The Role of IFVs in the General Assembly
By Kenmoria
By Kenmoria
| Kenmoria is a well-respected regular within the World Assembly, having submitted and passed two General Assembly resolutions and co-authored three of them. Kenmoria is probably one of the most consistent members of the General Assembly in terms of feedback, and is constantly giving well-written and comprehensive feedback to nearly every proposal brought to the floor. This feedback has led to Kenmoria being considered one of the most prominent members of the World Assembly, whose opinion is very highly valued. |
When I first started playing NationStates, almost four years ago now, I don’t remember ever seeing an IFV grace the list of dispatches. Of course, that is just an artefact of faulty recollection and the fact that I was mainly just an issues player at that time, for IVFs, not necessarily regular regional publications but rather just influential groups telling others how to vote, have always existed in some form or another. Look at any debate thread for a General Assembly proposal and you will see countless players, some influential and some not, each telling others their opinions on the current legislation. However, when we talk of Information For Votes, or IFVs for short, we usually mean regional publications developed by a specific player or group that are published as dispatches. These have now become far more prominent, to the point where I, as well as presumably many other players, regularly consult a selection to inform my vote. However, I haven’t seen much discussion on whether the growth of this type of information has been positive or negative. Does presenting helpful tips on how to interpret a particularly challenging resolution aid in letting players understand the way that the General Assembly works? Or does this just amplify the already-present bias towards delegates that many feel is undemocratic, resulting in individual nations and their opinions having even less of a say in an individual vote? These are the questions I will try to answer in this essay.
Firstly, it is helpful to understand exactly what I mean by an IFV. Almost every large region has at least some guidance on how its members should vote, whether this is a consistent policy of going against every non-repeal or just an RMB post by the founder at regular occasions. Of course, none of these methods are necessarily superior to others, since it varies from region to region. However, in this essay, I am tackling the type of IFV that I feel is most prominent today and which has the large international impact. Unlike a regional policy, telegram or poll, a published dispatch has a high chance of reaching potentially hundreds of players over the course of its popularity. Particularly in the case of the North Pacific, which I believe has one of the most developed World Assembly programs on the regional stage, these dispatches garner an impressive number of votes for their relatively niche content in a surprisingly short amount of time. In a dispatch-based IFV, one is essentially telegramming hundreds of interested nations without any rate limit and no monetary penalty. It’s the ultimate way of spreading information, which is why this method of publication has become so unexpectedly powerful in the General Assembly.
The most important component in an IFV is usually a direct recommendation of how people should vote. Often bolded or otherwise formatted in an attention-grabbing way, this recommendation of ‘for’ or ‘against’ is really the crux of the dispatch. Everything else can be thought of as being solely a justification of this thought process. As soon as a player views this helpfully-highlighted text, some might take this as all that is required and immediately go onto the World Assembly page and cast their vote as the dispatch recommends, without even reading the rest of the text presented by these regions to the world stage. This is similar to the lemming effect, though I of course acknowledge the increasing dubiousness of that mechanism, since the IFVs are traditionally released by some of the larger regions. The North Pacific is a notable producer, as is Europeia, the South Pacific, and recently my own region of Europe. You may notice that there are remarkably few regions on this list. Though others do exist, a lot are only active on certain legislative areas, such as Right to Life being unsurprisingly rather focused on proposals that affect abortion, or are rather small in scope and hard to notice. This creates an effect whereby some of the most powerful delegates votes are supported not only by players in that region, but also by the entire part of the NationStates community that regularly reads these dispatches.
However, there is not only a single word in these IFVs. Although that would definitely be more direct, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as seemingly-authoritative nor as intriguing to the players who are actually interested in what these World Assembly Offices have to say. I view the justification as the most interesting part of any WA-based information dispatch, because it provides an insight into the thought processes behind some quite influential groups, as well as the opportunity to benefit from a close reading by someone outside the particular bubble I frequent, more precisely the forums. There are several players active in IFVs who sadly don’t visit the festering snakepit, resulting in their valuable opinions on legislation going unaddressed. There has been a moment where I have been forced to change my opinion from for to against in an instant, upon realising that a crucial flaw has been unremarked upon save for a reference to it in a Europeian dispatch. Even with the might of the GA elite regularly tearing new authors to scraps of flesh upon inspection of an illegality, there are still loopholes that skip through the cracks, which regional dispatches help address. This means that players who might not visit the forums or be able to tease out the meaning from a particularly technical proposal can engage with the democratic process of the General Assembly on a more intellectually-equal footing. Not only does this conceivably improve engagement, it also paves the way for these players to further become immersed in this part of NationStates, even allowing them to one day submit proposals of their own.
Therefore, we have two main positions, as one often does, with regards to IFV dispatches. On the one hand, these publications serve to amplify the voting power of large regions and the delegates thereof, burying the opinions of ordinary players beneath the collective might of years of experience and seemingly endless arrays of knowledge players ready to tear apart every loophole. On the other, it could be argued that these recommendations serve a vital purpose in encouraging every player, regardless of ability or experience, to gain a greater insight into a particular proposal. For the experienced member of the GA elite, this allows even those entrenched into their views to come out of the snakepit and hear someone else’s viewpoints; for the average Joe or Jane, an IFV dispatch could serve as a gateway to one day participating in the General Assembly to a greater extent. Personally, I think the arguments on both sides are very compelling, and it really should be up to the reader to work out which camp you fall into. However, I do acknowledge the irony in being inconclusive about the polarising and partisan subject matter, so may as well provide an official recommendation. On the topic of Information for Voters dispatches, I encourage you to guide your opinions FOR their continual purpose and improvement on NationStates. These publications serve a vital role in encouraging diversity of opinions, and it is my hope that they may one day become just as valued as forum debates as a way of obtaining crucial information about proposals-at-vote.