The Imperial Moot in Classic Traveller

[Garnfellow]

Is the Moot described anywhere in CT, particularly its ability to dissolve the Imperium? I thought there was something in one of the Library Data books, but other than a stray reference to "moot election" in the Emperor's List, I've got nothing.

 

[vegas]

I think this was a Megatraveller idea, and wasn't described in CT

 

[mike wightman]

CT S8 LD AM
the Moot is mentioned three times in the Emperor's List

Jerome: Ascended the throne by right of moot election

Jaqueline I: Ascended the throne by right of moot election

Ramon I: proclaimed emperor by right of moot election in 609, assassinated in 609

Three out of 43. Not as important a body as MT made it methinks.

 

[vegas]

Well, to be fair, I don't think CT gave a realistic motivation for the political development of the 3I and the moot in MT is a small step in that direction and T4 gave a more fulsome description.

As I recall, you and I don't see eye-to-eye on this topic, but the idea that the 3I is an absolute monarchy is far-fetched. No single person can run a government, let alone a star-spanning empire, and once you have more than one person involved, politics and power sharing inevitably follows, so entities such as the Moot and the Arlea Committee are nice chrome that make more believable a setting where the powers that be on Sylea allowed a bloodless coup to remove the prior political system and put an emperor on a thrown.

 

[Commander Truestar]

I would agree that no single person could rule the 3I alone.
But...
...any "power sharing" would also come with "safe guards'
The shared power would have it's limits
It would also, presumably, have watch dogs.
And, those watch dogs would be both obvious and covert.....with strict orders to:
1) Maintain continuous communications with the Throne..
2) Understand "FULLY" the limits of the power granted
3) and even be able to execute an obvious or nefarious removal of those who over step their bounds.

In that case, this still falls into the category of an Absolute Monarchy.
That is because the power is "delegated", not shared
The Delegate has very specific "lane guards" and limits
And, at any minute, a Uniformed officer can step forth with a holographic statement from the Throne that the "late delegate" had strayed from their limits one too many times. They had been warned both privately and publicly and failed to change their ways.

Or, the delegate might die when their grav car suddenly failed and plummeted to the death of all aboard....
....then, following that, political speculation and commentary could consider who might be selected next, with "Extremely Harsh" discussion on how the late delegate had strayed from the desires of the Throne.... and, of course, it was only through the trust and fealty shared between the late delegate and the Throne that they were allowed to continue exercising their granted power until this "unfortunate accident" removed them from the living...

 

[Spinward Flow]

Well, to be fair, I don't think CT gave a realistic motivation for the political development of the 3I

Well, for a lot of CT's run (until MT came along), the setting was always along the fringes of the 3I ... Spinward Marches, Solomani Rim ... far away from the center of power at Capital.

The way that CT describes (in various places) how the politics of the 3I are organized seems like an odd fusion of feudal and federal, with different "layers" of governing authority reaching all the way back to the head of state ... the Emperor (and their family).

the idea that the 3I is an absolute monarchy is far-fetched.

Agreed.
The Emperor is not an absolute dictator.

For one thing, the Tyranny Of Distance (and thus, Lag) between Core and outlying sectors makes such an aspiration almost entirely unworkable in practice.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Agreed.
The Emperor is not an absolute dictator.

For one thing, the Tyranny Of Distance (and thus, Lag) between Core and outlying sectors makes such an aspiration almost entirely unworkable in practice.

Not for nothing, but the "Tyranny Of Distance" affects the bad guys too.

Also, as I mentioned, no one knows if the Captain of the Guard who nearly gave his life and might have given a limb is only that loyal because the baddie has stuck to the Emperor's limits. Every would be Tin Pot Emperor has to worry about those assigned to serve in his court as a safe guard against any separation between the desires of the Throne and the target.

Added to that, distance shrinks if you have a covert layer of J-6 ships for the use of the government only.
This has already been hinted at, as a method of communicating alarms both locally and to Capital.
So, a casual check just before I wrote this showed a J-6 courier could make the trip between Capital and Rhylanor(Spinward Marches) in 26 weeks.

No, that is not insubstantial.
But, if the alarm is raised, it is only a handful of weeks before all major commands in the Marches AND all major commands in the Deneb sector are notified.
So, even as the message is on its way to the Throne, it is notifying all loyalist commands.
So, if a world has gone rogue.....the subsector commands will be warned quickly, a levy raised and action taken even as the Sector leadership are being told (or about to be so)
If a Subsector decides to go rogue, they have to first subdue any loyal formations in the subsector. So, there will be fighting already happening as the rest of the Sector fleets are raised.
If an entire Sector decides to go rogue.....there is much more in-fighting between loyalists and rebels

Even in the First Imperial civil war, most of the civilian Imperium just did their best to go about day to day business and hoped not to get sucked in....except the Spinward Marches, of course. (Sarcastic alert) They were dealing with fighting those peskey Zhodani (/Sarcastic alert)

And, in the MegaTraveller Civ-war (which I did not accept IMTU), the issue forced every command and every system to choose "who they'd support. So, fighting even started between military formations and the assets of the system they nomrally called home.

