The Six Pillars of Democracy: A Nouveauterra Political Deep-Dive

[Nouveau]

The Deep Dive

 An ONRP Radio Series

presents

June 4th, 1425

---

The Six Pillars

A Deep Dive into Nouveauterran Political History and the Future

Hosted by               Yorick Van Der Beek     and     Dawood Van Rees

Chapter 1: The Foundation

YORICK: Nouveauterra is at a major crossroads unlike anything it has faced ever before. New found attention from hosting the Esferos Economic Expo, intervention in the Candelu Civil War to the north, spearheading the expansion of the GECA, and combining efforts with other leaders for ocean protection while trying to expand undersea mining and industry.

DAWOOD: The nation’s parties now have a complex task of balancing the desires of the people, the government’s in-built expertise, and the nation’s resources towards a better future. At the heart of this effort are the six political parties which work to make their mark on the nation and in history.

YORICK: The parties cover a broad swath of ideologies. Les Gens des Collines want a higher level of regional and personal autonomy from the government, while La Ligue Populaire wants a more comprehensive government safety net and an expansion of government control over certain markets, like food or medicine. Le Parti de la Patrie has openly stated that they want to reduce the number of foreign worker and student visas to, “promote domestic prosperity,” and that social safety nets are a net negative to society. Although these parties have few representatives, their presence has influenced les forces majeures, conservative Ligue de l'Accord, and liberal La Sécurité Sociale. 

DAWOOD: Before we begin this series in ernest, we need to establish important context for why these political parties are structured the way they are, and how laws dating back to La Guerre Civil still play out today.

---

History

YORICK: La Guerre Civil tore the country apart with bloodshed and chaos from 1254 to 1259. The Roues and the Lyonnaires came to a mutual peace in 1259 on Ile des Sirènes. As part of that peace, the political parties that had been a part of the social order before the war were legally disbanded. 

New parties could form, but the many positions of government that were used as prizes for political support were professionalized under Le système professionnel de l'État civil, better known as the civil service system. These political parties were also mandated to publicly disclose their financing, since the Lyonnaires had used the war chest of the République Démocratique party to fund their revolution. And the proverbial cherry on top; political parties would be legal to form in the year 1290. The peace planners believed that maybe if everyone who participated had passed away, the old grudges would go with them too.

DAWOOD: All of these factors would contribute to a tumultuous time known as The Party-less Era.

The Party-less Era
YORICK: Some believe that political parties being banned meant the death of organized politics. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Secret parties formed throughout the country, attempting to influence voting and politics through covert activities, organizing, and in some cases murder. The time between 1260 and 1300 would see many political actors and careers rise and fall. Because of the secret nature of these parties, we can only gleam so much. But here are some parties and activities we do know about.

One of the first secret parties to form was Der Jägerbund, or The Hunting Party. The Hunting Party formed in a hunting lodge in the state of Pics Rouges near the end of 1260. They were made up of former revolutionaries who had escaped imprisonment. They formed under the belief that the way to political power was through subversive actions. The Hunting Party would attempt this for years, by aligning themselves with local politicians in the areas of the old revolution. They gained followers in Pics Rouges, Champvert, Ferme, and Mare de Sang through public speeches, forums, and their most popular pamphlet, The Voice of Reason. This included business people, representatives, and local people. Their actions culminated in a deadly clash in 1262 with a siege of the Pics Rouges Regnal House, where nearly 84 people died, and 102 were wounded. The Hunting Party survivors were prosecuted the subsequent year and sentenced to death as rebels.

DAWOOD: Another revolution-aligned party was The Brotherhood, formed in 1261. Although they’d have similar goals as The Hunting Party, they attempted to stay covert for a much longer span of time. Their efforts were discovered by the government in 1263, and led to the first use of an undercover investigator in the nation’s history. The investigation, lasting from 1263 to 1264, uncovered a wide spanning conspiracy to infiltrate the Viriarma, the national police service, and seize power by force. Many conspirators were arrested in late 1264, with most being sentenced to prison. Some were spared as witnesses, while others fled the country to nations like Saint Mark, and Mediobogdum.

In contrast to these revolutionary parties was a secessionist group known as The Great Horn. The Great Horn consisted of Danav veterans of the Guerre Civil, and revolutionaries, who believed they had an opportunity to break away from the nation. This was based on the depleted military, with a cash-poor government, and weak territorial control of law enforcement. The Great Horn would coalesce in 1261, and started to make political moves in the ensuing years.

YORICK: Although their original aim was secession, they were intercepted by another group, The League of the Oath. 

The League of the Oath formed at the beginning of 1260, and were composed of generals, government administrators, and like-minded business people. All of them were unified in one mission; destruction of revolutionary thought in Nouveauterra. They had fought in an official capacity against the revolution, but wanted to, “Continue the efforts of national unity beyond the warfront.” 

DAWOOD: The League of the Oath would use the different offices of government, both through official and unofficial means, to continually undermine the forces that still believed in the revolutionary ideals. Raids on tea houses, extrajudicial killings, and scheming that hamstrung many groups, like The Brotherhood and The Hunting Party. The League of the Oath and The Great Horn are connected, because they would cut a deal in 1268. The deal meant that The Great Horn would stop its secessionist activities, but they would help The League of the Oath in clamping down on secessionists and revolutionaries in the countryside. In return, The League would fight to pass expanded civil rights for the Danav people.

YORICK: The two parties, through this deal, would work together towards national unity, and by the 1270s would become the dominant forces in political culture. Wherever secessionist, or revolutionary forces would spring up, the two parties, historically referred to as The National Compact, would squash them down.

DAWOOD: The National Compact would operate throughout the 1270s to the 1290s without much interference. The League of the Oath would indeed keep their promises, and assisted in passing land development in Danav areas, as well as civil rights legislation throughout this time. Their pamphlet, La Colombe, was circulated in daily and weekly papers like Le Crieur de Gue, and L'Examinateur Quotidien, to instill republican ideology into the people who read it.

This political force would start to lose power by the end of the 1290s. Multiple changes in government, and a new political movement of Responsible Republicans would see the ouster and arrest of League politicians. The Responsible Republicans, born out of racial animosity towards foreign people and Danav people, gathered into a coherent movement by 1296. They were opposed to the rights given to Danav people, such as easier access to voting, land grants and land banks, as well as new developments such as expanded telegraph lines and train routes. The Responsible Republicans’ biggest achievements from 1296 to 1315 were undoing the work of The National Compact, and causing a split in its two constituent parts.

YORICK: This long era culminated in The Special Committee on Subversive Organized Groups forming in 1298. The Committee, held in the Upper Assembly, would officially investigate the secretive parties, both for historical purposes, and to get a better sense of their contemporary situation.

DAWOOD: The Committee would eventually identify 39 different political parties that had formed and/or disbanded between 1260 and 1298. Some parties were just a handful of people, while others like The League of the Oath would boast over 400,000 official members, at a time when the nation’s population was just cresting 2.5 million people.

YORICK: With this context laid out, we can dive into the individual parties that exist today, starting with the oldest; La Ligue de l'Accord.