House of Commons (Themiclesia)

House of Commons 中書省 trjung-st'ja-srêng′
Type
Type	lower house
Term limits	5 years or less
History
Founded	March 22, 265 (265-03-22)
Leadership
Speaker	Kaw Rjem, Conservative since Mar. 15, 2009
Structure
Seats	245
Political groups	Government   Liberals: 132 seats Oopposition   Conservatives: 82 seats   Progressives: 14 seats   Independents: 7 seats
Committees	Whole, Appropriations, Foreign & Defence, Industry & Commerce, Transport, Education, Administration & Jurisprudence, Rural & Children's Development, Women's & Minority Rights
Length of term	Up to 5 years
Elections
Voting system	first-past-the-post
Last election	Dec. 27, 2019
Next election	Dec. 27, 2024 latest
Redistricting	itself; super-majority required per convention
Meeting place
Kien-k'ang, Themiclesia
Website
iiwiki.com/wiki/Council_of_Protonotaries

The House of Commons or Council of Protonotaries (or Prothonotaries in some Tyrannian sources) is the elected chamber of Themiclesia's bicameral legislature, the other being the House of Lords. This house is the one to which the executive branch is responsible and where most government legislation is tabled; in political practice, it is also the dominant chamber of the two.

Originally a writing office for drafting decrees and proclamations, many new-recruits of the civil service found themselves appointed to this body to garner experience; they often voiced concerns from their origins, which function came to dominate towards the 18th century. It is now the sole elected chamber of the Themiclesian parliament and holds the most sway in the legislative process.

It sits in the Kien-k'ang Palace.

Name

The House of Commons has several names reflecting the evolution of the organization which is notionally connected with the royal secretariat that first appeared in the historical record in the 5th century. The term "house of the lineages" (群姓之省) is often used in the media and members of the public when it is contrasted with the House of Lords.

History

Pre-1700

The deepest roots of the House of Commons may be traced to institutions introduced under King Kl′ang of Tsjinh. Seeking to balance the heredity of bureaucratic clans with meritocracy, he ordered the aristocracy clans in each county to assemble and rank candidates according to their reputation, which determined the ceiling of their bureaucratic career. As this process did not distinguish the more from the less powerful clans, it effectively redistributed influence from the former to the latter. While this process implicitly acknowledged an aristocractic influence in politics, it was very distant from modern democratic politics. The assemblies deliberated but did not cast actual ballots, and those that were rated neither met as a legislative body not acquired influence on account of their election. Instead, it permitted popular clans to strengthen their faction in the bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, this institution proved resilient and withstood the revolution of royal dynasties. Clan-based factionalism dominated the court for at least the next five centuries, and the assembly was concretely conceived by the lesser aristocracy as their political entitlement. Functionally, the triennial elections were opportunities for aristocrats at court to sway the opinions of those not at court by supporting a candidate in an appropriate clan or political persuasion. For the throne, which periodically switched alliances with the most powerful clans, they were also a weapon against unilateralists that push policies unpopular with the aristocracy, who could elect new bureaucrats that opposed him. As the assembly could re-rate any of its elects and effectively remove their qualifications, bureaucrats during this period were typicall conscious of their reputation in office.

1700s

The while the long-standing civic elections did not create a legislative body, some conservative Camian authors in the 1700s rudimentarily analyzed it through the lenses of Casaterran philosophy as a constitution, or at least power-sharing agreement, of some kind. They say that the crown ultimately has no power without bureaucrats that supported him, so by electing bureaucrats, the clans were, effectively, controlling the crown. On the contrary, Tyrannians and their supporters in Camia used this idea to suggest that Themiclesians and Tyrannians could co-exist under the same political institutions, as long as the Themiclesian elites were willing to share this "political franchise" with their lessers. The purpose of this scholarship is somewhat controversial today, some asserting that the comparisons were made only to defend the civic elections' operation in Camia, which supported political cliquism and excluded much of the commoners there.

This form of thinking evidently had little impact in Themiclesia, most writers still taking the civic election as one of several "bureaucratic paths" (仕途), the politics of the 1st millennium now largely bygone. The 1600s and early 1700s was a period of centralization, with the crown gaining against the bureaucracy in government and aristocrats in the country. Literature provices that many voices were heard at court, and the rural gentry felt little compunction to elect candidates that opposed warfare and ridiculed the crown. Some writings also criticize the emperor for disregarding the views of the aristocracy, which was framed as an aberrance from the "harmony and normalcy" of former centuries. This reference to the past was a recurrent motif in Themiclesian politics, compelling monarchs exepriencing failures to reconcile his relationship with the aristocracy.

