good idea to normalize this. You’re free to do it on your own (or with a small group), but I bet most Legislators would be invested in a program like this.
TLDR: this is a good idea and people are interested in it. It might be a good idea to adopt this formally!
If my fellow legislators are willing to adopt this as an official thing, that would be great. My original plan was for it to be separate from the Assembly to try and mitigate any biases we may have. The final form of that would involve me either stepping back and letting the others take the reigns or resigning from the Assembly. As long as we can make sure nobody is getting preferential treatment, or have a more hostile intervewer, then I don’t see why we can’t make it run by the Assembly.
There should not be an issue with bias. I think you’re overcomplicating this program—but when we talk about overcompensation, I think maybe I am too.
We don’t need a designated time to ask questions—we can do that whenever in the Office of the Cabinet thread. It’s just the motivation to do so (and making it a more normal practice).
I think we could use a more structured way to have the government answer questions and an interview or panel format, sponsored either by the government or a private entity, could be just what we need.
The sad truth is that we don’t currently have a culture where governments officials are routinely expected to account for their work or, perhaps more importantly, where legislators feel incentivised to hold their officials to account. Yes, we have the Office thread and legislators could always ask questions in the Assembly floor, but how often are those used for regular and substantive discussions and exchanges?
My personal preference would be for a ministry or (in an ideal world) SPINN to routinely host panel discussions with a mix of legislators and ministers where they could discuss relevant issues, share the government’s perspective, and be challenged by legislators about what they’re doing at any given time.
We’ve been talking a lot about questioning our elected officials, so seeing as our new Prime Minister takes office tomorrow, I’d be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on how the discussion around Lordnwahs and their cabinet went, especially in comparison to our previous preformances (Penguin’s Cabinet; Drew’s Cabinet). At face value, this most recent topic has more posts, but does that actually translate into a better performance by the Assembly?
Also, continuing in the spirit of communication, I’d just ask that anyone interested in my interview project reach out to me once again. I’d like to hold a meeting of the minds so we could discuss the best way to approach this, and any other applications it may have.
I believe this discussion has run it’s course by now, so I thought I’d just give it an official end.
Thank you all for participating and helping to give your thoughts on these matters a place where they can’t be swept away by the flow of incoming posts. Hopefully this will prove useful in proposing solutions to our activity problems in the future, and should we need to discuss our activity again, I strongly encourage someone to start a discussion on the specific subject so we can focus in on that.
That that said, I’d like to thank you once again, and bid you a good afternoon.
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