Politics and Projects
Jun. 4th, 2004 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hathycolInspired by a fellow politics student, and also a recent study of Prime Ministerial and Cabinet power, I began to examine the post of the Minister for Magic and the history of the Ministry of Magic as a whole. I apolgosie; the thing is rambly, long and dull. Yet strangely fun...
That, and it’s really good for my revision.
It seems to be similar to that of Prime Minister – primus inter pares, or first among equals. This leads to my original line of reasoning. Like much of the British political system, I put forward the idea that Wizarding government has evolved quite nicely ever since William The Conqueror. Evidently, much of the histories are different between Muggles and Wizards, but it’s quite logical to presume that as we are sharing a country, many aspects of governance would be similar.
I am currently speculating that the post used to be that of Royal Appointment, and it’s no great stretch of logic to presume that early Ministers of Magic were actually a part of the Privy Council. Of course, all of this was reformed in 1649; I presume that the early Minster of Magic jumped ship long before people starting wielding axes and flicking ink across the most influential document of the last 1000 years. It’s worth noticing that the Minister of Magic would have gone incognito through much of the this period due to the Puritanical, nay, radical extremes of the Rump Parliament and the later Protectorate, the time in the which the notorious witch-burnings took place. Yet as reason and chemistry took the place of witchcraft and alchemy, it’s not illogical to suggest that perhaps the Wizarding community made themselves known to later Parliaments. I would envision this being through the House of Lords, once it was re-established. It has already been speculated that there would be some wizarding influence in there already; this is probably true, given the nature of the earlier Lords (before Blair’s changes).
This doesn’t answer the question of how the Minister became a minister. Earlier these were Royal Appointments; this has passed down to the position of Prime Minister. In truth, the Minister of Magic is not in fact a real minister in the sense that we would understand it. I would go as far to say that the inner Cabinet (that is Blair, Brown and Prescott) would know of its existence out of necessity. This is suggested in Prisoner Of Azkaban where Fudge is criticised for telling him of Sirius’ escape. This might normally suggest that Muggles have no knowledge of the wizards; perhaps it might make more sense to suggest that the Minister of Magic is far more independent than any of the other Minsters. I can’t imagine Fudge in a bi-lateral or a standing committee and most definitely not in any form of Cabinet meeting, but at the same time I can hardly see Blair being completely and utterly clueless. Memory Charms are good, but before long someone will notice patterns.
This, again, leads to the idea of a separation between the two in all but crucial events. When the Minister of Magic lost their connection with royalty (and this may have been early on; James I is responsible for a great number of tracts on demonology and witchcraft) they may have first evolved this separation. Wizards are good at aping useful Muggle inventions. Perhaps the idea of democracy was a useful one to them as well; although in mimicking English society of the time, I’m imagining property-based voting. The Levellers would be horrified.
This isn’t actually answering the points I meant to sit down. Whatever way you look at it, a Ministry of Magic evolved out of the ashes of 1649 and the witch-burnings of the later decades. It seems to be essentially Conservative, or I would propose that it was in the beginning. As already mentioned, it must have evolved in the odd pattern that only British government seems to be able to pull off. Anyway, perhaps only pureblood families could vote; that would make a lot of sense, in my mind.
Yet as Muggle government evolved, and crucially Muggle-born magical folk did too, the changes in government must have come about as well. There is no reason for the Minister of Magic not to sit in the House of Commons. I suspect that he is, in fact, elected democratically. Under our system, this may take some explaining.
There are, probably, not a huge amount of witches and wizards in British society, meaning that geographical constituencies would be all but pointless. They could stand in Muggle elections, but this would be rather pointless; with the two societies so separate, it wouldn’t have an impact on the way either worked. However, witches and wizards could have their own constituency. For reasons addressed in other essays, there’s probably not many, enough to make up one constituency, making it democratically fair for them all to vote under the guise of one constituency. This would be to stop other people noticing. (Although our electorate is famously stupid, and there’s not much hope for the politicians either.) It has been stated that Hogsmeade is the only “All Wizarding village.” Why not make it into a constituency and have the Minister of Magic voted for there? Postal ballots could be used for those further afield (and I have a suspicion that owls would be a better system than that currently decimating the North) with the more familiar boxes for the locals.