Despite such monitions, Themiclesia was in the largest part still a centralized, autocratic state, and aristocratic displeasure formed only an ineffective opposition to Emperor 'Ei and his disastrous and expensive wars. A closer reading of the history of the period reveals that the Emperor acquired clout by aligning himself with the bureaucracy and nurturing his own faction within it, while still (perhaps reluctantly) respecting the rules of civic elections and the underlying reality that, without their assistance, much bureaucratic experience would simply be inaccessible.

In the 1790s, Themiclesia suffered a series of defeats that weakened the emperor's position at court. Emperor ′Ei's faction was built on aristocrats who, for one reason or another, had personal interests in Themiclesian power in the Halu'an and beyond. For their support in office, the Emperor awarded them more profitable opportunities and dignities, as well as domestic and foreign lands. Other aristocrats, however, felt that their interests, primarily agrarian ones, were unfairly burdened with the costs of the crown's hawkish policies and came to view ′Ei's relationship with his favourites as corrupt.

Though the royal faction was initially strong, the war's unenviable progress alienated the emperor's supporters. The Emperor was forced to sacrifice the interests of some supporters to protect those of others, while doubts developed, amongst the faction itself, of the Emperor's aptitude in both political and military affairs. At court, the Lord of Gar-lang exploited this weakness and persuaded many of the emperor's supporters that, continuing in power, he would lead Themiclesia to financial and military destruction. In the country, he visited other aristocrats whose estates have lost both men and revenue due to royal taxes in name of war and claimed that "their money" either went into the pockets of royal favourites or into protecting them.

In 1798, the aristocracy's anger manifested as a petition to dismiss the prime minister, the Lord of Nap, who had an interest in textile exports to Camia and was therefore endeared to the throne's desire to rebuild the navy and re-subjugate Camia and Solevent. While the crown relented, Gar-lang's faction persuaded pro-crown peers to decline the premiership, which was saddled with the task of raising an army, rebuilding a navy, and fielding them while the treasury was bankrupt. With no prime minister for over a year, the emperor was left with no option other than Gar-lang himself, who was a vocal proponent of disarmament. In office, Gar-lang refused to support the Emperor and instead began dismantling Themiclesia's armed forces, while ′Ei began sending letters to his former supporters, courting them once more.

In previous centuries, the Emperor always chose highly-regarded men amongst recently-elects to fill the secretariat, which drafted royal edicts and letters; this was a device by which the emperor disguised his opinions as those of men elected by the aristocracy itself. Given latitude in royal appointment, the secretariat was a tool to centralize power in some periods, while nominally retaining the aristocracy's approval. To counter the Emperor's epistolic manoeuvres, Gar-lang first appointed pro-crown royal secretaries to distant regions and urged his supporters to select anti-crown candidates, who packed the secretariat. Without a secretary to draft his letters, the crown was left naked and unable to pretend support from the aristocracy. Thus, by 1801, the crown was, for the first time in history, able to control neither his secretariat nor the Council of Peers.

1801 – 1845

The 1801 civic election is often considered the first election in the political transition from monarchy to democracy. Internally, it was the first time something resembling a political party was active in Themiclesia, advertising for anti-crown candidates in many places and convicing the electorate that they held the key to establishing an anti-war government. Combined with peerage support, the party overcame royal power and reformed an existing institution for its goals, and became the dominant political body; it evolved into the Conservative Party that remains active today. Externally, it came during a period when Casaterran Enlightenment had permeated Camia and was gaining currency in Themiclesia. The success of a constitutional monarchy in Camia was, according to some authorities, indispensible in convincing Themiclesian electors to stand against royal power when used against their interests.

Despite a revolutionary context, the terms of the 1801 elections were the same as virtually all those that came before it. On Jun. 28, the aristocracy of each prefecture assembled in the prefectural capital and reviewed a list of male candidates who came from and were educated under aristocratic backgrounds. The electors then interviewed candidates. Each aristocratic house participated as a single unit and gave out its ratings, from a highest of two to lowest of nine, of each candidate; each elector may only award one "two" in the entire list of candidates. The candidate who received most "two" ratings was given the Second Class ranking from that prefecture and presented to the royal court on Nov. 10, 1801 as a candidate for the royal secretariat.

7,956 houses participated out of a total of 7,989, providing a turnout of 99.58%; the prefecture with fewest electors had 25, while the one with the most, the Inner Region, had 582. Around 184 ballots were attributable to a female householder. Accounting for the number of administrative households, noble and common, the franchise was possessed by 0.43% of them. While each household made its decisions autonomously, many fell into one of two models: a patriarch making decisions alone, or a patriarch and matriarch making decisions together. The latter model was more common amongst the greater aristocracy, which married amongst itself and had more influential wifes.

