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South Hills: Difference between revisions
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Concord is notable as a major crossroads for a number of different sentient species for thousands of years, including humans, elves, and tieflings, among others.
=Politics and Government=
[[File:Bristol City Hall (2321).jpg|right|thumb|200px|
[[File:Delhi_India_Government.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Executive Office of South Hills, New Faramount]]
[[File:Singapore_Old-Supreme-Court-Building-02.jpg|right|thumb|200px|National Court Building of South Hills, Aiyanopolis]]
===Administrative divisions===
The UCCS consists of 20 states and 1 territory, with one state being located in Itur and the territory, District 58, being jointly administered with the neighboring [[Norgsveldet]]. The Constitution states that sovereignty shall be shared between the state governments and the confederal government. The autonomy of the states are given by the Constitution, especially regarding internal affairs not explicitly conferred upon and reserved to the confederal government. Any territory is directly administered by the confederal government with powers devolved to them by statute, but may vie for independence through the [[Improved Autonomy Act of 1783]]. In practice, no such territory has gained independence through this act due to the nature of the governance of territories falling onto the confederal government itself.
The Constitution does not grant the states the right to unilaterally secede from the Confederation. The admittance of new states and territories into the Confederation requires the nomination by three state Governors, and approval by a vote in the Confederal Legislature. The Confederal Legislature also has the power, with the direction of the President, to create new states from pre-existing states or territories through the [[Acts of Unity of 1795]]. A state may be devolved into a territory with a state-wide referendum that must first be approved by a vote in the Confederal Legislature.
The Constitution requires that each state be governed under a republican government, the definition of republic in the Constitution differing from the standard Staynish definition in the sense that it simply refers to the requirement to be constituent and subordinate to the larger Confederation. This gave rise to a new term, referring to the states as concordian republics. The governance of each state is influenced significantly by its history and circumstances. Because South Hills was initially formed from a unification between three kingdoms in the Ulvrikian civilization and the codexian-speaking [[Kingdom of Thesland]], they are governed differently than the rest of the country, whose systems of government reflect the political systems under which they were governed before their annexation into the nation.
The northernmost states (namely Oakenheim, Rødhøyde, and Meldan) inherited many aspects of the Ulvrikian forms of governance, having in their past been regions of the medieval Jarldom of Eyjaria, and earlier been part of the Ulvrikian Empire. In the modern day this manifests in a Governor-Jarl who is directly elected by the residents of the state. The Governor-Jarl has the power to appoint members of the executive branch, promulgate state legislation, represent state interests abroad and to the Union government, to grant pardons, and to dissolve the state legislature. The daily administration of the state is vested in the Avgjørelsehus (the State Cabinet) which consists of the state Premier who is required to command the confidence of the Avgjørelsehus and who in turn appoints the State who helm executive departments.
The tendency of the Ulvriks to summon large gatherings of their common people to deliberate on issues of import to the community persists in the form of the lower legislature, known as the Moothus, in which the legislative body consists of citizens selected by a voluntary lottery once a year to deliberate issues of import, and approve the report of the executive branch on the governance of the State. With regular governance having been vested in a body of nobles, the Ulvrikian states retain an upper legislative chamber of full-time legislators elected by proportional representation, known as the Edelhus.
Small groups of citizens had once judged their peers in medieval Ulvrikian societies when formal tribunals of full-time literate judges were uncommon. Thus, the judicial systems of the northernmost states still incorporate small groups of citizens, who are selected by lottery to judge their peers in court. The judicial system has adopted a hierarchical system that divides the courts into appellate and trial courts. To dilute the power of one individual, such systems have limited jurisdiction of a court to defined geographical boundaries, vesting the highest and final judicial authority in a State Supreme Court, which may still be overridden by the National Supreme Court.
The nation's interior had once consisted of the Elishan Empire, which persisted up until its unification with South Hills through the [[Treaty of Preservation]] in 1781, the treaty officially incorporating the two nations into the UCCS. The nature of this treaty allowed for a confederation between the democratic South Hills and the autocratic Elishan Empire, creating a unified national legislature, but maintaining separate executive positions in the form of the Emperor of the Elishan and the President of South Hills. The autocratic nature of the Elishan government produced a top-down system, wherein decisions by the Emperor were carried out by subordinates in a disseminating, hierarchical method of responsibility, the lowest-level subordinates, known as Csvin's, being directly elected to by the people. This top-down system of government has continued through to the present in the states of Farena, Strasern, and Franken, wherein the Governor of the state is elected by the state legislatures, who is then tasked with running the state and representing state interests in the Union and abroad.
The justice system of the Elishan was very decentralized, with each city (and in some larger cities, each borough) maintaining an arbiter elected by the local population and approved by the overseeing Csvin. The arbiter serves the role of judge and jury. The system is often criticized for its lack of checks and balances within South Hills and the larger world.
The state of Rostraver's history was mostly as the vassal of a larger empire, the people of the region being largely made up of the nomadic [[Vangdren]] people. As such, upon becoming a state through the Breakup of Elishan by President Baldwin in 1798, the state adopted a similar system to the national government, including a state legislature directly elected by the people, a Governor also elected by the people, and a judiciary appointed by the Governor and approved by the legislature. The primary distinction of the Rostraver system of government is its method of representation. Due to the people's nomadic lifestyle, it was encoded into the state's constitution that representatives should not elected based on geography, but instead by community. Such a system was very unique in the early days of the UCCS, but has since become an arbitrary difference with the advent of the industrialization and urbanization. Some nomadic communities (who make up a notable minority) are still represented by their shared community, but the majority of Rostraver's population now live in stationary settlements, with their "community" now being synonymous with the city in which they live.
New Tilden, the sole inheritor to the Chincuatlan civilization, adopted a similar system as the larger national government, but due to the nature of the Chincuatlan system being centered around the existence of a multitude of city states. This can be seen in how the constituencies are drawn; every city that traces its history back to a walled city state pre-annexation has its own unique constituency. Every other part of New Tilden remains as part of a large constituency, which results in places that were established post-annexation to be underrepresented in the state legislature.
The states of the south inherited their political identity from the Ladoese kingdoms of old. Their governments were highly decentralized with small tribal and clan groups resolving disputes, managing resources, enforcing justice and distributing work by the consensus of the community with deferrence paid to the advice and leadership of the elders. Although these states adopted the modern systems of a Governor as chief executive who presides over and rules with the State Cabinet, as well as a state legislature elected by the people via proportional representation, they veer in that constitutional amendments require a referendum and laws can be referred to a referendum and proposed by the public when sufficient signatures on a valid petition are presented.
===Usage of Confederation===
Though its official name, The United Confederation of Concordian States, refers to the nation as a confederation, it has not been organized under a confederal system since 1781. The reference to the nation as a confederation has been a point of debate, with suggestions the nation should rename to the United Federation of Concordian States. Proponents against changing the official name have argued that changing the name would be a loss of national heritage.
=Economy=
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