I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment. Our final elections before switching to appointed ministers were largely uncontested. How will we ensure that, if we return to elected ministers, the same won’t happen again?
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Thank you, you’ve set the stage for what I wanted to discuss beautifully. We all know there’s an issue revolving around activity an participation, that’s why I made a whole discussion thread around it. When staffers stopped helping out to the degree we wanted them to, we cut the system off as dead weight and moved on. When people stopped running for Minister, we evidently decided to cut that out too. While they make have appeared to work at the time, this was the easy way out, and like any manner of kicking the issue down the road, it’s comming back to bite us.
When faced with inactivity in our elected or volunteer positions, we should not jump to removing those positions or using a system more on the acceptance of an offer than a willingness to serve. We’ve already seen uncontested PM and Delegate elections in recent times; are we going to get rid of the Prime Minister? Will we stop acknowledging the Delegate as an official part of the region? No, that’d be silly, but that’s the path we’ve started down on.
I truly think that the region will benefit with more opportunities to get involved, and a good first step will be bringing back elected Ministers. However, if we fail to nurture it, it will only end up withering once again. I think it’s a good idea for us all to consider the ways we can help create this interest and activity, but I think even more so this is a question we should be asking our PM candidates this election.
Anyway, full support for elected Ministers, I want to see what ideas we can come up with
To be fair, I think it’s also entirely possible to read that report as a cautionary tale on ministerial independence. Or as a cautionary tale of how serious things have to get before the Prime Minister’s “leadership” means something. Especially because there are people here not just saying “ministers will pursue their own policies but compromise is necessary” but rather “it kind of sucks having a PM set an agenda.” But everyone in the ministry is listening to an agenda set by someone else, whether that’s the minister or the PM. So I’m concerned that, even with the merits of an elected cabinet, we end up falling into the trap of a bunch of people who want to do their own thing and lacking overall direction.
That’s a good point! But I’d say it’s better read as a cautionary tale against PMs that don’t balance their oversight. My biggest criticism of myself as PM is that in all 5 terms, I was always (if to differing extents) more FA-focused than RA-focused, and some of the other pre-appointment-PMs (HS, Amerion specifically) were much, much better at keeping an eye on both.
Roavin, I think we’re talking past each other here because you’re making some good points about how the executive can function in theory, and I have specific concerns about how some folks here are talking in practice. And in theory, I agree! In a world where the Cabinet wants to work together, it might be adequate to just tell the PM to just get better at oversight. It is not clear to me that everybody here is actually advocating for or envisioning that kind of cooperation.
If I may make a comparison: in the debate over that 2018 amendment you linked, you described how Tim as MoFA basically declared, “this is my unilateral authority, I’m deciding it unilaterally, sue me if you don’t like it.” Compare that to this sentiment from last December:
Okay, big deal, that’s a quote from months ago. I admit it’s also a little out of context (and frankly the context is, well, you can choose your favorite expletive). But it’s hard not see a direct line towards supporting an elected Cabinet: if I want to be a minister but don’t want to have to carry out anyone else’s ideas, then we should have an elected Cabinet so the Prime Minister can’t boss me around anymore.
Or, consider what the law actually said from 2018 (after the amendment you referenced) to 2023 (emphasis mine)…
As leader of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister is responsible for overseeing a collective Cabinet agenda, and may give directions and instructions to the ministers. Disputes within the Cabinet are subject to the majority decision and collective responsibility; where there is no majority the Prime Minister’s vote shall be the deciding one.
…and compare that to the sentiment in this topic (again, emphasis mine)…
To me, giving ministers the unilateral right to say “my way or the highway” is not a good reason to have an elected Cabinet. There are a lot of good reasons to have an elected Cabinet — I articulated my thoughts two years ago and mostly stand by them — but a brazen attitude towards ministerial independence is not a good reason. I think Kris had a good description of how things could/should work…
…but I am concerned whether there is actually buy-in to that last part about ministers sometimes deferring to the PM.
One of my concerns is that the proposal does not sufficiently offer a way to enforce the compromise factor needed. If the elected Minister of Culture stonewalls the PM on coordinating and compromising on an agenda for the term and the PM has no powers or legal authority to force a decision one way or another, then we’ve set up for executive dysfunction at a much greater scale than we’ve had under the current system.
I would also like to mention that it appears the biggest issue with our current system is that the PM is a make it or break it position: is that not the goal? Centralize expectations, powers, and responsibilities so that it’s simpler to understand, make work, and newcomers don’t have to wonder or navigate through a complex political web to get engaged with it? Pronoun’s idea of offices is extremely compelling as an actual solution to the question of longer-term government functions needing continuity, but without allowing a path for severe infighting to be possible.
I think I lost the subject in the discussion and strayed from my objective. My main point here is actually about integration. It is simpler and better, especially for newcomers, to apply as Ministers, present their ideas, projects, etc. and have the chance to be elected than having to “wait for the PM to choose them”. Of course, as Pronoun said, we can do this without taking all power away from the PM, and I would like to know how we would do this; give the PM the power to veto ministerial projects, for example? I don’t know, I’d like to hear about it.
That qoute is so out of context, and quite frankly I’d rather we not reopen old wounds just for the heck of it, but ok, lets roll with this for a bit. That would have been a good point if that’s what I was arguing… but it wasn’t…
Nowhere did I say “we should bring elected Ministers back so I can run for office.” I don’t want to, I don’t plan to. And yes, I don’t think it’s a terrible idea for Ministers to work on their own agenda, the whole point of them being appointed in this system is that the PM believes they can do a good job with it. With a cooler head, I can see now that its obviously a good idea to work with your PM, whether you were elected or appointed. It’s a commitment from both sides, and both sides should be held accountable if they fail in it.
Apologies — I think that wording came across as personally targeted, and that’s my bad. I wasn’t trying to make an inference about your personal intentions, but rather about how the sentiment you expressed at that moment could lead towards an elected Cabinet. That is, the “direct line” I referred to was between your words and an elected Cabinet, not between you and an elected Cabinet; maybe you have changed your mind, but I felt (maybe incorrectly!) that there was more general sentiment here that ministers shouldn’t need to listen to the Prime Minister’s agenda. But I didn’t make that clear and that was poor wording on my part; I’m sorry for reopening any old wounds.
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Well, the thing is, the system you’re worried about is one that worked in TSP for literally decades. The Head of Government (PM or, before 2016, Delegate) and the individually elected Ministers always ended up coming together somehow to make things work. I think the Feb2018-Cabinet is the only post-2016 example where it ended up not working out (and consider the highly unusual set of personalities involved there); before that there were a few which ended up being “solved” by resignations.
TSP Historians, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly certain that even dating back to 2003, we always had elected ministers, and it rarely was a problem.
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And even if there is a problem with a Minister, well, in the past, the Assembly could still remove them through a Vote of No Confidence, which is a very good counterbalance.
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I would say you are correct on both counts. TSP has always had elected ministers, dating back to the very first government, and it was never an issue in terms of governance.
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