So,
1) There is a huge amount of consideration beyond simple distance and communications lag
2) You should check out my earlier post on this subject the other elements the Throne may have in place to stop just a thing
3) If you do keep your life vs Throne-emplaced assassins....and, you do gather a number of allies....you will soon enough face a massive wave of Imperial forces coming to bring your systems back in line after burning you and your last standnig loyalists down.

While there may be odds the above scenario won't work out, the odds are greater they will.....especially scaling up the smaller personal rebellion is.

The smaller your allied force is, the smaller a wall of warships and Marines will ha ve to be in order to burn you down.

 

[vegas]

I would agree that no single person could rule the 3I alone.
But...
...any "power sharing" would also come with "safe guards'
The shared power would have it's limits

In that case, this still falls into the category of an Absolute Monarchy.
That is because the power is "delegated", not shared

So I don't think we have a disagreement in substance, just in semantics. When you write "this still falls into the category of an Absolute Monarchy... because the power is "delegated", not shared." you are making a (correct) point about the legitimacy of rule in the 3I. I don't dispute that.

When I say there is no such thing as Absolute Monarchy, I am not talking about the source of the legitimacy of power (because of course there have been monarchies in history) I am talking about the pragmatic breadth of power, and the necessity to share power (that every monarch in history and in the far future described by the 3I encounters). Because the breadth of power is necessarily limited, there will be different loci of power within the 3I, thereby creating the room for political maneuvering. Even the "safe guards" you write about (and I agree there would be several overlapping safe guards and processes employed by our Imperium) are each there own loci of power that the emperor has manage within the body politic.

But leaving this highfalutin theoretical language behind and getting back to the setting: the 3I origin story is that there was a Sylean senate and powerful Sylean corporations, which one day chose to have an emperor instead. The pre-existing powers would not simply surrender their power; they would structure a government to have an effective executive (the emperor) while still having means to defend their own interests (the Moot etc.)

I could imagine a dystopian Absolute Monarch of the far future using pervasive surveillance and control technology and automation, but that isn't the setting of the 3I as described.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[mike wightman]

The Emperor is an absolute monarch.
The Imperium is a feudal autocracy but just falls short of dictatorship for one reason.

The subsectror dukes.

Subsector dukes are the first tier of Imperial authority, they are granted their patents from the Emperor.

TL;DR - the emperor is the Don and dukes are made men.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The Emperor is an absolute monarch.
The Imperium is a feudal autocracy but just falls short of dictatorship for one reason.

My impression is that the Emperor is more of a Constitutional Monarch, rather than an Absolute Monarch.
"The Law is King. The King is not the Law."

Another interpretation would be the historical transition from Roman Republic to Roman Empire, where the Senate continued as a political force even though there was an Emperor (and the arrangement wasn't "constitutional" per se, but more a matter of political customs and traditions of the privileged). When the Roman Empire was established by Octavian, there was a continuity in the forms of governing which is why Senators and the Senate continued, rather than being abolished. As the centers of power shifted over successive Emperors, the Senate became more or less relevant at different times in different circumstances.

I agree that the Imperium is a (mostly hereditary) feudal autocracy in the way that the nobility is structured ... but the imperial bureaucracy that is needed to support that structure is neither hereditary nor autocratic (per se), while also not being democratic (in either the direct or representative sense of the word).

The key point that prevents the whole mess from collapsing under its own weight is that individual worlds within the Imperium are more or less autonomous, with their own local governments and laws. It's the INTERSTELLAR COLLECTIVE of them that aligns with the political structure of hereditary feudal autocracy, so it's more like a confederation of worlds loosely bound together by common interests than it is a monolithic political structure that is all powerful.

 

[kilemall]

I don’t know about that, I am not aware of any 3I constitution referenced per se.

There has to be a founding document/treaty that defines basic relations between the Imperium and joining planets and the function/power of the moot, but the rest can be combos of decrees, custom, delegated power etc.

The principle of ‘Rule of Men Not Laws’ to me speaks against universal law beyond large scale no slavery type edicts. Too much distance, too many cultural drifts and cubbyholes, too many differing mind bending circumstances and custom to achieve accepted consensus.

And nothing clarifies the nature of that to me like the Imperial Rules of War. Leave little wars to burn out the underbrush of conflict fuel, intervene massively when it threatens to get out of control, no body of legislation or commissions just people personally responsible for maintaining the realm. No laws saying when that line is crossed but we will know it when we see it.

