Influenced decision

Influenced decision (Lithuanian: įtakojamasis sprendimas) in the law of the Republic of the Two Crowns means such a decision of more than one of the houses of the Sejm and/or the local (provincial) sejms where all the legislatures vote separately and the final outcome of each of the voting is added up to the total after multiplying it from the influence indicator.

Influenced decision is the required form of decision to change many laws - mainly laws that concern only one country or province, but are considered to be so important to the general order of the RTC that it is believed that a consent of the other country or the nearby provinces is required to pass the decision.

Implementation

When the bills that require influenced decision are being considered in some legislature, the legislatures that have influensive power are informed. All the legislatures vote on the bill at the same day and the members of each legislature are not informed about the decision of others until their legislature votes on the issue.

Depending on the law that is being changed, each legislature has a pre-attributed influence indicator. For example, if one country (Veneda or Lithuania) would want to delegate additional infrastructure-related powers to its provinces, the sejm of that country would have an influence indicator of 66.(6)% for that decition, while the sejm of the other country - 33.(3)%. This means that in case all the members of parliament (100%) in the first country votes in favor of the bill and all the members of parliament in the another country votes against it, it will be considered that the bill is passed on 66.(6)% votes against 33.(3)% of votes. Therefore, under this influence indicator, in order to pass the decision, if all the MPs of the second country votes in favor, at least 25%+1 MPs of the first country needs to vote in favour, while if none of the second country MPs votes in favour at least 75%+1 MPs of the first country needs to vote in favour in order to pass the bill. Such situations that everybody in sejm would vote either in favour or against the bill are very rare however. The influence indicators varies (between 15% and 50%) depending on how much perceived influence the bill has over another country (or province, or the jurisdiction).

In some cases legislatures of different levels (for example the country sejm and one of its provincial sejms) votes on a single issue on the basis of influenced decision. More than two legislatures may be required to vote on a single decision on the basis of influence as well.

The side that has influence rating of over 50% is generally known as the main legislature, while the legislatures with lower influence ratings are called influencing legislatures for that particular decision. The main legislature is in many cases the only legislature that can draw bills for particular influenced decision. In some particular cases the influenced decision cannot be considered passed if it is disapproved by the main legislature even if after counting the percentages it is found that overal voting was over 50%. When issues concerns more than two legislatures it might be so that there are more than one major and influencing legislatures. In this case the influence indicators of the same level legislatures are divided into several equal parts (or according to other means if the law requires that). For example if three provinces would want to pass some law that naturally requires influence of country sejm at 33.(3)% influence indicator, each of the provinces would have 22.(2)% influence indicator (66.(6)% / 3) and the country sejm would still have 33.(3)%. In this case the provincial sejms would still be considered major legislatures, despite of the fact that each of these legislatures would have smaller influence indicator than the influencing legislature (country sejm). In this case if these three provinces would be in two different countries and the Lithuanian and Venedic law would not differ over the issue, the influence indicators for the country sejms would be counted according to the number of provinces in concern in each country. For example, if two of the provinces would be in Lithuania and one in Veneda the sejm of Lithuania would have an influence indicator of 22.(2)% and the sejm of Veneda - 11.(1)% (while the provincial sejms would still have influence indicators of 22.(2)% each).

Where the influence indicators for all sides are equal (e.g. 50% and 50%) it still may be so that one side is considered to be the major legislature by law. In some other cases however both legislatures are called major legislatures in such situations.

History

This concept was created when the RTC was reestablished after the Second Great War. Other suggestions were to apply the typical concept where a consent of all the houses of parliament are required to pass the bill (this concept, known as "United decision", is also applied to some particular bills). However, this was opposed by many people as both Veneds and Lithuanians seen it to be a breach of a sovereignty of their nation that a parliament of another country could overturn decisions of their parliament. But it was agreed however that some system of consent is needed, as otherwise both countries would drift away from each other. Therefore the concept of influenced decision was developed. This concept generally permits a country to pass a bill that is not supported in the other country, but only if the support for the bill in the passing country is large enough or the opinion against the bill in the other country is relatively weak.

The decition in the famous Sejm of Lithuania vs. Sejm of Vilnija case of 1986 established that it is unconstitutional to vote on so-called "pre-decisions" in case of influenced decision. Pre-decisions was a popular practice in Vilnija (and to a lesser extent elsewhere) by mid 80s where the sejm of was voting on a law which would make every MP vote in some partiicular way in an upcoming voting for an influenced decision. That is if 50%+1 MPs of the sejm in question would vote in support of such a law in pre-decision phase, all the MPs of the sejm would be forced to vote for that law during the voting for influenced decision. This meant that the opinion of the majority of the sejm, even if that majority is fragile, would have a much stronger power during the influenced decision. After the said decision of the court however this practice waned.

This page was created by Abdul-aziz.