National Social Consultative Conference (Menghe)
The National Social Consultative Conference (Gomun: 全國社會協議會, Sinmun: 전국 사회 협의회, pr. Jŏnguk Sahoe Hyŏbyihoe), also translated "All-Nation Social Consultative Conference" and usually abbreviated NSCC in official English translations, is a political advisory body in the Socialist Republic of Menghe. It forms the head of a chain of Social Consultative Conferences, which also exist at the Provincial and Prefectural levels.
In place of political parties, representatives to the NSCC are broken up into fourteen "social backgrounds," each corresponding to a given occupation or field. Voters cast ballots by identifying the social background that they most identify with, and seats are filled through proportional representation with umbrella interest organizations serving as parties. This gives the body a distinctively corporatist character, with proportional elected representatives of labor, business, military, and other social interests.
In contrast to the National Assembly, the NSCC is not a formal legislative body and lacks the power to draft or pass laws. It also convenes just once a year, for three weeks in July, to hear reports drafted by the Provincial SCCs and compile a non-binding advisory resolution which is then passed on to the National Assembly and Supreme Council. In light of this limited role, some scholars have referred to the NSCC as a "quasi-legislature."
History
The first round of so-called "Social Consultative Conferences" were held in May 1993, after Choe Sŭng-min issued a proclamation encouraging prefecture-level governments to organize "Five-Class meetings" with representatives for laborers, farmers, professionals, petty entrepreneurs, and state-owned enterprises. The vaguely worded document did not lay down any guidelines about the selection of representatives, nor did it provide for a national-level parent body.
The SCCs were legally formalized in February of 1998, when the National Assembly drafted the Foundational Law on Social Consultative Conferences and enshrined this document in the 1989 Constitution by amendment. In addition to converting the Prefectural SCCs into formal government bodies, the Fundamental Law on SCCs established Provincial and National Social Consultative Conferences, the first sessions of which would convene that summer through special indirect elections. Subsequent sessions of the NSCC and its lower-level counterparts were filled through the election process spelled out in the Fundamental Law.
Initially, the NSCC was a "window dressing institution" with little policy influence. Its first few sessions, which took place during the Disciplined Society Campaign, heaped praise on Choe Sŭng-min and expressed a unified commitment to economic cooperation, even as the 1999 Menghean financial crisis shook the economy. Over time, however, the NSCC grew more assertive in raising sensitive policy issues, such as environmental protection, labor rights, and gender equality. The 29th National Social Consultative Conference, held in July 2017, called for the relaxation or abolition of the Household Registration System, a contentious issue in light of Menghe's large population of internal migrants.
Represented social backgrounds
Every year, the National Assembly compiles a list of "social backgrounds" or corporate interest groups which will be represented in the coming SCC elections. The list generally remains the same from year to year, with the occasional addition of new interest groups, if they are deemed large and significant enough to merit national attention. The "women outside the labor force" category was added in 2001, and the "university students" category in 2012.
Each social background is matched with a single officially recognized nationwide umbrella organization representing the interests of its members. A few of these bodies, like the MoND's Social Consultation Directorate, are attached to government bodies, but the rest are formally non-government organizations. Even so, they are not fully independent of the regime, as all have a high density of Socialist Party members among their top-level staff and maintain built-in Party Committees for ideological guidance. The All-Menghe Federation of Labor Unions, for example, is much less militant than national labor unions in other countries, and generally encourages joint negotiation with management over strikes and protests.
| # | Social background | Umbrella Organization |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Socialist Party cadres | SCC Bureau of the Menghean Socialist Party |
| 2 | Military officers and personnel | Social Consultation Directorate of the MoND |
| 3 | Police and security personnel | Social Consultation Directorate of the MIS |
| 4 | Large entrepreneurs and management | Commission for Prosperity |
| 5 | Small business owners and self-employed | National Small Enterprise Association |
| 6 | Skilled workers and professionals | National Union of Skilled Workers |
| 7 | Artists, writers, musicians, and cultural figures | National Artists' Association |
| 8 | University students | National Higher Education Association |
| 9 | Industrial, construction, and other blue-collar workers | All-Menghe Federation of Labor Unions |
| 10 | Unskilled or semiskilled service employees | All-Menghe Service Workers' Union |
| 11 | Agricultural workers | Menghean Agriculture Organization |
| 12 | Fishermen, sailors, and nautical workers | Organization of Nautical Labor |
| 13 | Pensioners | National Association of Retired Persons |
| 14 | Women outside the labor force | Patriotic Association of Mothers and Wives |
Delegates
The allocation of seats in the NSCC follows the same general scheme as that used for the National Assembly. Each of Menghe's provinces, including the four directly-governed city, is treated as a single multi-member district, and seats within that unit are distributed to the different interest groups proportional to their vote share. Compared with Provincial and Prefectural SCC elections, the procedure for dividing up the "remainder" in each vote group - the votes left over once the largest number of whole-number seats is deducted from each - is slightly different, and is designed to ensure that the number of seats allocated to each group nationally matches up with its nationwide vote share.
