Annotation
Original title: Welcome to the WA Bureaucracy, Such a Lovely Place
Date: Aug 12, 2014.
Comments: Originally by Sciongrad; reproduced with author's permission. The addendum in the second post is an evolving list and the copy maintained here may not be the most up-to-date version. Please refer the original.
[Source]
Document
A Comprehensive Guide to the World Assembly's vast and ever growing bureaucracy
An artist's rendition of the bureaucrat's natural habitat.
An artist's rendition of the bureaucrat's natural habitat.
So what's a "bureaucracy"?
Simply put, a bureaucracy is an administrative policy-making institution composed of non-elected officials, which creates rules, provides oversight, or simply runs essential administrative tasks. Bureaucracies are often broken up into smaller, more specialized units, like bureaus, departments, committees, etc. For example, the World Health Authority is a committee responsible for coordinating the World Assembly's health policy, and has been assigned many duties by several resolutions. While there are technical differences between these smaller units, they're negligible in the World Assembly, and you're given a lot of flexibility over how you want to name your committee (subject to some rules discussed later). As the title suggests, the World Assembly bureaucracy is vast, with more than 50 individual committees currently active.
"Non-elected officials?" So how do I join a committee?
Unfortunately, you can't. As far as the General Assembly is concerned, a committee is a legislative tool, not necessarily its own part of the game. While anyone is free to roleplay committee proceedings, these roleplays are generally considered non-canonical, and decisions made in the roleplay are not binding on other nations.
So who staffs the bureaucracy?
Because the bureaucracy is purely a legislative tool, it's not all that important as to who staffs a committee. However, for the purpose of IC consistency and preventing unresolvable debates on effectiveness, impropriety, or competence, it's generally accepted that committees are staffed by gnomes, who have unquestionable ethical fortitude and technical expertise. If you're not comfortable with committees staffed by little people (RUDE), you can always just roleplay them as being staffed by actual bureaucrats.
So why do we need committees?
Oversight
There are several reasons that we need committees, but perhaps the most important is playing the part of an impartial authority meant to provide some form of assurance when resolving issues where individual member states may have different favorable results. For example, let's take the Nuclear Testing Oversight Agency (NTOA). The policy goal put forth by the resolution that created the NTOA is a very reasonable one that most nations would want to see followed - that is, ensuring nuclear weapons are tested properly and responsibly. However, without assurance by a committee like the NTOA, it wouldn't be in the best interest of individual states to restrict how they test nuclear weapons because for all they know, other states are not adhering to the standards established by the resolution. That's where the NTOA comes in - now that member states know there is oversight, they can rest assured knowing that their neighbors in Bigtopia aren't at an advantage through irresponsible nuclear weapons testing.
Rule Making
As resolution authors, we are constrained to 3,500 characters (including spaces, code, etc.). This is not a lot of room to write legislation, especially in complicated areas. Therefore, authors often use the World Assembly's bureaucracy for a more practical purpose - saving space. Take, for example, the International Transport Safety Committee (ITSC), created by General Assembly Resolution #34, International Transport Safety. Establishing the nuances of international transport safety in 3,500 characters or less is, for all intents and purpose, impossible. Therefore, the committee is given the very broad task of "enact[ing] regulations pertaining to the safety, communications, markings & signals, distress signals, loading limits, emergency protocols, the provision of life saving equipment, mechanical inspection protocol, standards of accident investigation, and search & rescue procedures for international shipping, aviation, and railways." While it's assumed these regulations will be reasonable, it's always good to toss in phrases like "reasonable," "practical and necessary," and others that will ensure the committee doesn't create frivolous regulations. Obviously, if it can be helped, rules should be written out in the text of the resolution, but oftentimes, we lack the room or technical expertise to create detailed policy on our own, and so we use the bureaucracy to help us out.
Resolving Disputes and Carrying Out Other Quasi-Judicial Functions
Whereas committees can take on a quasi-legislative function (the type described above), committees can also take on a quasi-judicial function (even both simultaneously). Which is to say committees can act as a form of arbitration to resolve disputes, enforce rules with penalties, and so on. For example, the World Assembly Trade Commission had its duties expanded by General Assembly Resolution #208, Resolving WA Trade Disputes, to include "non-binding mediation and binding arbitration" of trade disputes. Another example of a quasi-judicial committee was the International Trade Agency, which was tasked by the since-repealed General Assembly Resolution #118, Ethics in International Trade, to assign ethical ad valorem tariffs on a case-by-case basis, considering a list of relevant factors.
Assistance and Supplementing Policy Initiatives
Sometimes, a committee doesn't necessarily need to solve an issue to be useful. Sometimes, committees can assist member nations in enacting policy. For example, the World Assembly Commission on Biological Agents, created by General Assembly Resolution #242, Biological Warfare Convention, supplements the policy espoused by the resolution. Rather than writing rules or arbitrating, it assists member nations in implementing policies relevant to biological weapons, like assisting in the training of personnel and developing evacuation plans.
Wow, committees are the coolest! Why doesn't every resolution have one?
From a IC perspective, committees aren't necessarily cheap. Therefore, if it can be avoided, committees should not be created. Broadly speaking, committees should not be created if the policy is either self-enforcing (where no reasonable nation wouldn't follow the rules set forth by a resolution), or where all of the rules and regulations necessary can be fit in the character limit. Unnecessary committees give the idea of bureaucracy a very bad rep. "A committee by any other name would serve in a quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial, or oversight capacity as sweet," quoth Shakespeare, probably.
I want to legislate on a policy area, but a committee already exists for that topic. Do I need to make a new one?
No, you don't. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't. As I said before, try to avoid creating new committees if it can be helped. Assigning new duties to old committees is very possible, and it's as simple as writing a clause along the lines of "Extending the duty of the World Assembly Kitty Committee to include the following duties."
What do I name my committee?
Your committee's name should very clearly indicate its purpose. For example, a hypothetical committee on urban development policy should not be called the Apartment Department, because we don't really know what it does. The World Assembly Committee on Urban Development, on the other hand, sounds professional and conveys its purposes effectively. Furthermore, committee names cannot be abused to circumvent other rules. Making a committee name an acronym for your nation's name is illegal under the branding rule.
Great! So now that I know what's what, can I go create committees?
It's not necessarily that simple. A committee is a legislative tool and cannot be the focus of the legislation on its own. By which I mean a resolution must be able to exist (solely in the legal sense) without a committee. Technically, this means a resolution can create a committee and then tack on an "urging member nations to do so and so." I don't necessarily advise this, but there are probably circumstances where a committee is more important than any actual in-resolution policy making.
I think I've got the basics... What if I have another question?
If you have any other questions, feel free to post it in this thread and I, or other players, will try to answer your question.