Leadership Committee

At the top level, the MSY is organized around two main ruling committees, the Rules Committee and the Leadership Committee, which form the Legislature and Executive, respectively. In contrast to the expansive nature of the Rules Committee, which has nearly five hundred members, the Leadership Committee is much smaller, numbering only thirty—a number that may increase or decrease with the approval of the Rules Committee. These members are elected by the entire MSY membership from a slate of potential members every five years.

Members are organized into three ceremonial tiers: the Executives, the Second Executives—generally reserved only for Founders—and the First Executive. The First Executive serves as the chairman, calling meetings, setting agendas, and so forth. Other roles of note are the Secretary and the Logistics Coordinator. In its entire history, the First Executive title has only been held by Akemi Homura; upon her disappearance, the office was declared permanently vacated, and its powers diffused among the other members. Technically, she still holds office, posthumously, and the position is officially hers alone.

Members of the Leadership Committee without specialized Committee roles generally serve prominent roles within the Bureaucracy, as either Division Heads or other specialized roles. Tomoe Mami is, for instance, Special Liaison with the Armed Forces and Kuroi Kana serves as the Commanding General and Director of the Black Heart.

The Executive consists of both the Leadership Committee and Bureaucracy. The latter is organized into Divisions, whose individual mandates and resource allocations are handed down by the Rules Committee, but who are otherwise allowed to operate mostly independently. [A non-exhaustive listing of MSY Divisions: Finance, Science, Soul Guard, Governmental Affairs, Logistics and Grief Cubes, Elections and Representation, Legal Affairs, Mental Health, Internal Media and Public Relations]

One notable feature of both committees is the relatively invariant membership, especially in the Leadership Committee, where many of the same faces can be seen year after year from the beginning of the system all the way to the present time. This occurs primarily because of the nature of elections: voters select a list of committee members equal to the number of open positions from a list of candidates, and the top vote-getters receive the positions. While there is some churn among the less prominent candidates, candidates such as Tomoe Mami, Kuroi Kana, Odette François, and so forth can count on the near-certainty of receiving seats, based on name recognition and incumbency alone.

This kind of consistent leadership gives the MSY considerable institutional stability, a feature which has served it well in the turbulent periods of its history. It, however, engenders considerable concern about concentration of power and institutional ossification, a worry that manifests itself in occasional grassroots movements to replace the top Committee members. But while such movements sometimes succeed in temporarily removing some of the less popular members, they have never managed to remove the true fixtures of the Leadership Committee, people like Sakura Kyouko and Chitose Yuma, who usually have their own cults of personality. Removing Akemi Homura would have been unimaginable.

Legislation is passed in a manner that would be familiar to students of the Modern Era democracies. Majority approval by both Committees enacts legislation; a two-thirds vote of the Rules Committee is sufficient to enact regardless of the opinion of the Leadership Committee, though both the “Veto” and “Veto Override” are exceedingly rare. The First Executive (and later, the Secretary) also personally signs legislation, attaching a signing statement approved by the Leadership Committee, which directs implementation.

The MSY Charter stipulates a wide variety of conditions, including of course Charter amendment, under which legislation must be forwarded to a referendum of the membership. Either of the two Committees may also voluntarily submit legislation to referendum, a practice that is usually employed when a piece of law is felt to be controversial and the government is desirous of a majority mandate. Technically, either Committee may force such a referendum without the approval of the other, but this is rarely done.

The referendum is arguably the MSY’s most democratic feature, and it has been employed far more successfully than similar features in previous democratic societies. It is commonly argued that this success is reflective of MSY’s older, more experienced membership, much of which is well into their second, third, or even fourth century. It is also often pointed out that the newest members rarely vote.

Early Years[edit]

Charterized in 2031, the Leadership Committee was formed due to the increasing unwieldiness of decision-making that required being discussed by the entire membership. Ultimate authority would still lay completely within the hands of the full membership, which could be summoned to meet any time deemed necessary, the day-by-day decision-making of the MSY was to be handled by the Leadership Committee. At it's inception simply being made up of prominent girls within the organization

In 2044, by a modification of the Charter was the Leadership Committee given the executive power to create formal MSY sub-organizations, starting with the foundation of the Soul Guard in the same year (Detailed in La Fondazione della Guardia di Anima, by picardyThird). After this proof-of-concept, there was a ballooning of the number of executive committees and organizations, with, for example, the ever important Mental Health Division, or MHD.

This early on in its existence, the Leadership Committee lacked a clear institutional and legal structure, being made up of whatever girls with enough repetation were willing to the job. The major Charter rewrite of 2059 would change this structural dysfunctionality and give the Committee a clear structure.

Membership[edit]

Known members of the Leadership Committee (2460) include:

Tomoe Mami, Second Executive, MSY Founder, aswell as the title of Chairman, making her the de-facto highest ranking member within the Committee.

Sakura Kyouko, Second Executive, MSY Founder.

Chitose Yuma, Second Executive, MSY Founder.

Kuroi Kana, Executive, MSY Founder.

Clarisse van Rossum, Executive.

Shizuki Sayaka, Executive.

Odette François, Executive.

Mohana Bachchan, Executive.

Mila Brankovic, Executive.

Other notable people that are likely sitting or has sat on the Leadership Committee would include Founders Chiyo Rika and Tanaka Yui.

Meeting Room[edit]

The Leadership Committee is said to house their (mostly virtual) meetings within the Crown Room. The physical Crown Room being situated audaciously at the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in Mitakihara. The room was surrounded by panoramic windows and a fully transparent ceiling, all of it tunable to control the amount of light that poured into the room—or to provide other views entirely, if preferred. The center of the room was dominated by an imposing mahogany meeting table, carved out of a single piece of giant wood, and flanked by comfortable leather chairs.