In Civcraft, Authority has been taking a gradual shift upwards. Quite recently, Autocracy and oligarchy has been creeping into many governments. Many Orion citizens I have spoken with complained their system has become less democratic and more Oligarchical. Hjaltland's system of government is largely dominated by one ruler, with a few officials, and no elections. The citizens are somewhat happy with this setup however. If you ask them why, they will say something like: "It is more efficient," or "It avoids confusion." This kind of "Consensual Autocracy" is not the first of it's kind in Civcraft, but it is on the rise, only recently this form of government came to power in fellowship, and in other places too numerous to mention. This is not an ideal form of government, and it is only a temporary solution to the problems it's followers cite with representative government.

I believe this is because of the failings of poorly-implemented representative government. People see one form spin into instability and destroy a country and believe there is no other option. However, I believe that representative government is still a superior way of building and maintaining nations, if it is implemented properly. I will use examples from my own experience to prove this.

An example of a poorly implemented democracy would be the Early Olympian Government. It consisted of ministers, each with a vote on a council and vaguely defined powers. During the ULV crisis, the lack of defined powers and organization lead to corruption and a complete collapse of government. The key problem with this was that many in the government had wildly differing levels of experience and differing opinions, but they all had the power to attempt to implement their ideas. Eventually, a new government formed that was closer to the ideal.

This new Government (And the current government model of Montarnis) was much better, but still lacked key features of a good democracy. Based vaguely on the Paris commune, there were powerful officials, subject to instant recall, and votes could be held to force them to action/inaction. There were only 2 elected positions, The Premier, and a head judiciary of sorts. The Premier would then appoint officers and a secretary who would carry out administrative tasks. These officers had clearly defined roles and responsibilities, avoiding one of the major setbacks of a bad democracy. This system also created a unified, streamlined government while avoiding removing the vast majority of citizens from government, destroying the criticisms of the Consensual Autocrats. This system is ideal for small populations, however, it begins to lose it's advantages when faced with a larger population spread across multiple regions. The following is my predictions of how this form of government will fare when faced with these stresses.

As population rises, the ability of the Premier to accurately represent the needs of his people worsens, much like an autocrat's. If this situation is not mended, the authority gradually seeps out of the citizens hands and The Premier will gradually become a Consensual Autocrat in all but name. Without the participation of citizens in government, people will gradually lose purpose and direction, national unity will drop as people feel less and less a part of the nation. This will after a while, cause a sharp population drop, as happened in Olympia temporarily. If this is not dealt with, it will quickly kill the nation off, just like autocracy will over time.

The remedy for this I predict, will be federalization. As population rises, districts can be created with their own representatives acting as Mayors, with similar authority to a premier in his district. The Premier would be chosen from among the mayors, to avoid inexperienced candidates being chosen, and to maintain the unity of government. The premier would mainly deal with being a foreign representative and organizing inter-district efforts, as domestic policies would be mainly decided by mayors. Lastly, wealth must be kept out of politics. Citizens of every social standing must be represented proportionally. I do not know how a capitalistic nation would achieve this, but a socialist nation would have no trouble, as wealth would be held in common. Lastly, runoff voting must be used in elections.

This system would maximize the citizenry involved in government, which in turn would maximize the unity of the nation and keep players active and logging in. In addition it would keep a unified government and avoid the inefficiencies of past representative governments. It would combine the best parts of representative government with the consensual autocracies while maintaining a bottom-up structure of authority by giving the citizenry the ability to intervene in official's decisions. Autocracy is a dangerous path for a country to go down. At best it can severely damage a country's reputation if a ruler goes bonkers, and at worst it can completely destroy a nation. We must strive to defend and reform libertarian government before it's light is extinguished from civcraft.

Tl;dr: Authoritarianism bad, alternative forms of government are not only possible but necessary.

P.S. Im not saying the people who have implemented consensual autocracies are bad, they are just that consensual. New Leningrad is an example of a good consensual autocracy because the people there came for it. Consensual Autocracies that already exist, like Hjaltland should preserve their current governments, but democratic nations must preserve and reform to maintain their ideals and unity. I also largely ignored anarchists in this talk on freedom because I'm going to write a second wall of text on libertarian governance vs anarchism.

Apologies for any grammatical mistakes, as I wrote this on a whim and it got very large very quickly.