Professor Wayne King-Meiouf of the University of ProximaWhile on Dino-Land for a business trip i have been able to experience at first hand the mysterious world of Dino politics. Democracy is a fairly recent innovation for the Dinos who were led by a line of Emperors for centuries until the establishment of the Dino Republic by Ronald a few years ago.
Then for the first time the leaders of the state (2 Consuls) were elected. However democracy is still limited, the decisions are really taken by the Senate (the Consuls mostly being Senators with a few extra perks like power of veto) and the Senate are unelected.
There is an Assembly at a lower level in each Dino province though the link between these and the Senate is fairly limited. The Dinos seem to like leaving the mundane every day job of running the planet and the job of running the Republic to separate spheres. Each Senator has a minister role and officially runs a ministry feeding into the Assemblies but in reality the ministers only interest themselves in high-level decisions such as which alien civilisation to fight next while the Assemblies and the ministry workers get on with everything else. The only real consideration the Assemblies have with new legislation and governing is to apply a simple rule to everything they do : if it would make Ronald angry then don't do it.
Thus Assemblies have vast powers and can get away with so much as long as they obey that simple rule. This i think satisfies the Dino population who do not then mind not being able to vote for their Senators, in any event the Senate is more like a group of rock stars to your average Dino than politicians (and being Dino of course its ear splittingly awful Dino death metal - honestly do they not listen to anything else?!)
For most aspects of their lives the Dinos have a democratically accountable Assembly, for everything else they leave in the hands of demi-gods (or in Ronald's case an actual god). And it they don't like it then some gentlemen from the SS will be around for a chat... dissent is not tolerated here much actually.
Its a mysterious system that seems to mix democracy, fascism, authoritarianism, theocracy and celeb watching in equal measure. Somehow it works.
