United Nations Policymaking
A Treatise On Building Functional Resolutions
Contents
Introduction
While sarcastic debate might seem to be the daily focus of the United Nations, the real purpose of our organization is the draft and implementation of legislation. By way of resolutions, we possess the ability to change the way the world operates, improving human rights, strengthening economies, and ensuring social justice.
Unfortunately, a great deal of the proposals that are put before the United Nations hardly merit consideration. Often we see typo-ridden legislation with no clear format, or opinion essays translated roughly into a sad attempt at policy. We ridicule these proposals mercilessly (with good reason), but often times we let an entirely separate kind of flawed resolution pass into our midst: bad policy plans.
Where the Resolution Writing Guide sought to help nations polish their proposals into well-written resolutions in the proper format, this thread will examine the process of policymaking. From choosing a topic to putting a plan into action, this guide serves to help you during the idea phase, and greatly increase your chances of making it onto the hallowed list of implemented United Nations resolutions.
The Two Burdens of Legislation
The United Nations has a long and distinguished history of passing bad policy, some of which will be cited in this text. For one reason or another, these proposals failed to meet the two basic criteria that a proposal must meet in order to be considered “good policy.” As the author of a resolution, it is your responsibility to ensure that your proposal meets the first two critical burdens. These are called prima facie burdens, coming from the Latin phrase meaning “before the fact.” You must pass both of these tests before the United Nations can consider the resolution.
Procedural Rules
Listening to the way we talk about resolutions, one could come away with the idea that, with the right wording, a person could enact any policy they wanted. While the proposal system does give players a large amount of flexibility in the issues they may address, there are still things that are off-limits. A number of rules have been laid down by Max and the moderation staff, and violating any one of them can not only cause your proposal to be deleted, but also get you banned from the United Nations. These include:
Game Mechanics:
- This is one of the most important rules governing what a resolution is allowed to do with regards to policy. The action clauses of your proposal may not require any action that would necessitate additional programming by the system administrators. This includes things like setting tax rates, mandating a committee be formed in character, or requiring the General Assembly to vote on a subordinate issue. Understand that this isn’t a complete list, though, and many other actions qualify as game mechanics violations.
Addresses Specific Nations:
- The United Nations is not allowed to single out specific nations or regions in its legislation. While you may feel quite justified picking on a nation for their ultra-polluting policy or their homophobic rhetoric, it is inappropriate to bring those things to attention via a resolution. The moderators have expressly forbid this action, and tend to act mercilessly should you violate the rule.
Lacks Policy Mechanism:
- Every resolution presented must include some kind of action that the United Nations will take should the legislation be passed. While saying we should support human rights is all well and good, the resolution is meaningless unless you provide a tangible way for those rights to be improved. Using the action clauses listed in the Resolution Writing Guide will help ensure that you don’t fall victim to this rule.
Restricting Future Proposals:
- It is illegal for the United Nations to prohibit itself from performing an action in the future. To do so would require reprogramming the game so certain proposal categories or specific clauses aren’t allowed, a mechanics issue.
Wrong Category:
- Given the immense power they hold, resolutions are expected to meet a minimal standard of accuracy and professionalism. Neither of these are fulfilled if you submit a proposal dealing with nuclear weapons and call it an environmental issue. The categories are set up for a reason. It’s best to follow those intentions.
Real-Life References:
- The Nation States universe is an infinitely varied amalgam of nations. Some people play as medieval kingdoms, others as super-tech space empires. While certain parallels exist between the real world and the Nation States world, they aren’t exact mirrors. Proposals may not make references to real-life people, places, or organizations. As the FAQ specifies, Tony Blair and George Bush don’t exist in Nation States, nor do Cambodia, Argentina, or the UCLA Literature department. Any reference to a real-world entity is grounds for deletion.
Banning Political/Economic Models:
- Countries of all shapes and sizes are welcome in the United Nations, regardless of their economic or political policies. A right-wing dictatorship and a civil-rights love-fest are both equally valid governments in these halls. Because of this tolerant attitude, no resolution may prohibit any kind of political or economic system.
