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==Government== | ==Government== | ||
The government of Ardmore functions as a {{wp|unitary}} {{wp|parliamentary republic}} under a {{wp|syndicalism|syndicalist}} {{wp|dominant-party system}} governed by the [[Popular Left Coalition]], itself governed by the [[Co-operative Party of Ardmore]] (formerly the [[Syndicalist Party of Ardmore|Syndicalist Party]] before 2000). The Ardmori political structure is based upon the fundamental principles of {{wp|cooperative|cooperative ownership}}, {{wp|direct democracy}}, and {{wp|workers' self-management|workers' control of the means of production}}. These principles line up with the [[Constitution of Ardmore|constitution]]'s adherence to the principles of {{wp|syndicalism}} which has officially governed Ardmore since 1931; syndicalism decentralizes economic and political power into the hands of autonomous cooperatives. These cooperatives, whether they be a workers' cooperative or a community cooperative, serve as the foundational baseline for local governance in both the realms of politics and economics within Ardmore. Since 2000, the Ardmori political sphere has opened as the country moves away from its revolutionary phase and begins to establish formal diplomatic relations with non-socialist countries. | {{main|Politics of Ardmore|President of Ardmore}} | ||
The government of Ardmore functions as a {{wp|unitary}} {{wp|parliamentary republic}} under a {{wp|syndicalism|syndicalist}} {{wp|dominant-party system}} governed by the [[Popular Left Coalition]], itself governed by the [[Co-operative Party of Ardmore]] (formerly the [[Syndicalist Party of Ardmore|Syndicalist Party]] before 2000). The Ardmori political structure is based upon the fundamental principles of {{wp|cooperative|cooperative ownership}}, {{wp|direct democracy}}, and {{wp|workers' self-management|workers' control of the means of production}}. These principles line up with the [[Constitution of Ardmore|constitution]]'s adherence to the principles of {{wp|syndicalism}} which has officially governed Ardmore since 1931; syndicalism decentralizes economic and political power into the hands of autonomous cooperatives. These cooperatives, whether they be a workers' cooperative or a community cooperative, serve as the foundational baseline for local governance in both the realms of politics and economics within Ardmore. Since 2000, the Ardmori political sphere has opened as the country moves away from its revolutionary phase and begins to establish formal diplomatic relations with non-socialist countries; the nation's {{wp|head of state}} since that year is the [[President of Ardmore]] who serves a {{wp|titular leader|ceremonial role}} with no powers and instead serves an exclusively diplomatic role. | |||
===Executive=== | ===Executive=== | ||
{{main|Board of Labor|Chairman of the Board of Labor|President of the General Assembly}} | |||
The [[Chairman of the Board of Labor]] is elected by the members of the [[Board of Labor]] and serves for a three-year term with no term limits nor reelection restrictions. Before the year 2000, the Chairman also served as the president of the Syndicalist Party and functioned as the {{wp|de facto}} {{wp|semi-presidential}} head of state even though the previous constitution had never designated anyone to serve as head of state; the main purpose of the Chairman was to serve a presiding and minor administrative role on a {{wp|first among equals}} basis within the Board, but in practice was the most powerful office in Ardmore because of its presiding role and close association with the leadership of the Syndicalist Party. Since 2000, the current constitution explicitly designates the Chairman of the Board of Labor as the nation's {{wp|chief executive}} and officially divorces the office from the role of president of the newly-renamed Co-operative Party. The Chairman is accountable to the Board of Labor and may be removed if two-thirds of the total membership of the Board of Labor vote to replace him with a new Chairman. | |||
The executive | The [[President of the General Assembly]] is the main presiding officer of the [[General Assembly (Ardmore)|General Assembly]], and is always the president of the nation's largest political party, which has always been the Co-operative Party and the preceding Syndicalist Party since even before the reforms of the year 2000. The General Assembly President is also guaranteed a seat in the Board of Labor. According to the current constitution, the General Assembly President is the Ardmori {{wp|head of government}} and serves for a three-year term between legislative elections; as party leader he serves for two years with no term limit and is directly elected by all members of his party regardless of rank. He is responsible for formally proposing executive {{wp|bill (law)|bills}} to the General Assembly, and he serves as the primary liaison between the Board of Labor and the General Assembly and is often asked questions by members of the General Assembly pertaining to the performance of the executive. Like in most parliamentary systems, the General Assembly President is accountable to both the members of the Board of Labor and the members of the General Assembly; failure to maintain the confidence of a simple majority of either will trigger the removal of the General Assembly President from office in preparation for a snap election. | ||
