A Note on Confidence
Confidence is a relationship which an assembly does (//not) have with those who it commissions to to do it’s business, represent itself to external parties (such as constituents, other assemblies, including those to which it itself is a constituent, et cetera), execute its resolutions, report on their effect, et cetera.
A motion of confidence (re)installs and (re)affirms confidence in such a commissioner, or group of commissioners. Such motions may be accompanied with binding instructions, to which commissioners must ascent to or tender their resignation (that is, the instructions are binding). Commissioners may wield individual or collective veto over each other’s discharging of their shared mandate, so as to ensure that the instructions are followed, and deviations or ambiguity are reported.
Confidence can be invested in commissioners and it can be taken away. It may also deteriorate or decay, like a satellite falling to earth.
When a commission’s responsible officers (i.e. those who must deliver the response to the assembly, give an account of themselves and their actions, etc.) determine that certain instructions, especially authorization to use the resources under the purview of the Assembly, are necessary or expedient to the execution of their obligations, they might introduce a motion of confidence to signal the importance or non-negotiate ability of the measures. In such a situation, if the motion fails to carry the resolution (or vice versa), the commissioner’s gambit will have failed in a formal sense, and they will be required to resign—though whether the assembly accepts their resignations or reinvests them with their confidence can render such resignations symbolic. Other rules may impart obligations to seek out the temperature of the assembly, as it were, on a regular basis—at the beginning and end of legislative sessions, for example, or attached to their budget proposal. Such requirements turn the commission from a powerful if dangerous negotiating tactic into a countdown clock on the commissioner’s mandate.
Motions of No Confidence withdraw confidence from a commission proactively. This may operate on a delay, for example, until a new commission can be, well, commissioned. Under other rules, the absence of a majority opposed to the motion of no confidence is adequate to bring a commission’s governors down*(such a system renders motions of confidence and no-confidence identical with regards to the burden placed on the commissioners, except that motions of no confidence removes the commissioner’s relative monopoly on initiating these votes. More lenient assemblies assume that the commission is supported by a majority, or not opposed by a majority, until an outright majority proves otherwise. Other rules go even further, requiring the opposition not only to oppose investing the commission with their confidence by a positive majority, but also uniting that majority (or a different majority) around a slate of replacement commissioners. Such a processes is referred to as A Constructive Motion of No Confidence, and provides the greatest degree of leniency and stability for the incumbent government. Alternatively, a commission might lose confidence and with it prestige or powers, but retain their offices in a limited, temporary capacity, until their successors have been installed. If one cannot be installed, the dissolution of the assembly may be in order, whereupon the acting commission might make a ploy to win back it’s mandate, or at least hold onto partial power.
In the above cases, incumbency becomes as important as holding the high ground at the start of a battle; i.e. a defensible position. The ease with which the incumbency retains the greater swath of the powers of the commision are the slope and height of this high ground. A weak incumbent which cannot even muster a plurality of members in support requires very high buttresses and sharp slopes, i.e. a constructive motion of no confidence.
What if we do not trust the incumbents, even with reduced powers for a sharply limited duration of time during which the new commissioners must be chosen. In that case, I propose the following reintroduction of ancient democratic theory: the use of rotation. The members of the assembly need to be divided into, for example, 12 chapters. These chapters might correspond to delegations for a given geographic region, ideological balance, et cetera. For one month, each chapter serves as the executive arm of the assembly, deciding in committee how to discharge the powers otherwise invested in the commissioners. The return of confidence to the assembly itself in miniature flattens the trenches around the incumbents at the cost of some chaos in the form of the rapid turn over rate and margin of fluctuation between the assembly’s median and the median’s of the 12 chapters. at the same time, these 12 medians pose a concrete alternative in response to which a commissioner slate can take shape.
For ease of transition, I think incoming and outgoing chapters should serve as the executive assistants to the presiding delegation. 3/12ths, or 1/4, of the assembly would then be responsible at any given time for the executive, with approximately 90 days between selection of the members of the assembly and their return to normalcy with the body. This includes 30 days during which the capabilities of that particular delegation can be accessed by the ruling delegation and the assembly as a whole.
Should the chapters should include all members of the assembly or just some? Should the members of the body who are chosen through direct democracy (assembly) or sortition (the Congress), and/or election (also the Congress) be eligeable?
The commissioners are responsible to a mandate council, half elected members, half lotter members? The leaders of the factions which make up the commission have the right to appoint their own fellows and veto their dismissal; all commissioners are appointed by the mutual consent of the representative(s) of those commissions?
The mandate council—representatives of the factions, commissioners of the ongoing-commissions, extra-ordinary commissioners, who stand outside the council?
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