I would like to thank Al for his nice words of encouragement. I would like to give some credit to sparking my interest in Bweezy's proposal to Where Are The CBs. Their post about the Middle East region forum gave me fresh inspiration. Granted their version was of a more limited scope and was more about RP for their region but it was thought provoking to see their attempt.

I agree that the orginal name Bweezy assigned was miss leading (if you read the history Bweezy agreed also). There are two threads that were generated by Bweezy's proposal:

One in the House of Commons

And the initial in the CSP

I would like to say right up front that to attempt this proposal as purely Canadian will limit it's effectiveness. It will be very hard to convence anyone that it is not self promotion, rather than democratic promotion, when the only region involved is Canada. When it comes to the negative side of NS (invader/defenders) an inter-regional organization has a natural level of security that a single region could never have.

I fully agree with Judith Gap that we should take our time with this. Think it out well, and generate documented polices before attempting to involve too many other regions. We need to clearly define how the CDR will relate to the feeder regions. I suspect that will be a lingering point of confusion until the vision is actually in motion.

Hudson Bay and I had excahgned a few pms about this topic and I thought I'd share what we were talking about.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to propose a road map of items to address in order to focus the creative energies of the wonderful members who are interesting in pursuing this project.

I suggest we work on the following items in the following order:

1) Vision Statement (What is the CDR; in no more than one or two sentences)

2) Mission Statement (What are the main goals of the CDR, in no more than one or two sentences)

3) Define the organizational structure of the CDR

4) Create a draft of the CDR by-laws

My attempt at a vision statement was:

An association of self-governing, autonomous regions associated in a common fidelity to the promotion and support of democracy throughout NationStates.

Some goals that I'd like to see addressed in the mission statement are:

Goals:

Provide a positive alternative to the totalitarianism of the majority of the feeder regions, invader groups and "defence" organizations.

Establish immigration centers in the feeder regions.

Provide a strong clear pro-democracy voice pressing for fair game mechanics were required.

Develope a despute resolution center for use by member and non-member regions.

Establish neutral inter-regional institutions whenever it is believed to be in the common good.

Some rough thoughts I've had related to the organization of the CDR are:

Member regions would supply one Senior (Sr) ambassador and at least one Junior (Jr) ambassador (think of it as a deputy minister or back up person) with one additional Jr for every 100 nations of regional population. (ex. currently Canada would supply 1 Sr ambassador and 3 Jr ambassadors (population is over 300))

Only the Sr ambassadors would be able to vote. Thus larger regions would have more influence due to greater ambassador participation but all regions would have an equal vote.

The CDR would be managed by a Steering Committee made up of 3 permanet member regions (represented by their Sr ambassadors) with the balance of the committee made up of Sr ambassadors on a rotating membership that would total 10% of the total region membership of the CDR. (think of the UN secruity council)

For ongoing tasks the CDR will have activity committees to perform the work (ex. immigration committee). Members of these committees should be elected by the member body on a quarterly basis. The election schedule should be structured to avoid all activity committees being elected at the same time.

To plan out future CDR activies the Steering Committee can assign Project Committees which would run for the duration of defining the assigned planning.

I picture two sizes of committee depending on the amount of work to be done. Small committees would have a Chair (must be a Sr ambassador) and 2 additional committee members. Large committees would have a Chair (must be a Sr ambassador) and 4 additional committee members. Each committee would also have an assigned alternet member in case one of the other members can not complete their duties.

Project committee recommendations would need a majority of CDR member approval to take effect.

Any changes to the CDR by-laws would need a 2/3rds approval of the member regions to take effect.

Possible Vision Statement

We hope to develop a colotion of regions willing to give, a democratic alternative for the smaller nations in Invader or Dictatorship regions. Our longterm goal is to formulate a unbais inter-regoinal dispute tribunal, in which would we would try to find a peaceful democratic solution to conflicks(sp?) or potencail conflicks(sp?)

I'm not sure that this idea is sufficiently different from other organisations.

Vision: The CDR hopes to provide all nations with an alternative to Invader, Alliance, or Defender regions by proposing a new sort of organisation-an organisation of negotiation and arbitration.

Mission: The CDR seeks democratic options for all nations who so desire, but more importantly the CDR seeks fair game mechanics in all region's boards regardless of the region's political structure. To accomplish its vision, the CDR proposes to establish neutral interregional centers for both arbitration and communication.

HB, I think all the thinking you are doing is important and valuable as are the comments that CB's have provided. I think the next step is to take this idea to the board and to see if the CDR is a concept that they'd like to encourage further work on.