The flaw in this would be that the elections would only be held when a previous Minister died or resigned. The post seems to be a lifelong one, such as that of Archbishop of Canterbury, and there is no way to remove this. Again, this has some relation to our history, but differentiates from the here and now. With such separate systems, it need not matter.
The beauty of the single-relative-majority system (colloquially named first-past-the-post) is that we have an abundance of safe seats. A seat that only changed hands once every 10 to 15 years would be no eyebrow raiser, even if it did seem to go to the same party. I do not think that party politics apply in the wizarding world (thoughts on Voldemort and Michael Howard are the subject of a later essay) in the sense that we understand today. Again though, one need only look at our history to understand this. Parties evolved as factions rather than definite ideologies. Judging by the actions of the Ministry, this still prevails; the pureblood faction of Conservatives against the Muggle-born Whigs, perhaps? If only Disraeli had been born wizard. It might have made the world of difference. Yet for them, like our own (fairly recent) history, all of the Ministers are independents. There’s just no reason for them not to be democratic.
So, the Minister’s role today. Well, it does seem to be rather that of a Prime Minster, although I would speculate that it goes even further. Blair has the power of patronage, but at least they’re vaguely democratically elected; the Ministry seems to be a weird mixture of civil service and Cabinet, and Fudge can pick and choose whom he wants in certain positions. The heads of departments are the ‘Cabinet’ and may possibly vote on ideas, although I would say that Fudge has the final line.
The Ministry seems to have been ‘hived off’ into agencies in the manner that Mrs Thatcher was so keen of. There are no quangos, though, and they all seem to still be under governmental control. No privatisation then, evidently. Each department has a head, who as mentioned Fudge chooses, or he at least has control of the process. Yet they also work in the day-to-day aspects of policy implementation as well as formulation; this turns the entire Theakston model on it’s head. At the same time, it rather supports most of his ideas. The civil servants really are the hidden government.
I’m not going to go into the intricacies of policy-making; I find it confusing, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
loneraven appears to have sorted that out to my satisfaction, within the parameters I have already set out.
The Ministry, as I’ve banged on about, follows Muggle trends. It must have been laissez-faire once, although it does seem to have been the first to have a funded school. St Mungos indicates a paid-for service, and the amount of offices in the Ministry indicates that taxes must be paid. It’s probably not in the way council tax is paid. The lack of geographical clumping means that our system of parish, district and county councils would be daft. Early on, I suspect that a general British Wizarding council must have come into being. Long before 1776 Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales must have diverged into one wizarding nation; there’s no reason to suggest that it’s entirely similar between our two ‘worlds’. Most of Hogwarts students seem to be from all places in Britain, and that seems to have been going on since the founding. Devolution would not affect them through sheer lack of actually caring, for example the lack of enthusiasm over the Welsh Assembly.
With no geographical boundaries, it’s interesting to wonder what departments there actually are. Should the ‘Cabinet’ act in the same way as ours, there shouldn’t be more than twenty, (which leads me to believe that it’s actually more of a Parliament. I suppose that makes it more democratic, or at least slightly fairer, even if they aren’t democratically elected) yet without quangos or other such bodies, there would need to be many more. Sports are a department on thier own right; heavens, Gobstones are their own department. Makes an interesting Cabinet, doesn't it? I suppose the individual ministers would gain some permanence, like our Civil Serivce: reshuffles would be more rare. (Not accounting for various indescretions and other such fun.) The Ministry becomes a huge, sprawling place, filled with everything that's needed and some that aren't, with only one man- the Minister of Magic - in charge of the lot.
How on earth does this weird, complex mixture of government work? The same way ours does – “Leave it alone, it works!” It shouldn’t, but it does. That’s what counts, right?
Well, that didn’t go the way I expected.
This was meant to be posted a while ago as a seperate post. Unfortunately, my computer crashed and died on me (is this a theme?) so I was forced to post it in Yet Another Mammoth Update.
