Viðaldsdeild

The viðaldsdeildir are the þing assemblies of the five commonholds of Helminthasse. They are the only such bodies elected by universal suffrage within the country; all registered citizens above the age of sixteen – the traditional Siur age of majority – are eligible to vote. Deildarmenn are required to seek a renewal of their mandate from their electorate at no more than five-yearly intervals, although the decision to go to the polls otherwise rests with the member unless obliged to do so by outside forces (including the recall mechanism of moltalandi customary in the Siur lands). The wider extension of the franchise is actually a quite recent development in Helminthasse, having been put in place only in 2005 in a highly contentious alteration driven through by then alráðherra Eir Dæld; previously, Helminthasse shared with its neighbour Siurskeyti the amskyldr system under which only registered heads of household were eligible to vote.

The development of the viðaldsdeildir came about as a response to the increasingly obvious issue of a newly developing and financially significant middle class which had no direct voice in the affairs of government; while in theory a thosse or thein was subject to challenge over his fitness to exercise authority over his domain, in practice such challenges were difficult to raise as an individual polity became larger and more unwieldy. Particularly in the larger cities, it was quite possible that the wealthier merchant classes possessed greater economic power than the more impoverished noble houses or eðalkyn. The commonhold of Helminthasse was the first to address the issue, establishing its first viðaldsdeild in 1820; the other four Helmin commonholds would follow suit before 1835.

History

In the early history of the newly-independent Helminthasse its five member commonholds were, in most important respects, independent states in miniature – perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the push towards secession was driven by a sense of exploitation of the individual commonholds by a centralised government in Ostari, Siurskeyti’s capital, regarded as being dominated by financial and industrial interests predominantly based in the coastal regions. In this sense, the new nation was consciously harking back to the principles that had supposedly inspired the original unification in 1623. Indeed, the idea of the new Helminthasse being five nations working together as one was formally recognised in the official name of the country, the Alliance of Independent Siur Commonholds.

While the idea may have been laudable in principle, practical realities saw it steadily erode over time. Even among the comparatively weak economies of the Siur interior, the commonhold of Ærlasse – largely mountainous and, at that time, sparsely populated – was particularly feeble, and was forced to rely on subventions from its stronger neighbours to support its internal budget from as early as 1830. The concept of the commonholds as stand-alone entities began an accelerating decline in the wake of the Vinhaxan Usurpation and the failed attempt by Vinhaxa to break away from the Helmin alliance, and the process of centralisation was ratcheted upward still further as Helminthasse became embroiled in the Long War; concerns over perceived Siursk sabre-rattling along the countries’ shared border and the involvement by Helmin forces outside the country during periods of open warfare, as in the Abranoussan War of 1937-41, saw the central government in Virkið gather more power to itself. The growth in strength and influence of the federal government over everyday life naturally had a knock-on effect on the capacities of the viðaldsdeildir, although the weight of history and the strength of old loyalties has meant that there has never been a concerted campaign to remove the tier of government that they represent.

Present day

In the modern era, the powers of the individual viðaldsdeildir are much more circumscribed than they had been at secession; generally, the balance between central and commonhold governments has developed so as to broadly deprive the latter of the power to create and enforce setningar which would potentially have effect outside their intended jurisdiction. There has been substantial resistance to this centralising process within individual commonholds, where the “hand of Virkið” is frequently seen as a betrayal of the principles on which the nation was founded. However, while “commonholds’ rights” factions have gained some traction within individual deildir, their small numbers – and the principle of appointment, rather than election, to the federal Fólksdeild – have thus far kept them weak and, for the most part, isolated.

The abstraction of much of the capabilities of the viðaldsdeildir to the federal level has, according to frequent criticism, diminished the capabilities of its members and rendered them “the playgrounds of wanna-bes, has-beens, never-wases and never-will-bes”. While this may be considered an overstatement of the position, competent observers have commented on both the marked decline in apparent ability of the average deildarmaður and the quality of public debate in the houses. The sense that the viðaldsdeildir now function essentially as training grounds for those whose ambitions lie at the federal level cannot be wholly ignored.