Not sure what you mean JG. I've moved this thread to the Diplomacy section so that as many people as possible could comment. Is that what you mean by "the board"?

HB, I very much like the balance of power you are aiming for with the many reps - one vote concept.

I do think, though, that the detailed structure will have to be worked out by the organisation itself. I think we need to have some idea of what we want to achieve, and offer this as an initial vision, but to be fully democratic we have to accept that once other regions come on board there will be new ideas to consider.

I think we might be able to offer a service to the Pacifics if we can get a good regional advertising service going. That might allow the Pacifics to reclaim their regional HQs to some extent. If we back that up with threads where visitors can comment on their evaluation of the regions, that could be quite a useful service to newcomers, too.

I think some sort of reasonably neutral information service would have to be a key element, as that fits with our mission to encourage participation in the democratic regions.

We would need to consider carefully what the stance should be as regards the admission of Invader or Defender regions into the alliance. The region-taking game is a recognised part of NationStates, and we have to aknowlege that, while promoting the alternatives.

I like the idea of an arbitration service, but it would have to be very good if it were to succeed. (There was a very good arbitration thread on the FSoG boards once, but it appears to have been deleted. I'll see if I can get a copy from Zigland)

Just a few thoughts - lets hear from some more people.

So where are you in the develpment of your CDR step 1,2,3 (0ff origonal list)

My second post should be ignored. Relating this idea to the board was wrong.

CB I posted a bunch of stuff just so I don't lose the idea. However, we are just getting input on item 1.

AL - I agree with you that the CDR will have to have the final say on how they are organized. However, working out a starting point, now while in a smaller group, is going to be much easier than once regions start excerting their individual influence.

To your other points let me stress - that the secret of this getting off the ground is keeping it focused on non-feeder, democracies. Expanding the scope to invaders or to the pacifics will delute and fracture the focus.

Simply getting the democratic regions to work together on common issues would be a huge accomplishment (gigantic even). The Invader/Defenders and the feeder regions can take care of themselves and don't need our assistance.

So you would suggest we exclude defenders?

I wasn't proposing extending membership to the Pacifics, just trying to look at how we might present the idea as a benefit to them.

I not suggesting that we exclude them simply because they are defenders. If they meet the guidelines of the Canadian Standards for Diplomatic Relations (or whatever the CDR version of the guidelines are) then I think they could possibly become a member of the CDR.

One way we might demonstrate how the CDR benefits the Pacifics would be to show how arbitration would benefit all members should disputes arise. While the members are who we hope will most benefit, I think most of the leaders in those regions will have seen enough upheaval to want some guarantees that should they be ousted unfairly, they would have a legitimate process to make their complaints known and resolved fairly.

I feel confident with a strong proposal and reasonable diplomacy, we could show the Pacifics that we do not have ultimate motives of interference.

We'd probably need to build into the structure body who would review nations and their conformity to the guidelines to confirm or remove members.

I did a great deal of work in this area (with a lot of input from bweezy) for another region. (it never really got used though). I would very much like to see the FSoG information you refered to.

I'm of the opinion that mediation and arbitration won't be important until later but that we will need it. To whom we would make such services available to is also an issue to work out...

So we don't digress too much I would like to keep our thinking of the feeders, as they relate to the CDR, as simply sources of immigration (the feeders are like high schools suppling students to colleges and universities). We may communicate with them but we are functioning on different levels, at least for our planning purposes.

If this is to referance the Inter-Regional courts, I think this would be best saved till the CDR is an accual political being. What I mean is when pitching this always allude to the fact that we wish to make an international court and then when we have enough regions and nations as a following start laying down the guild lines and purposes of the arbitration.

To give this concept the room it needs to come to life I've asked a friend to let us use his forum to hold this project. That forum was formerly used to develope a NS-wide dispute resolution service, which never became active. As such, it can support the needs of the CDR with very little change to it's structure.

Developing this project in a forum other than Canada's will help establish it's inter-regional credentials. The forum still needs work to tune it directly to the CDR but I didn't want to go too much further without receiving the input of others.


The introduction to the project is located here.

Please feel free to look around. Those of you interested in contributing to the project should send me a PM on the CDR site and I'll make you a member. Actual membership requirements have yet to be developed. We can't all be representatives from Canada so we'll have to reset membership at some point in the future, once the CDR becomes active.

If you know of another NS nation that you think would enjoy contributing to the CDR project please direct them to the forum of the Congress of Democratic Regions

Good job, hb! :clap:

Correctamundo! :D