Once all seats are allocated, each interest group fills them using a pre-prepared ranked list of candidates, functionally similar to a party list. The Fundamental Law on SCCs allows a formally designated umbrella organization for each interest group to determine its own procedure for assembling a candidate list. Some, like the Social Consultation Directorate of the MoND, prepare this list through internal appointment, while others, like the All-Menghe Federation of Labor Unions, conduct a vote-by-mail poll of registered members to determine the ordering. The Patriotic Association of Mothers and Wives fills half of its ranked places through a raffle of participating subscribers to its national magazine.
NSCC delegates are encouraged to maintain their full-time jobs or lifestyles while the NSCC is not in session. Formal compensation is relatively low, taking the form of a stipend to cover travel expenses, living expenses in the capital, and the hours worked in July. The requirement to work the rest of the year in full-time jobs also keeps delegates embedded in their social background, as it would defeat the organization's purpose for them to become career politicians. Similarly, while there are no official term limits in the Constitution or the Fundamental Law, organizations are strongly encouraged to rotate out candidates frequently, and most of them do.
Annual operations
The full NSCC convenes for three weeks in July every year, with members from all over the country gathering in Donggyŏng at the All-Nation Social Consultative Congress Hall, formerly the Hall of People's Representatives - the legislature of the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe. By this time, a full year has passed since the delegates were elected, giving them ample time to converse with constituents in their everyday lives or handle local issues at the Prefectural level.
After the opening ceremony, delegates listen to prepared reports by the Chairs of each of Menghe's Provincial SCCs. These groups, which operate very much like the NSCC in terms of their annual routine, spent most of their recent meetings aggregating reports from the individual Prefectures and Municipalities. Provincial SCC chairs are sometimes NSCC members, though this is not always the case; where the two don't overlap, Provincial SCC chairs are brought in as non-voting auxiliary members.
Delegates then hold discussions on the major social and economic issues facing the country and present the stances of their respective social groups. With 2,918 delegates, the NSCC does not lend itself well to organized debate, so designated leaders for each interest group do much of the talking in full sessions and the remainder of the work is carried out in smaller issue-based committees.
At the end of each session, the NSCC drafts an advisory report which identifies latent social issues and presents broad policy recommendations, or at least the official stances of social groups on how to best proceed. On or around July 21st, the NSCC releases its official report to the National Assembly, the Supreme Council, and the press. The timing of this release ensures that when the new legislative year begins on August 1st, representatives are presented with a ready-made list of issues to consider.
Lower levels
The structure of the NSCC is replicated, with modifications, at each administrative level of Menghe. Provincial SCCs meet for three weeks every June, and function in much the same manner as the NSCC, aggregating information from the Chairs of Prefecture-level SCCs and submitting an advisory report to the provincial government. Prefectural SCCs meet once a week, generally on Saturday or Sunday, and their delegates discuss local issues and disputes as they emerge.
Candidates to the NSCC may concurrently appear on ranked lists for Provincial and Prefectural SCCs as well as the NSCC. The National Assembly encourages this practice, as it ensures that NSCC delegates have firsthand experience working with local issues by the time they gather at the national level. To ensure that there are no scheduling conflicts, the NSCC convenes for three weeks in July, the Provincial SCCs convene for three weeks in June, and the Prefectural SCCs are in recess from May to August
Role
In spite of the NSCC's very limited lawmaking power, recent scholarship has identified it as an important institution of "consultative authoritarianism." The bottom-up structure of the SCC system, the practice of issuing concurrent seats to delegates, and the requirement that delegates work full-time jobs in their represented career enable a steady upward flow of information on the public's policy preferences, which are then passed on to national officials with actual policymaking power. While local conferences sometimes generate heated arguments over labor rights, national and provincial conferences are carefully regulated to present an image of inter-class harmony, while still alerting government officials to cases of labor unrest and possible solutions. In this sense, the NSCC serves as an important feedback mechanism, allowing the government to adjust non-critical policies in ways that maximize popular support and steadily monitor the implementation of central policy initiatives.
Additionally, the "social background" structure of the NSCC allows representatives of officially recognized interest groups to discuss mutually agreeable policy solutions in a formal, collegial setting, as an alternative to protest and lobbying. This gives the body a distinctly corporatist character: it is the only legislature in Septentrion in which all delegates are explicitly organized along class and occupational lines. Notably, the fact that the NSCC is filled through proportional representation means that each interest group has a number of seats directly proportional to its share in the national population, or at least its share of self-identifying voters. This gives labor and agricultural interests a larger voice than the CEOs of large corporations, who normally enjoy privileged access to bureaucrats and elected Assembly members.
Nevertheless, the NSCC and its local counterparts cannot be considered democratic institutions, as the selection of representatives and the setting of the agenda are overseen by Socialist Party organs. Most SCC debates deal with "everyday" issues such as law enforcement, environmental protection, and labor rights; "critical" issues such as freedom of speech and multi-party competition are seldom discussed in Prefectural meetings, and almost always filtered out before they reach the national level. The SCCs also lack the ability to pass laws, giving unelected Party and Government officials full discretion over how, and whether, their non-binding resolutions should be implemented. In this sense, at most they represent a form of "bounded representation," designed to support the regime's popularity without substantively changing its authoritarian nature.