Both the Board of Labor Chairman and the General Assembly President serve as the collective head and chair of the Board of Labor, and thus are considered to be the final decisionmakers in Ardmore with equal executive power. Both have {{wp|veto|veto power}} which they may independently invoke as needed; should either of them raise a veto then the chances of the vetoed bill getting passed are considered to be highly slim as most laws are contingent on the approval of both of them in order to pass. Both are the two foremost representatives of the Board of Labor, and are thus given top precedence when receiving foreign dignitaries before the rest of the Board of Labor is able to receive them. This arrangement is partly based upon the role played by the [[Consuls of Lucrecia|Consuls]] of [[Lucrecia]], save for some modifications that make it more suitable to the socialist political structure of Ardmore, as well as being the probable main inspiration behind the role played by the Qhapaqs of [[Kelekona]]. Indeed, the constitution states that this equal relationship is designed to ensure that power no longer falls into the hands of a single leader and to serve as part of Ardmore's commitment to decentralized leadership. | |||
The Board of Labor is the highest administrative authority in Ardmore and the main executive cabinet in the Ardmori government. The Board of Labor consists of representatives who are elected by their respective syndicates, which are labor councils governed by workers' cooperatives, across the nation. Although the Board of Labor Chairman and the General Assembly President are the final decisionmakers, the Board of Labor has the right to vote on whether or not to approve the decisions of the two before they are made legally-binding. The main executive responsibilities of the Board of Labor is to oversee the implementations of policies that have been approved by all levels of national government, coordinating the different sectors of the economy with the syndicates, and to represent Ardmore in international affairs (being second in precedence after the Board of Labor Chairman and the General Assembly President). | |||
===Legislative=== | ===Legislative=== | ||
{{main|Cooperative Legislative Assembly|General Assembly (Ardmore){{!}}General Assembly}} | |||
The [[Cooperative Legislative Assembly]] serves as Ardmore's legislative branch. Since 1931, the Cooperative Legislative Assembly is a {{wp|bicameral}} legislature; the Board of Labor is the upper house, and the General Assembly is the lower house. The Cooperative Legislative Assembly makes use of {{wp|fusion of powers}} much like most other systems of government that use a {{wp|parliament}}. Prior to the year 2000, the fusion of powers was even more apparent as there was no well-defined delineation between the executive and the legislative; the Board of Labor, as such, became the upper legislative house even after the reforms implemented in the year 2000. The exact responsibilities that the Board of Labor has in the legislative branch include the ability to propose legislator {{wp|bill (law)|bills}} (bills proposed by either of the head and chair of the Board of Labor are considered executive bills), and the ability to debate and vote on whether or not a given bill should become a law; responsibilities that are commonly expected in the legislative branch. There are 125 members in the Board of Labor, which includes the Chairman and the General Assembly President, with 124 of the members each representing a syndicate from which they are elected by to serve a three-year term. | |||
The General Assembly is the lower house of the Cooperative Legislative Assembly, and is legally required to have a minimum of 250 members, each representing the community cooperatives throughout the country and are elected for a three-year term. However, the Constitution stipulates that there is no specified maximum membership count for the General Assembly, the 250 members are only there to form the basis of a legislative {{wp|quorum}}. Indeed, the General Assembly allows for any member of the general public to not only enter the General Assembly while it is in session at any given time but also to actively participate in said session, serving as the basis for Ardmore's commitment to {{wp|direct democracy}} and consensus-building. On average, just over one thousand people actively participate in the General Assembly each day. Like the Board of Labor, the General Assembly may propose legislator bills and debate and vote on said bills to determine whether or not it should pass, but the General Assembly reserves the exclusive right to veto any new laws that have been approved by the head and chair of the Board of Labor; the grace period for a General Assembly veto is four weeks. The General Assembly is also the only legislative house that has multiple non-socialist parties represented, but to ensure that these parties are unable to dismantle the current co-operative syndicalist system there are partisan quotas set up to ensure that at least two-thirds of the General Assembly are seated by members of any of the member parties in the Popular Left Coalition. | |||
===Judiciary=== | ===Judiciary=== | ||
{{main|Judiciary of Ardmore}} | |||
The Ardmori judicial system operates on the fundamental principles of {{wp|conflict resolution}} with a heavy emphasis on community involvement and democratic justice. Disputes that occur are typically resolved through the use of local judicial assemblies or even specialized tribunals; these organizations are composed of representatives directly elected by the affected communities. The primary purpose of the Ardmori judicial system is to interpret laws, mediate disputes, and to ensure the fair administration of the rule of law in accordance with the preamble of the constitution which espouses the values of equality and cooperative solidarity. There is no established force for {{wp|policing}}; the Ardmori police force was abolished in 1931 due to it being seen as nothing more than a tool for the royalist government and thus was deemed to be irredeemable. Instead, law enforcement is a community-based approach where the citizens of the community are expected to remain vigilant, and the right to make a {{wp|citizen's arrest}} is a constitutional guarantee. | |||
