Does the political spectrum (far-left, center-left, center, center-right, far-right) have any real application in eRepublik? If not, can it subjectively be given application? If so please explain.
Anthony Colby
Administrator Irish University Administrator
The only thing I see party affiliation doing in game is giving like minded people a party to join. Basically your RL party beliefs give you a party to join in game. You hang out with like minded people. It has no game mechanic application at all that I can see.
As to having the spectrum have an application in game the admins would have to give nations some sort of bonus economically for different elected governments. Say a right wing party gets a military bonus and a left gets manufacturing or something like that.
I would like to hear what others think.
"My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military."
Smedley Butler
Colby's right it's mostly so you can find a party that suits you. It's mostly for RPing I'd believe and it's fun to have. also reminiscent of Alpha days.
Anthony Colby
Administrator Irish University Administrator
Yes a party in game could just as likely be grouped around a favorite beer. It is just a group of like minded people. They just happen to usually share RL political philosophy.
"My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military."
Smedley Butler
The application of the political spectrum isn't even all that clear in the real world. In fact many real-world political scientists (including myself) are starting to look at the left-right conceptualization as a rather overly-simplistic and dated way of looking at political ideology, which is much more nuanced and multidimensional than most people give it credit for.
Although left-right ideological distinctions may appear coherent on the surface, much of what is commonly grouped together in terms of policy preferences are not necessarily due to a coherent underlying system of belief, but are often mere artifacts of the way modern western liberal democracies happened to evolve (although obviously certain clusters of policy attitudes do legitimately hang together due to underlying systematic philosophical and/or personality commonalities; they are just not very well-described by traditional left-right classifications).
I think that goes even more so for eRepublik ideology, which, although it obviously has the potential for systematic thought, is even more eclectic and can be even more influenced by superficial social factors than real-life ideology. Things also change faster in eRep than real-life politics, making one-size-fits-all systems of thought inferior in this game to more adaptive ground-up styles of thinking.
"In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool" --Lord Chesterfield
Post by Arjay Phoenician III on Jun 11, 2013 22:19:08 GMT
I don't think the real-life political spectrum applies to eRepublik. The questions a citizen has to ask for himself in the real world do not apply here. In any country in real life, there are a myriad of issues to deal with (education, defense, infrastructure, the environment, and MANY others). How you felt on these given issues would slot you somewhere on the spectrum.
There's just not enough issues to create a wide array of political choices. Maybe back in the day, before the business and economic modules weren't sabotaged by the admins, there would be more to talk about, i.e. free enterprise vs. communes. These days, what are the great issues a country faces?
How are we going to jam as much currency into our treasury as we can so we can afford next month's MPP's?
Who are our friends and enemies in this world?
How will we defend ourselves from PTO's and invasions?
How can we grow our population?
There's not many more pressing problems a country now faces than that. There are subtleties, sure, but none that would require a broad political spectrum with an array of possible solutions to choose from.
“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”
― George Carlin
Anthony Colby
Administrator Irish University Administrator
Post by Anthony Colby on Jun 11, 2013 22:35:23 GMT
I agree Arjay. In making the game more of a plain war simulator the admins took away anything that gave a country any individuality. Parties are not what they used to be. It used to be there was some RL identity to them. Now nations are carbon copies of each other and numbers are all that matter. Really in eIreland when was the last time someone used an Irish slogan or even called a Congress person a TD? We might as well be called "country 23" for all it matters.
I know that is an oversimplification as to why we are less like Ireland in RL now but it seems like some of it to me.
"My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military."
Smedley Butler
That is unfortunately completely true, Colby. Also back in 'the day' when a nation was wiped it was serious business, which I believe also made political parties more important. Like after the December Revolution of 2010, there were no political parties. We all had to start new and in that we actually saw perhaps the only time in eIrish history when everyone was united in struggle and we were working as a nation and not as separated factions fixated on party politics.
Post by Arjay Phoenician III on Jun 13, 2013 6:05:50 GMT
I think the only way to differentiate parties in this game is if they were single-issue parties. If a party got together for the sole purpose of, say, ensuring a country was a member of CoT, and they put up candidates and endorse candidates from other parties that fit their agenda, then a party would have an identity. You just don't see parties trying that, and because so much has been made flaccid by the admins, it's just one set of generic voters against another set of generic voters.