I just got off the phone with the Lord Of The Rings Research person. I feel thoroughly geeky. Half an hour she said! Well, I rambled. She asked me about Eowyn, and you know that's always a mistake, as I rambled on about nobility and whatnot. I waxed lyrical over Gimli and Legolas' friendship. I talked about how it would make a good myth, about why it was a shame there was no Elladan and Elrohir, why Frodo annoys me, why I liked Lord Of The Rings, about Miranda and the great things it had done for me. I mentiond various writing projects, I alluded to Imedhuir and Liz, I rambled on about the changes and why the films were important.
This took about forty minutes. She stopped me, and said "Look, I'll phone you back - I want to know more, but the tape's run out."
Thirty minutes later I had talked about Mary-Sues, Pringles, how many times I'd read the books, Gandalf, the beacon scene and almost anything else that popped into my head. Eventually we drew to a conclusion about an hour and twenty minutes.
There's a lot more I could have talked about, and it's probably a good thing that I didn't. It was actually extremely enjoyable to sit and analyse why I like being in this fandom, why I like the films and the book, and I really genuinely hope that I was able to help; dude, I am officially part of the research for that project. I find that quite cool. There seemed to be a lot of the fandom they wanted filling it. They'd heard of fanfiction, but they seemed to want to knwo more about who was in it, and who the involvement seemed to be the greatest for. I talked about why I was there, and also about why I had other fandoms, and why some of them were more materialistic than other (yes, vampires were mentioned) and all in all I think I babbled a lot.
I also got to ramble at length about the levels of realism in it, and why it felt real. This meant that, for reasons best known to myself, Discworld and His Dark Materials also played a part.
Wheee. That was fun, it really was. It's nice feeling that I could do something for LOTR... besides, fame whore, remember?
Only I've just remembered that I've missed watching The Lost Boys. Damn!
Well, I am going to go and watch ROTK again. It seems apt. And waHEY! Going to work tomorrow for six hours yes, but also going to go and see Harry Potter withloneraven and hammer_strike! I am happy now.
~Hathy_Col~
That, and it’s really good for my revision.
It seems to be similar to that of Prime Minister – primus inter pares, or first among equals. This leads to my original line of reasoning. Like much of the British political system, I put forward the idea that Wizarding government has evolved quite nicely ever since William The Conqueror. Evidently, much of the histories are different between Muggles and Wizards, but it’s quite logical to presume that as we are sharing a country, many aspects of governance would be similar.
I am currently speculating that the post used to be that of Royal Appointment, and it’s no great stretch of logic to presume that early Ministers of Magic were actually a part of the Privy Council. Of course, all of this was reformed in 1649; I presume that the early Minster of Magic jumped ship long before people starting wielding axes and flicking ink across the most influential document of the last 1000 years. It’s worth noticing that the Minister of Magic would have gone incognito through much of the this period due to the Puritanical, nay, radical extremes of the Rump Parliament and the later Protectorate, the time in the which the notorious witch-burnings took place. Yet as reason and chemistry took the place of witchcraft and alchemy, it’s not illogical to suggest that perhaps the Wizarding community made themselves known to later Parliaments. I would envision this being through the House of Lords, once it was re-established. It has already been speculated that there would be some wizarding influence in there already; this is probably true, given the nature of the earlier Lords (before Blair’s changes).
This doesn’t answer the question of how the Minister became a minister. Earlier these were Royal Appointments; this has passed down to the position of Prime Minister. In truth, the Minister of Magic is not in fact a real minister in the sense that we would understand it. I would go as far to say that the inner Cabinet (that is Blair, Brown and Prescott) would know of its existence out of necessity. This is suggested in Prisoner Of Azkaban where Fudge is criticised for telling him of Sirius’ escape. This might normally suggest that Muggles have no knowledge of the wizards; perhaps it might make more sense to suggest that the Minister of Magic is far more independent than any of the other Minsters. I can’t imagine Fudge in a bi-lateral or a standing committee and most definitely not in any form of Cabinet meeting, but at the same time I can hardly see Blair being completely and utterly clueless. Memory Charms are good, but before long someone will notice patterns.