Existing royal secretaries having resigned, the results of the 1801 election presented the emperor with 22 hostile candidates for the secretariat. While calls to change aristocratic opinion have long existed during civic elections, they have generally been ephemeral, fading away once the election was over, whatever its results. The emergence of a party political in 1801 meant that the candidates were discouraged by the threat of disqualification from defecting to the emperor. Furthermore, this party's influence also extended to the Council of Peers, which was another institution that checked royal power.

However, the governance founded upon the 1801 elections was far from a normal one. The Lord of Gar-lang himself initially believed this form of politics was extraordinary, and power should be restored to the throne when Themiclesia was in better shape. However, Emperor ′Ei's schemes, aimed at undermining him and keeping a pro-war faction at hand, convinced him that power should not return to a monarch that played aristocrats off one another, and Gar-lang's colleagues were larely of the same view. Thus, starting in 1806, they implemented a series of reforms that would vest power permanently with the aristocracy.

In 1809, the Limited Elections Act provided that the electorate of each prefecture judged the admission of new electors. Gar-lang believed this would create a conservative electorate unlikely to deviate from its current inclinations. Additionally, since the old rules stipulated that a family gained the franchise when it was in higher public service for five consecutive generations, the Emperor inevitably had leeway through to promote the clans that supportied him; the new system would, in Gar-lang's design, prevent royal meddling with the franchise. In 1810, he forbade peers from recommending their children as royal secretaries, since these individuals were, theoretically, free of the electoral will of the aristocracy, even though almost all peers backed Gar-lang.

Despite Gar-lang's best efforts, his party began to disintegrate in 1811. So far, he slashed Themiclesian forces from its peak of 300,000 men, in 1795, to 43,000. While demobilization was not earlier controversial and indeed one of the party's chief planks, the party became divided over the ideal size of the armed forces. Some in the party believed that a navy of 12,000 and army of 20,000 was normal before the reign of Emperor Gwidh-mjen (who was thought to have set Themiclesia on a belligerent path) and should be restored. Others believed that an army that size was inadequate to address threats and must be augmented by militiamen. However, the effects of mass mobilization were abundantly-demonstrated in the Second Maverican War and caused several lost harvests for rural aristocrats.

In Jun. 1812, Gar-lang's government became aware of a plot by the Emperor to purchase the support of six royal secretaries and eventually to install a royalist as Inner Administrator, which would give throne access to receipts and outlays. Gar-lang acted decisively to prevent this coup and raised the threshold in the royal secretariat to produce an official draft, from five members to half of all sitting members, which was nine in 1912. Politically, this was also Gar-lang's tactic to ensure that his party would not enact contradictory policies that undermined its unity. This was one of many reforms that eventually created a deliberative assembly out of the royal secretariat, though during this period discussions happened privately.

In Oct. 1814, Gar-lang resigned due to ill health. On his deathbed in Jan. 1815, the visiting emperor asked who is to be his successor, and Gar-lang replied that as long as he made oath before his ancestors to restore the antiquated deference to the aristocracy that "is the quality of all cherished sovereigns," he was free to appoint any prime minister. Emperor ′Ei refused to make such an oath but offered to honour Gar-lang's choice of successor, and Gar-lang died before he could give a considered response. ′Ei appeared for Gar-lang's funeral, but he failed to move any observer: the Lord of N′rubh thought that "in 1796 he was a poor general, but in 1815 he is a poor emperor."

Westminster interpretation

In imitation of the Westminster system, it was made statute in 1837 that if any member of the Protonotaries wished to stay beyond his "three year term", he had to seek re-election. This change was one of the more controversial reforms in recent Themiclesian history, since it was openly imitative. This rule was extended to administrative Protonotaries in 1853, after the new Protonotaries sought compositional independence from the executive, whereas formerly they were linked by the common identity of civil service and, if only theoretically, could be fluid. Conservatives at court argued that this change was not necessary, since the administrative Protonotaries usually did not participate in legislation, but were unable to prosecute their position, after a Liberal majority, which consisted of Protonotaries who believed their functions to be analogous to that of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Anglia and Lechernt, emerged in 1851. The Protonotaries introduced voting around this time to replace the legislation by consensus or passing multiple drafts for the selection of the Correspondents (which evolved into the executive) that was traditional in this body for almost more than a millennium.

Historical composition

After the executive-led Radical Reformist movement abated in the late 1840s in widespread criticism, the moderate segment of the party agreed to seek a less intrusive way towards the ideal of civic government, which they found supported by the classics. The Moderates believed that the Westminster system was the method that the sages of antiquity desired but could not produce, which would allow all individuals of merit to participate in government with his own voice.

See also

• National Assembly (Menghe)