===Political Parties=== | |||
{{main|Political parties in Ardmore}} | |||
Since 2000, Ardmore has allowed for the formation of opposition political parties that may compete in legislative elections with no restrictions. However, there is a quota enforced that ensures that the opposition parties can not win more than one-third of the 250 representative seats in the General Assembly; this measure is intended to prevent aspiring right-wing populists from gaining political dominance as well as to ensure that the current socialist form of government will not be so easily dismantled. The other two-thirds of the representative seats in the General Assembly are reserved for parties that are committed to the retention of the socialist form of government. This means that Ardmore is under an enforced dominant-party system where the socialist parties are allowed to win any seat in the General Assembly without any of the quota restrictions that the opposition parties are under. | |||
The | The main leading political coalition in Ardmore is the Popular Left Coalition, an alliance of three socialist parties that have agreed to a perpetual electoral and parliamentary partnership. The coalition is derived from the idea of a {{wp|popular front}} model that was often supported in left-wing democratic circles. Members of the Popular Left Coalition are among the socialist parties that are thus not subjected to the limitations implemented for non-socialist parties. The Popular Left Coalition was established in 2000 with the express purpose of uniting all likeminded socialist parties against the forces of reaction. To maximize their electoral efforts, the member parties have agreed to not complete against each other in seats that are guaranteed to be won by one of them and to instead focus their efforts on seats that are reporting a high amount of support for an opposition party. Through these efforts, the Popular Left Coalition have been able to win roughly three-quarters of the representative seats allotted in the General Assembly. | ||
=== | ====Governing parties==== | ||
The dominant party in Ardmore, and leading party in the Popular Left Coalition, is the [[Co-operative Party of Ardmore]] (PCA). Founded in 1921 as the Workers' Party of Ardmore (POA), it is the oldest continuously-operating party in Ardmore. Initially a catch-all socialist mass movement, the POA quickly turned towards syndicalism as the party's initial leading members were largely educated in [[Vithinja|Vithinjan]] socialist thought which called for a decentralized form of government run by groups of largely autonomous workers' councils; the party would soon be renamed as the Syndicalist Party of Ardmore (PSA) in 1927 as its ideological framework became formalized. From the end of the Civil War in 1931 until the reforms of the year 2000, the PSA operated as Ardmore's sole legal political party; any other political organization could only existed as a faction within the PSA. The current name of the party was registered in 2003 to reflect the changes in Ardmore's political sphere and to match the party's name to the country's official name to reflect its historical legacy as Ardmore's longtime ruling party which it still lives up to to this day. | |||
The second-largest member in the Popular Left Coalition is the [[Labor Party of Ardmore]] (PLOA). Initially an internal faction of the Syndicalist Party that was formed in 1947 under the name "Democratic Front of the Revolutionary Vanguard", the PLOA was spun out as an independent political party in 2000. The PLOA is a revolutionary {{wp|social democratic}} party that claims to be the heirs to the truest forms of social democracy back when the ideology was seen as advocating for a "revolution by the ballot" rather than merely advocating for a reformed form of a capitalist economy that most social democratic parties have shifted towards for the past several decades. However, because the revolution has already been achieved, the PLOA has opted for a populistic approach and supports the slight centralization and rationalization of government to transform Ardmore into a robust {{wp|socialist republic}} in the vein of Rumahoki's form of socialism. It is most often associated with urban {{wp|technocrats}} and {{wp|intellectuals}}. The PLOA prides itself in being the party of "red professionals" and young entrepreneurs. | |||
The smallest member in the Popular Left Coalition is the [[Borbonist Workers' Party of Ardmore]] (POBA). As the name implies, POBA is a {{wp|communist}} party based upon the tenets espoused by Rumahokian revolutionary hero [[Vito Borbon]]. The party was founded in 2001 by radical members of the Syndicalist Party who felt largely inspired by the revolutionary zeal found in both the Ardmori Civil War and in Rumahoki's [[Velvet Revolution]], and the pre-feudal society that governed the Ardmori Isles. The POBA advocates for the immediate transition to communism as well as gradually converting Ardmore into a confederation of semi-independent labor councils. The official ideology of POBA is described by members as being "Ardmori-Borbonism" which most political scholars have a difficult time describing it with some calling it {{wp|anarcho-syndicalism}}, others calling it {{wp|anarcho-communism}}, and more calling it {{wp|libertarian socialism}}. Most members of POBA are generally in their young adulthood, but there exists a sizeable amount of members who are beyond that particular demographic. | |||
===International Relations=== | ===International Relations=== | ||