This, again, leads to the idea of a separation between the two in all but crucial events. When the Minister of Magic lost their connection with royalty (and this may have been early on; James I is responsible for a great number of tracts on demonology and witchcraft) they may have first evolved this separation. Wizards are good at aping useful Muggle inventions. Perhaps the idea of democracy was a useful one to them as well; although in mimicking English society of the time, I’m imagining property-based voting. The Levellers would be horrified.
This isn’t actually answering the points I meant to sit down. Whatever way you look at it, a Ministry of Magic evolved out of the ashes of 1649 and the witch-burnings of the later decades. It seems to be essentially Conservative, or I would propose that it was in the beginning. As already mentioned, it must have evolved in the odd pattern that only British government seems to be able to pull off. Anyway, perhaps only pureblood families could vote; that would make a lot of sense, in my mind.
Yet as Muggle government evolved, and crucially Muggle-born magical folk did too, the changes in government must have come about as well. There is no reason for the Minister of Magic not to sit in the House of Commons. I suspect that he is, in fact, elected democratically. Under our system, this may take some explaining.
There are, probably, not a huge amount of witches and wizards in British society, meaning that geographical constituencies would be all but pointless. They could stand in Muggle elections, but this would be rather pointless; with the two societies so separate, it wouldn’t have an impact on the way either worked. However, witches and wizards could have their own constituency. For reasons addressed in other essays, there’s probably not many, enough to make up one constituency, making it democratically fair for them all to vote under the guise of one constituency. This would be to stop other people noticing. (Although our electorate is famously stupid, and there’s not much hope for the politicians either.) It has been stated that Hogsmeade is the only “All Wizarding village.” Why not make it into a constituency and have the Minister of Magic voted for there? Postal ballots could be used for those further afield (and I have a suspicion that owls would be a better system than that currently decimating the North) with the more familiar boxes for the locals.
The flaw in this would be that the elections would only be held when a previous Minister died or resigned. The post seems to be a lifelong one, such as that of Archbishop of Canterbury, and there is no way to remove this. Again, this has some relation to our history, but differentiates from the here and now. With such separate systems, it need not matter.
The beauty of the single-relative-majority system (colloquially named first-past-the-post) is that we have an abundance of safe seats. A seat that only changed hands once every 10 to 15 years would be no eyebrow raiser, even if it did seem to go to the same party. I do not think that party politics apply in the wizarding world (thoughts on Voldemort and Michael Howard are the subject of a later essay) in the sense that we understand today. Again though, one need only look at our history to understand this. Parties evolved as factions rather than definite ideologies. Judging by the actions of the Ministry, this still prevails; the pureblood faction of Conservatives against the Muggle-born Whigs, perhaps? If only Disraeli had been born wizard. It might have made the world of difference. Yet for them, like our own (fairly recent) history, all of the Ministers are independents. There’s just no reason for them not to be democratic.
So, the Minister’s role today. Well, it does seem to be rather that of a Prime Minster, although I would speculate that it goes even further. Blair has the power of patronage, but at least they’re vaguely democratically elected; the Ministry seems to be a weird mixture of civil service and Cabinet, and Fudge can pick and choose whom he wants in certain positions. The heads of departments are the ‘Cabinet’ and may possibly vote on ideas, although I would say that Fudge has the final line.
The Ministry seems to have been ‘hived off’ into agencies in the manner that Mrs Thatcher was so keen of. There are no quangos, though, and they all seem to still be under governmental control. No privatisation then, evidently. Each department has a head, who as mentioned Fudge chooses, or he at least has control of the process. Yet they also work in the day-to-day aspects of policy implementation as well as formulation; this turns the entire Theakston model on it’s head. At the same time, it rather supports most of his ideas. The civil servants really are the hidden government.