 

[whartung]

All depends on how easy it is for the Emperor to replace a Duke.

Has that ever been documented?

 

[mike wightman]

Bland was able to do it...

 

[Spinward Flow]

There has to be a founding document/treaty that defines basic relations between the Imperium and joining planets and the function/power of the moot

Travellerwiki links:

• Imperial Moot
• High Moot
• Charter of Arlea
• Warrant of Restoration

Additional links of interest to this topic under discussion:

• Feudal Confederation
• Imperial Law
• High Law

Quite a few of these reference points are new to me, but the Warrant of Restoration looks like the closest thing you can get to a founding document/treaty along the lines of a constitution, forming the cornerstone of constitutional law in the Third Imperium (as per the wiki page).

Is the Moot described anywhere in CT, particularly its ability to dissolve the Imperium? I thought there was something in one of the Library Data books, but other than a stray reference to "moot election" in the Emperor's List, I've got nothing.

To be excessively fair, during the run of CT these kinds of questions were quite literally out of scope of the OTU setting that was being published. It is very likely that details such as the power to dissolve the Imperium (your question) were fleshed out much later on when such issues became important (starting with MT and the fractured sunburst following the assassination of Strephon). The OTU then moved towards a new era of civil war(s) ... only to get roflstomped by Virus, followed by the Empress Wave to roflstomp whatever was left EVEN HARDER in order to bring on a new Long Night and do a (yet another) Setting Reset™.

Back when CT was being published, prior to MT, we didn't even have maps of the Core sector. It was somewhere "so far away" from all of the published locations (Spinward Marches, Solomani Rim) that how the politics of the imperial court "worked" were barely even mentioned, let alone detailed.

We knew there was an Emperor and we knew there was a Moot.
HOW they worked politically was always left quite nebulous and undefined ... mainly because no PCs were expected to ever GO THERE and find out for themselves. One of those deals where you know something is "there" but it's a case of "out of sight/out of mind" situations that no PCs (and thus, no Referees) ever needed to bother themselves with.

Anything having to do with the Emperor was "so far above PC pay grades" as to be the difference between Mere Mortals (PCs) and the Affairs Of Divinities (Emperor et al.) on completely separate planes of existence (to use the fantasy RPG tropes).

Most of what we know about the Moot was developed after CT.
If you look at the articles I've linked above, scroll down to the References & Contributors list at the bottom to see where the information is sourced from for each article. VERY VERY LITTLE of it can be traced back to CT publications, simply because the question "wasn't all that relevant" when CT was being published in the late 70s/early 80s.

Hope that helps answer the OP question.

 

[vegas]

The Emperor is an absolute monarch.
The Imperium is a feudal autocracy but just falls short of dictatorship for one reason.

The subsectror dukes.

Subsector dukes are the first tier of Imperial authority, they are granted their patents from the Emperor.

TL;DR - the emperor is the Don and dukes are made men.

So I recalled correctly; we don't see eye to eye on this.

In rebuttal:
Regarding the 3I setting,
the Third Imperium is explicitly labeled a "feudal technocracy" rather than an "absolute monarchy" or in Book 3 terms, as having a "non-charasmatic leader". We can all have our own settings and interpretations of course, but if we are going to do justice to canon, we have to give some credence to the words that were used, rather than sweep them aside and ignore them as meaningless.

Regarding the political science of monarchy,
the idea of an absolute monarch, whether in pre-modern society or among contemporary authoritarians, is a myth, a product of propaganda and the natural human tendency to reduce organizations to their leaders and the attendant hero-worship of those at the top. (An aside: humans are just like Vargr in this regard, Vargr just more so. It is a shame this lens isn't used to interrogate that species.) In reality, every monarch operates within a body politic that includes family, favorities, experts, and other powerful actors that must be balanced.

 

[Condottiere]

Absolutism is basically rule by man, as opposed to rule by law.

The way it seems structured, impersonal bureaucracy sandwiched between the Emperor and vassal states.

 

[vegas]

Not sure that is a very useful definition, condi. The absolutist governments of Europe's history included laws and used parliaments, bureaucracies, and standing armies, each with their own shifting power structures. Absolutism is one tyrant on top, where checks on the tyrant's power are pragmatic and political rather than legalistic.

 

[Condottiere]

I think the term is legalism, which the Chinese may or may not have thought of first.

In the end, or at least at the sharp end, I think it's a question of interpretation and intent of the interpreter, of customs and laws.

Not to mention, enacting laws to ensure certain outcomes favourable to the ruler.

 

[vegas]

Typologies of government are difficult, as there are multiple dimensions that must be captured: autocracy and democracy exist on a spectrum; breadth and types of both governing elites and suffrage differ; systems and methods of succession differ; Weberian sources of authority differ; institutional design differs;... it goes on and on.