“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”
― George Carlin
What if the University gave Party Leaders questionaires on their positions in multi-issues and give them 7 days to turn in results or their answers? Then we could provide a visual list of parties and where they stand on issues and help people choose what party truly represents their interests in eRepublik.
What if the University gave Party Leaders questionaires on their positions in multi-issues and give them 7 days to turn in results or their answers? Then we could provide a visual list of parties and where they stand on issues and help people choose what party truly represents their interests in eRepublik.
But I used broad policy clusters (e.g. foreign affairs, economics, social organization, etc) instead of specific issues. I tried to organize them in a way that made the most sense for eRep, but I had nothing other than experience and intuition to back it up.
One thing the the university might think of doing is first creating a large list of important issues/policies in eRepublik politics. And by this I mean issues that are not specific to current circumstances but rather have broad applications across situations and time (e.g. aggressive vs. defensive foreign policy, taxes, presidential power, immigration procedure, etc.). One we have a large list of issues we can run a survey to see where people stand on each of those issues, and then we can do some statistical magic (e.g. exploratory factor analysis) on the results to find out if there are any groups of policies that actually seem to cluster together. This way we can discover if there really are policy clusters that hang together to form a genuine ideology, and whether or not parties actually organize around these clusters.
"In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool" --Lord Chesterfield
What if the University gave Party Leaders questionaires on their positions in multi-issues and give them 7 days to turn in results or their answers? Then we could provide a visual list of parties and where they stand on issues and help people choose what party truly represents their interests in eRepublik.
Well. what are the issues (plural) facing Ireland? Isn't there just one overarching issue, how the hell are we going to get back on the map? From that, don't the other potential issues (how do we deal with the UK, what is our place in the alliance game) become secondary?
“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”
― George Carlin
Anthony Colby
Administrator Irish University Administrator
Post by Anthony Colby on Jun 15, 2013 14:11:33 GMT
I would say yes in the short run Arjay. We need to be back on the map would be in my opinion a priority. But as a long term study I like Stils idea.
But of course that isn't necessarily an either or idea.
Last Edit: Jun 15, 2013 14:12:30 GMT by Anthony Colby
"My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military."
Smedley Butler
I would also agree with Stils idea. It would not only help make voters more informed of their candidates, but also possibly create a clear-cut image of what political party leader's policies are and over the course of time attribute them to their respective "political wings".
A "long" time ago I started trying to define the broad political issues in eIreland, based on my long standing belief that left/right are defunct concepts as they stand now. I do believe that our political system would be most effective if we would base parties around actual ideologies (in the true practical sense of the word ideology).
It's been a while but here are some of the issues I came up with that might deserve a political party dedicated to them (if not solely than in part): *these aren't complete just a taste... as a group we can expand on these issues which are where i think the real discussions should be.
Northern Ireland: It is rightfully eIrish > war of principle vs. principled opportunism vs. diplomatic approach > varying levels of priority for the issue It is rightfully natural territory of eUK based on game rules > strategically neutral vs. natural strategic target vs. undesirable conflict
National Military: Belief in centralized military > MoD run MU, exclusive funding and priority, all citizens encouraged to enlist > strict vs. citizen style operations Belief in central military authority > MoD guides mixed unit composition (maybe a weak national military force), hands off MU organization > various funding schemes vs. no funding vs. special ops funding for national unit vs. national defence fund war discretions Belief in MU anarchy > don't tell me what to do!
Congress/Cabinet/Cp Authority: Mechanical Rule > encouraged to use mechanics however you see fit as a means to any personal goal or agenda > whatever degree of voter power exists will the only check and balance. Responsibilities like FA/Defence/Finance are derived by the power invested in players by the mechanics. Cp/Cabinet Lead > congress encouraged to exercise discipline and work for the cabinet experts on the majority of issues... concept of rogue proposals exists... congress has a voice and may be used as a democratic tool in meta, but strategy and overall decision making is delegated to cabinet members. Adversarial > congress members vote party lines and the mechanics are used as a tool for politics. congress are encouraged by a precedent of patronage rule: vote the party line or forget ballot priority next elections.