International Scope
The second burden is not an official rule, per se, but meeting it will save you enormous amounts of grief when you take your proposal to the forum. Remember, the United Nations is an international organization. With rare exceptions involving human rights, your proposal should only address issues that affect the world as a whole. This is a difficult line to walk, which means you should be extremely careful when picking out a topic to write a resolution on.
Because of this restriction, it is difficult to write policy within certain categories. Gun control, recreational drug use, gambling, and moral decency proposals are especially hard to justify. The gambling habits of Komokom’s citizens will not have a direct effect on the people of Vastiva, just as people being nude in Sophista won’t harm anyone living in Mikitivity.
Harms and Advantages
While the two prima facie burdens are extremely important, your responsibilities as an author have hardly passed. Just because the General Assembly is justified in considering your proposal doesn’t mean that your proposal is still a good idea. This is where the weighing mechanism of cost-benefit analysis. Greatly simplified, the premise of cost-benefit analysis says that if we pass your proposal, the world should see a net increase in the quality of life. This is where the concept of harms and advantages comes in.
First, your proposal must solve a problem that actually exists in the world. For the purpose of policymaking, we call these “harms.” A resolution saying the United Nations should make it illegal to use nuclear weapons for terraforming would only be justified if nations were actually terraforming with nuclear weapons. True, detonating a nuclear device can throw thousands of pounds of radioactive dust into the air, causing serious harm to the international community, but if it isn’t happening, there isn’t a real problem.
Remember, though, the harm you choose to address should be trans-national. If your proposal is to criminalize the eating of foods high in cholesterol, you must first prove that eating foods high in cholesterol has a harmful effect that crosses borders. A less feasible example would be claiming that having too many obese people on a plane makes it more likely to crash, thus endangering any international flights. This certainly isn’t a valid argument (planes can still fly, even chock full of obese travelers), but you get the idea.
Second, your proposal should also do good, or cause “advantages”. Often times, finding advantages is as easy as reversing your harms. Going back to the nuclear terraforming example, it is advantageous to have fewer people dying of cancer or being accidentally vaporized. Don’t be afraid, however, to look beyond the plainly obvious. Your plan to limit nuclear terraforming would also limit the construction of nuclear devices, meaning there are fewer weapons lying around for terrorists to steal. Thus, you could claim that banning nuclear terraforming will decrease the risk of nuclear terrorism. Be careful, though. Superfluous advantages are often easily dismantled, and no one wants to fight and uphill battle when their idea is presented in the forum.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
So you’ve chosen a topic and authored a resolution that follows the rules while addressing an international issue. You can point out clear advantages that will come from your policy, and it solves a problem that exists in the status quo. Now comes the most difficult part of the policy-making process: convincing other people that your idea is worth voting for. Go to the forums, post a copy of your proposal, and wait for people to offer their criticism.
Assuming you met the two prima facie burdens, then the usual "sovereignty" crowd and forum veterans hunting for game mechanics proposals will leave you alone. With those tests out of the way, you can concentrate on showing that, at the end of the day, your proposal will make the world a better place. To prove this, we employ a method called “cost-benefit analysis.”
Greatly simplified, cost-benefit analysis asks whether a policy proposal does more harm than good. While your environmental proposal might save the endangered sea llama, is that more important than the oil shipping industry which won’t be able to use regular ocean channels for travel? In the forums, many people will present disadvantages that would come along with your resolution. If those disadvantages are significant, i.e. the plan would spark a nuclear war obliterating all life on Earth, then the benefits you claim might end up severely outweighed. When writing a proposal, it’s important to think ahead, and ask yourself what kind of negative consequences might come out of the enactment of your policy.
Conclusion
This is by no means a complete how-to guide for writing a perfect proposal, but taking these points into consideration will greatly improve your chances. It doesn’t take a champion debater or a government expert to make the world a better place, only someone who is willing to patiently nurture their policy. Combined with the Resolution Writing Guide, these guidelines will help push your proposal closer and closer to changing the world for the better.
