Parliamentary franchise in Themiclesia
The parliamentary franchise of Themiclesia is the extent and manner in which Themiclesian citizens may participate in democratic politics by selecting representatives to the House of Commons, the lower chamber of the country's bicameral parliament. The upper chamber, the House of Lords, is an unelected body.
Pre-modern
The deepest roots of the parliamentary franchise may be traced to institutions introduced under King Kl′ang of Tsjinh in 330. Seeking to balance heredity and meritocracy, he ordered the aristocracy houses in each county to assemble and rank candidates according to reputation, which became the ceiling of their bureaucratic career. While this process implicitly acknowledged aristocractic influence, it was very distant from classical democratic systems. 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 clans to strengthen their faction in the bureaucracy.
To facilitate such assemblies, a formal list of aristocratic houses in each prefecture was drawn up by the royal court, totalling 485 across the realm in 395. It is unclear how common houses could join the list, though public service across multiple generations seemed requisite to build up the "reputation" that aristocratic houses claimed. This institution proved resilient and withstood the revolution of royal dynasties, concretely conceived by its participants as a key entitlement. In 532, when King Ngjon of Rjang wished to appoint unelected ministers, his court successfully opposed it as a contravention of the "great law of the state" (邦憲).[1]
While colonialism in Columbia became economically significant to Themiclesia from the 1500s, the colonies had little direct influence in the royal court. The first colonists were labour camp inmates promised free land for military service, and as such few of them developed aptitude for public service, much less satisfying the multi-generation requirement before enfranchisation. The few families that did become the Camian gentry later on were mostly branches of existing Themiclesian aristocrats and were, thus, not normally considered eligible for separate enfranchisement, though their position relative to local magistrates were comparable to their metropolitan relations. In 1680, 48 aristocratic houses existed in Camia, ordered to assemble for civic elections between 1603 and 1698.
1700s
Though some Camians thinkers took civic elections as a political franchise in Casaterran terms, this thinking had little impact in Themiclesia. The 1600s and early 1700s was a period of centralization, with the crown gaining against the bureaucracy and aristocrats that controlled it. Nevertheless, the aristocracy felt little compunction to elect those opposing the crown and critical of 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, undemocratic state, and scattered 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 emperors 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 1798, the aristocracy's anger manifested as a mass petition, signed by several hundred of prominent individuals, to dismiss the prime minister, the Lord of Nap, who had an interest in textile exports to the Subcontinent 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 but Gar-lang himself,[2] who was a vocal proponent of disarmament. In office, Gar-lang opposed the Emperor's plans and instead dismantled Themiclesia's armed forces, while the beleagured emperor began sending letters to court his former supporters.
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 served to centralize power in some periods, while retaining the aristocracy's nominal approval, as they had elected the secretaries themselves. To counter the Emperor's epistolic manoeuvres, Gar-lang first promoted pro-crown royal secretaries to distant regions and urged his supporters to select anti-royalist candidates, who packed the secretariat. Without a secretary to draft his letters, the crown was 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 permiership.
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."