Bep Legislative Government
The Bep domain, while sometimes treated as a coherent state, draws many distinctions between the broader, "federal" level and various levels of local government. Recall that the actual government is more of a mediator between regional powers than an authority. This text concerns itself with the highest-level, primarily legislative stuff.
The highest-level legislative government is divided into two main institutions; we will dub these the advisory government (AG), and the regulatory government (RG).
Role of the Advisory Government
In theöry, the Advisory Government serves only a lower-ranking legislative function, setting default laws that can then be overridden by local government's legislation. For example, the AG manages food quality regulations, but because regional government can override practically any AG mandate, many consumable items illegal by default are "re-authorized" and dealt with on a regional level. It is courtesy for local government to be explicit about it when default laws are overridden; some joke that local specialties are only truly local if marked as illegal by default, as opposed to legal by default. Surströmming comes to mind as a real life dish that would definitely be illegal to sell under default law, but might be authorized by a local government.
The Advisory Government's authority is non-negligible in local decisions, but because it can be overridden and often is, it does not hold a direct legislative power, aside from one exception. Because of how much it would cost to maintaining independent regional institutions for everything means there are unwritten rules that all regional government follows the AG's defaults & mandates on certain topics, usually ones that concern several regions at once. The AG is given prescriptive/executive powers over topics such as crisis management, and most infrastructure (crucially the postal system, which among other things also deals with petty crime).
How the advisory government wields power over broader issues varies by both region and issue:
- The AG may have indirect legislative-executive power, meaning the local government employs and generally manages its staff, but has systems in place for the AG to give override directives,
- The AG may have direct executive power, meaning staff is directly managed by a branch of the AG at all times.
The indirect legistlative-executive solution is the most common, as is essentially just local government going "yep, if the Advisory Government has Advice on this thing, we'll take it". The direct executive solution is less common, reserved mostly for densely populated areas, where it's nice to have things be snappier. This is sometimes controversial, as it means the advisory government has its own executive power, instead of borrowing it on condition.
tldr: The Advisory Government has locally-reversible legislative authority, and in/direct executive authority on certain large-scale issues.
Role of the Regulatory Government
The Regulatory Government (RG) is much more boring, holding direct legislative power and little else. The Regulatory Government's legislative power is pretty much absolute; they make absolutive laws. This means the RG only really makes Big Important Decisions. The RG serves to secure the Advisory Government's legitimacy, in that it can step in and deny local governments the ability to override default laws. Such a manoeuvre replaces the default law being questioned with an absolutive law, and is called an intervention. The absolutive law doesn't have to mirror the default law, but usually does, or is at least similar.
The RG is a tiny institution compared to the AG, and only holds a few, distributed offices; most of the RG's budget goes to travel expenses for envoys, who generally don't have branch offices or legations of their own to stay in. As such, many consider "retiring" to a life as a RG envoy assistant an ideal way to top off their career with some sightseeing. This occasionally causes problems of unqualified employees wanting to be envoys by seniority alone. Due to the high maintenance costs, the RG holds its staff to more stringent standards than what people are used to coming from other instances, which often means disappointment for those hoping to get in through nepotism.
Local governments wanting to pass controversial overrides of the Advisory Government's default laws are generally dissuaded by the RG's potential to intervene, and thereby kill any hope of the override being possible anywhere for a long time. Interventions are rare, but common enough that local governments have an interest in self-regulating against (esp. separatist) overrides. The looming threat of RG intervention makes local laws a bit more coordinated amongst themselves, without them having to derive from one body; if an override is allowed in one region, the RG won't intervene in something similar in another region, but then that other region needs to keep it pretty similar to be protected by precedent. Overrides thus have to be somewhat acceptable to everyone's sensibilities, even if they're uncontroversial locally.
The RG treads a fine line as the reinforcing body of the advisory government, because too many interventions removes power from the AG and might be taken as a provocation. Recall that interventions are not obligated to enforce the AG's default laws, being able to shoot down local overrides with an entirely new absolutive law of the RG's making. Provoking the AG is bad, because most executive functions the RG relies on for its laws to be enforced are run the AG, often alongside local government, both of which dislike being intervened with excessively.
tldr: The Regulatory Government has irreversible legislative authority used for Important Things. It balances local governments' power to radically override the advisory government, while itself being checked by the AG which is strengthened by local governments following default laws voluntarily.
Internal organization
Both legislative(+) institutions are bipartite, with a Department of Councils wielding legislative power, and a Department of Commissions managing commissions and miscellaneous staff. The Commissions Dept. manages assets and assists councilors, and in the Advisory Government's case also run the executive institutions (food regulation offices, postal system, etc). The commissions themselves are a sort of secretariat, tasked with ensuring laws are implement-able and implemented once they're decided on. This also ensures laws come with clearly declared reasons to exist.
Councilors are elected by the populace, while commissions and staff are mostly hired by other commissions and staff. Commissions typically consist of field professionals and lawyers, while the rest of the staff is a miscellany ranging from cleaning personnel to the subset of postal employees under the AG's direct authority. The RG's Commissions Dept. manages a significant number of logistical staff, while the AG's most numerous staff are postal workers & law enforcement.
Commissions Dept.s contain administrative management, commissions, and miscellaneous staff.
- Administrative management deals with managing both commissions and miscellaneous staff.
- Commissions are brought in on limited-time contracts by administrative management or other commissions, for advice or ultimate authority on how to implement stuff.
- Miscellaneous staff, which is hired by administrative management either as-is or on request from commissions. The administrative management hires cleaners on its own; it might also hire someone to carry tape measures for the week if requested by a commission dealing with railway safety.
Commissions Dept.s are generally independent from council(s), but host mostly-powerless council representatives there to monitor how the administrative management runs things. Councilors may in principle hire people to any position in the Commissions Dept.s, but rarely touch administration to avoid accusations of meddling.
Councillors and commissions regularly bicker about how to realize laws, and sometimes the process completely stalls as commissions fail to find viable ways for a law to be coherent and enforceable. Councils can skip/override commissions, but do so rarely as it's particularly stupid to implement laws without the support of the people who manage the logistics of law implementation. Law ping-pong between councils and commissions is much more common in the Regulatory Government than in the Advisory Government. This is because the AG makes less significant guideline-type laws, while the Regulatory Government needs to be very precise and only deals with important matters.
Councilors, commission members, and lawyers may be hired into miscellaneous staff as envoys, usually for a set number of years. Being an envoy means you're a representative of your instance within the RG/AG, and get to zip around doing work in exciting new places. You also lose most of your decision-making power if you had any.
The institutions have an interest in only putting out enforceable, viable laws, both because it limits the interpretive freedom (thus power) of judiciary & executive branches, and because councils destroying their own institution only leads to them being replaced with a bunch of successors that reinstate the system the way they want it.