I’m not going to go into the intricacies of policy-making; I find it confusing, and
loneraven appears to have sorted that out to my satisfaction, within the parameters I have already set out. The Ministry, as I’ve banged on about, follows Muggle trends. It must have been laissez-faire once, although it does seem to have been the first to have a funded school. St Mungos indicates a paid-for service, and the amount of offices in the Ministry indicates that taxes must be paid. It’s probably not in the way council tax is paid. The lack of geographical clumping means that our system of parish, district and county councils would be daft. Early on, I suspect that a general British Wizarding council must have come into being. Long before 1776 Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales must have diverged into one wizarding nation; there’s no reason to suggest that it’s entirely similar between our two ‘worlds’. Most of Hogwarts students seem to be from all places in Britain, and that seems to have been going on since the founding. Devolution would not affect them through sheer lack of actually caring, for example the lack of enthusiasm over the Welsh Assembly.
With no geographical boundaries, it’s interesting to wonder what departments there actually are. Should the ‘Cabinet’ act in the same way as ours, there shouldn’t be more than twenty, (which leads me to believe that it’s actually more of a Parliament. I suppose that makes it more democratic, or at least slightly fairer, even if they aren’t democratically elected) yet without quangos or other such bodies, there would need to be many more. Sports are a department on thier own right; heavens, Gobstones are their own department. Makes an interesting Cabinet, doesn't it? I suppose the individual ministers would gain some permanence, like our Civil Serivce: reshuffles would be more rare. (Not accounting for various indescretions and other such fun.) The Ministry becomes a huge, sprawling place, filled with everything that's needed and some that aren't, with only one man- the Minister of Magic - in charge of the lot.
How on earth does this weird, complex mixture of government work? The same way ours does – “Leave it alone, it works!” It shouldn’t, but it does. That’s what counts, right?
Well, that didn’t go the way I expected.
This was meant to be posted a while ago as a seperate post. Unfortunately, my computer crashed and died on me (is this a theme?) so I was forced to post it in Yet Another Mammoth Update.
I just got off the phone with the Lord Of The Rings Research person. I feel thoroughly geeky. Half an hour she said! Well, I rambled. She asked me about Eowyn, and you know that's always a mistake, as I rambled on about nobility and whatnot. I waxed lyrical over Gimli and Legolas' friendship. I talked about how it would make a good myth, about why it was a shame there was no Elladan and Elrohir, why Frodo annoys me, why I liked Lord Of The Rings, about Miranda and the great things it had done for me. I mentiond various writing projects, I alluded to Imedhuir and Liz, I rambled on about the changes and why the films were important.
This took about forty minutes. She stopped me, and said "Look, I'll phone you back - I want to know more, but the tape's run out."
Thirty minutes later I had talked about Mary-Sues, Pringles, how many times I'd read the books, Gandalf, the beacon scene and almost anything else that popped into my head. Eventually we drew to a conclusion about an hour and twenty minutes.
There's a lot more I could have talked about, and it's probably a good thing that I didn't. It was actually extremely enjoyable to sit and analyse why I like being in this fandom, why I like the films and the book, and I really genuinely hope that I was able to help; dude, I am officially part of the research for that project. I find that quite cool. There seemed to be a lot of the fandom they wanted filling it. They'd heard of fanfiction, but they seemed to want to knwo more about who was in it, and who the involvement seemed to be the greatest for. I talked about why I was there, and also about why I had other fandoms, and why some of them were more materialistic than other (yes, vampires were mentioned) and all in all I think I babbled a lot.
I also got to ramble at length about the levels of realism in it, and why it felt real. This meant that, for reasons best known to myself, Discworld and His Dark Materials also played a part.
Wheee. That was fun, it really was. It's nice feeling that I could do something for LOTR... besides, fame whore, remember?
Only I've just remembered that I've missed watching The Lost Boys. Damn!
Well, I am going to go and watch ROTK again. It seems apt. And waHEY! Going to work tomorrow for six hours yes, but also going to go and see Harry Potter with
loneraven and hammer_strike! I am happy now.~Hathy_Col~
no subject
Date: 2004-06-04 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-04 01:58 pm (UTC)"Well, I met my best friend at college through The Lord Of The Rings, which shows that it's such a close-knit fandom..."
Didn't mention your name because of Pesky Confidentiality that she warned me about, but I thought it needed a mention.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-04 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-04 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-04 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-04 02:51 pm (UTC)And
werewolf!slashPoA tomorrow! Whee!