Consulate of Nations?

[Albigensia]

All of Veeck's talk about the socio-cultural concept behind a race led me to thinking about how the non-crew population of the ship. After all, they're stuck on this boat, too, and would want a say in how things are going. I checked the duty roster and found that MB already figured out that angle with the Consulate of Nations (tm).

Of course, from a ex-government teacher angle, I have to have fun with this storyline. One race = one vote can lead to some interesting ideas. Naturally, not all races are going to have equal populations, so a group of ten from one race would have the same weight as a thousand from another. Never fun for the thousand; which is why although I sponsored MUN, I think the UN is rather flawed.

ANYWAY, with few other rules in place, if the decisions of the CoN have any weight with the governing of the craft, I imagine having a lot of fun with dirty politics. After all, the thousand might have the same weight in the vote as the ten, but the ten can be easily bullied by the thousand. I imagine having Tavesh going around to (ahem) "discuss" their vote at the next meeting.

It's a limited storyline, but it makes me wonder. What power would the CoN have in the daily admin of the ship? Or would it be an advisory council (which would also cause some fun when advice is not followed)?

[Veeck]

The way I understand it, the CN is mainly to govern the civilian population itself, mediate disputes, handle laws about petty crimes that don't endanger the ship, that sort of thing. You could think of them as Student Council In Space...sure, they get some prestige and even some authority, but for anything really important, the faculty (the crew) are the ones with real power and authority.

At least initially, anyways. Once it seems they're well away from the Milky Way and out of danger from the Borg, the CN might gradually gain more power, especially once the original crew dies out and gets replaced by recruits from the civilian population, people used to living under CN authority, and the authority of whatever government their own race sets up in their own holodeck.

[Lorpius Prime]

"Student Council in Space" might be a good way to describe it. The crew is certainly (at the moment) the chief authority on managing the ship's resources, but a good deal of those resources are devoted to the well-being and comfort of the civilian population. So we might start out with the default plan of more-or-less equal division of resources among the various races. But the CoN might be a forum for negotiating alterations to the status quo. For example, a species which sleeps 18 out of 24 hours might be willing to grant some of its holographic power allotment to another species which sleeps only 4 out of 24 hours; the CoN could then be the body which makes such an agreement official and presents it to the ship's crew for implementation. After all, the crew doesn't really care about the details of the civilian sector, they've just got a heading on their list of resources labelled "for civilian use", how it's divided up beyond that isn't their concern so long as the civilians aren't causing problems for the ship or mission.

Of course, since there's a whole hell of a lot more civilians than crewmen, the CoN could easily grab more authority and leverage over the ship's operation if it was ever united enough over a single issue. I could definitely see plots where all the species get together and demand more power be allotted to holography from the engines if there's a resource crunch.

Keep in mind that the ship's also big enough that the civilian population or even individual species could very well outright seize entire compartments or systems for themselves. The Cardassians could take by force control of the warp nacelles and then effectively use that power to run the ship in triumvirate with the Romulans who have seized the reactors and Klingons who've barricaded themselves into the compartments from which the deflector shielding is run.

[Albigensia]

Keep in mind that the ship's also big enough that the civilian population or even individual species could very well outright seize entire compartments or systems for themselves. The Cardassians could take by force control of the warp nacelles and then effectively use that power to run the ship in triumvirate with the Romulans who have seized the reactors and Klingons who've barricaded themselves into the compartments from which the deflector shielding is run.

Ooooh, I like that. Races taking over territory other than their racial holographic zones... micro-wars happening between species in conflict. A former lounge becoming a no-man's land; a plasma-burned hallway. Oh, the possibilities are endless... great idea, Lorp!