NationStates:
Regional Theory and NS Basics
By: The U.D.S.R. and Letskia
“A Spectre is haunting NationStates - the spectre of Democratikism”
-UDSR
Introduction:
Nationstates has many ideologies: from Communism to Capitalism, Anarchism to Fascism; Monarchists, Socialists, Inoffensive Centrist Democracies, Father Knows Best States, Psychotic Dictatorships, and everything in between. However, these ideologies are but the political beliefs of single nations. Regions, on the other hand, by their very nature work differently. You can find regions housing both leftists and the far right with minimal tensions in some instances because even though worldly political theory is fun to discuss those views have no real meaning on a regional level. Yes, regions have some typical characteristics of real world societies, however, ultimately dictatorships are the most secure regional systems within NS, but not objectively the best. The Regional Founder has the authority to do anything they want, total unchecked power and any checks and balances put on them by the regional community are essentially pointless if the founder does not follow them. At the same time, members can at will decide to move to another region or start their very own so such actions by the founder (this is known as Founder’s Syndrome) are not too effective. On the other end of the spectrum you have founderless regions, where executive power is given to the World Assembly Delegate: an elected position. These regions specifically are susceptible to other regions sending over their members en masse to execute a coup d’etate. These coup attempts are referred to as raiding. With all this being said, there are a few regional administrative systems that have been developed over the years. This paper will try to identify the unofficial NS political ideologies and try to diagnose what makes an NS region successful.
Basic Terms and Their Meanings:
Founder’s Syndrome: many have experienced young regions full of promise begin to grow, only to have the region to deviate just enough from the founder’s intended purpose to warrant a radical reaction from them. It is in such moments does the founder try to take matters into their own hands to force the region back onto its intended course, causing a mass exodus of members to search for more promising places to call home. Founder’s Syndrome is categorised by the founder justifying unpopular changes with the excuse “because I’m the founder” more often than naught.
Raids: when a group of nations en masse move to a targeted region followed by all members in the group endorsing a designated nation to get them elected as WA delegate. This blitz tactic is most effective when the WA delegate in the targeted region has executive powers, causing the newly endorsed raider nation to have unchecked power over the region allowing them to do as they please.
Raider Region: a region dedicated solely to grow and train new members in the art of raiding, allowing for large experienced groups to form, dedicated to taking over other regions.
WA Delegate: the world assembly delegate has power to vote on WA resolutions, having every endorsement from another nation count as an extra vote which they can use. WA delegates are the only regional officers that can be handed executive power by a regional founder to allow them to help build the foundation for a healthy region.
Regional Ideologies:
Note: as of this paper’s publishing these are the only regional ideologies, many more may have arisen but have not been listed
Foundership: just like dictatorships in the real world, an NS dictatorship sees all executive power in the hands of the regional founder. However, an NS dictatorship has many benefits such as making sure a region is 100% raider proof, having stripped the only mandatory elected position of all powers apart from WA status.
Constitutional Foundership: The Constitutional dictatorship sees executive power held by both the regional founder and WA delegate, having regional power held by both the founder a democratically elected member of the region. This allows for member nations to have a voice by allowing them to elect one of their own into office to enact legislative changes.
Founderless Democracy: some regions may wish to - or have no choice but to - get rid of their founder and hand over executive power solely to their WA delegate. This can be a show of integrity as the law of the land is the people’s will. If members dislike their currently elected executive they can just as easily unendorse them and endorse another for the position.
Officer Autocracy: when a group of officers mutually agree to make a puppet account and use it to create a region. The founder then acts as a puppet for the officers, having every officer hold onto the puppet account password. This way several individuals hold the power in a region instead of one.
Democratikism: the philosophy that a region must balance politics and fun by holding non political discussions alongside civil, Socratic discourses to provide the largest amount of member enjoyment. This is to be done by trying to cause regional membership booms alongside massive, sweeping reforms to put the region on par with other regions of equal size. Constant reform and maintenance is seen as the optimal way to increase activity. A Democratikist region must establish a regional think tank to help promote out of the box thinking.
Regionomics: Use, Practise, Theory, Development
Regionomics refers to the study of regional activity. It tries to solve the issue of having a theoretically unlimited number of regions while having a limited number of NS players. There have been many attempts at creating the optimal system of advertising and holding onto regional members, however no comprehensive theories are known to have been created, or lasted long enough to gain traction.
Popular Regionomics: the majority of regions on NS use telegram stamps to attract newly founded nations. Recruitment telegrams usually have a small paragraph or two outlining the characteristics and events found within the region. Once a nation joins, RP (roleplay) and regular polls are used to keep members interested and, therefore, incentivize them to stay. This is the most basic template for regionomics found across NS with many different additions and amendments made later on in a region’s life.
Advanced Regionomics: the use of a telegram api (a recruitment bot) to send out a constant stream of recruitment telegrams, having one send every three minutes as by NS rules. Alongside the api, the telegram itself is written in point form to catch and hold the attention of either a newly founded or refounded nation. Alongside the popular regionomic practise of having a regional RP, the use of an offsite meme page helps balance serious political discussion with a lighter tone to reach out to a broader audience. This theory’s largest complaint about Political centric regions is that seriousness can get out of hand and sew discontent amongst members by pitting players against others too often to sustain healthy attitudes of others.
Trickle Down Regionomics: The idea of establishing regional embassies with larger regions to promote one’s own region. In theory, members of the larger region would look at the list of embassies and stumble upon an effective enough World Factbook Entry that it would siphon out the larger region’s member count.
Regional Supply And Demand: regional supply and demand refers to content within a region. Unlike economic supply and demand, regional supply and demand works in the complete opposite way. The larger supply of content there is in a region the larger demand there is for said region. The issue is that supply is difficult in increase after a certain point, as content slowly dries up. A region’s first step to increasing content usually begins with either regional polls or roleplay. From there it depends on the officers what they consider to be key within their growing community.
Regional Currency: some regions may wish to focus on telegram stamps as their largest source of advertising, but will find funding an issue in the majority of instances. This is where regional currency comes in, as having in-region rewards tied to a currency which you can both earn and buy through official donations can be an effective way of procuring funding. This is in theory, but in practise it has the same success rate as recruitment telegrams themselves- you may in the end only get 1% of projected funds through this method.
Region Hopping: another NS favourite is region hopping - the practise of sending one or more members of a home region to other regions to promote the prior. It is in most cases looked down upon and it is unknown how effective this tactic is. More research is needed.
Offsite Chat Extension: it is no secret that the NS RMB is not as dynamic as other communication services. This is why many regions opt in to also getting a discord or website of their own. Offsite chats allow for smoother discussions and allow for larger prospects of content supply.
Supply Through Anarchism: even though it has been only considered in theory, if a larger region were to establish their own forum outside of NationStates and allow for content to be solely produced by members instead of relying on officer support to execute such demands, content would be pitted against other regional content through member creation, management, and sponsorship. This way, through competition, the best activities in the region would prosper while the less popular ones abandoned.
Confederation: regions will often pair up with like minded regions to establish confederations, usually characterised by sharing an offsite forum or chat. This, theoretically, is supposed to form closer bonds between regions as well as promote growth for all.
