The Legend of Korra

Shouldn't Raiko be out of office soon? He's been president for, what, five years? How long is his term anyway?

I think there's an upcoming election. We see him dismissing some campaign posters that show a shirtless swole version of himself punching out Kuvira's robot. He's unopposed currently but I feel that it might be a plot point that someone runs against him.

I feel like Raiko got flanderized over time from a small minded if competent bureaucrat into a total joke.

I do hope the comic ends with someone better as president. It'd be irritating if he's opposed by some villain to whom Raiko is seen as the better alternative. Though granted, the state of world politics right now does make you more appreciative of the likes of Raiko.

Run for office, Asami

Raiko: yet another wasted opportunity.

That's a terrible campaign slogan

Eh, I guess they could have made better use of Raiko, but in a series already stuffed with characters, the Reasonable Authority Figure politician is hardly the highest priority.

It would have been less of a moral excuse for Korra to take quick (angry) action; if she ever complains that her sort-of boss is incompetent she's more or less right.

Yeah, Raiko's one of those characters that serviced the plot as much as he needed to. We already had more interesting world leaders to focus on like Tenzin and Suyin and to a much lesser extent, Kuvira, Unalaq and the Earth Que-...okay, nevermind.

I wonder who could take his place, though. Lin, maybe?

edited 9th Dec '17 3:54:15 PM by deuteragonist

The political status of Republic City is an enduring yet evolving mystery

It's ruled by a council from the Four Nations except it apparently gets independence due to the Equalist uprising and gets its own president

Also it has its own military but also sometimes borrows the Fire Nation's

That last one is easy to explain—just look at Japan. They have the JSDF, but America has a strong military presence in the country, and helps with anything that actually requires the use of force. If Japan was invaded, America would be shouldering the bulk of the burden. Presumably Republic City has a similar alliance with the Fire Nation, since they were originally a Fire Nation colony.

If the show did a better job of explaining the whole political situation with Republic C Ity in Book 1 given Amon's focus on the lack of nonbending politicians and the like, then maybe Raiko would've had a stronger foundation to stand on.

The political history of the United Republic is a fascinating topic that doesn't come up nearly enough in fandom discussions about the show.

In the comic books, we find out that the United Republic is essentially Avatar Aang's personal political reconciliation project. The Fire Nation colonies established in the Earth Kingdom grew into such a problem with their stubborn insistence that they remain independent that Aang threw up his hands and went, “Fuck it! We don’t know how to deal with this. Let’s just set them up as their own nation and then it’ll be their problem! They’ll be independent, so whatever shit they have to deal with won’t be any of our business.”

Point is, I doubt much thought was put into designing it's political institutions. Case in point, the five-seat Council. Right off the bat, the Water Tribes get two seats in it despite them being, as we find out from Unalaq in Season 2, a single political entity with a single sovereign ruler. The United Republic also apparently has no kind of separation of powers. There does not appear to be any sort of distinction between executive, legislative and judicial branches, as in the Aang flashbacks we see the Council deciding on matters of law, public policy and judicial sentencing. And then there's Tenzin. This point has been brought up before, I'm sure, but it bears repeating- just who is he supposed to represent? If the ruling body of the United Republic is split along Four Nation lines, with each council member representing the citizens of their nation living within the UR, then Tenzin's constituency consists entirely of his immediate family. And yet, he still gets one vote in the Council- Tenzin wields a full 20% of the power afforded to the United Republic's highest governing body and the constituency he is supposed to wield that power in the benefit of consists of less than 10 people.

Absurdities like this positively abound, and extend even to simple things such as the name of the country. The United Republic of Nations is just weird and sounds awkward- and more than that, it's a misnomer. The UR isn't a republic, or at least it wasn't until Raiko became it's first democratically elected president. They should have called it the United Oligarchy, with a small group of 5 unelected foreign dignitaries deciding on all matters of state.

To this day I'm unsure if all of this was deliberate, or if Bryke/whoever was responsible for coming up with this slept through all their High School civics classes.

Anyway, interesting video about Zaheer:

The video goes pretty in-depth. I think this might provoke some interesting discussion since despite being one of the better villains in the show, everyone seems to constantly shit on his motivations.

edited 15th Dec '17 7:00:25 AM by Gault

I doubt that much thought was put into Republic City's political structure. It's clearly not one of the show's strengths.

Technically, a Republic can signify any nation whose rule is non-hereditary. Electing a parliament or president isn't a requirement, hence why People's Republic of Tyranny is a trope.

I don't remember the URN ever just "borrowing" the Fire Nation military. They got military assistance from the Fire Nation in the book four finale, but only after bargaining with the Fire Lord for it, and they didn't even get the forces they wanted. More puzzling is the fact that a prince of the Fire Nation is a General in what appears to the UNR army, though.

I get the impression that before season two, the United Republic was essentially a neutral territory jointly governed by the other nations for diplomatic purposes, sort of like if the United Nations had their own country. With the change of government between seasons one and two, it moved toward simply being an independent country with its own self-rule. It's not really that difficult to wrap your head around.

As for the alleged overrepresentation of the Water tribe... well, it's strongly indicated that before season two, the two tribes were one sovereign nation In Name Only. Given how badly everyone reacts to Unalaq trying to enact his power in the Southern Water Tribe, the implication seems to be that the Northern Chief is something like a ceremonial head of state to the Southern Water Tribe, but one who traditionally doesn't interfere with their governance. I imagine it's like if the Queen of Britain suddenly started meddling in the politics of Canada or Australia; it's just not something she's supposed to do.

Weird thing is, though, that the South had its own chief in ATLA, and Tenzin makes an offhand mention in season three of Sokka becoming chief in the south — at a time after Korra's birth, when her grandfather was chief of the north, meaning that until very recently both tribes had their own chief. The real question is, why does the South no longer have its own chief by the time of the series?

edited 15th Dec '17 8:21:55 AM by DrDougsh

That video made a pretty convincing argument for some of anarchy's benefits, but it does not discuss some of its greatest drawbacks.

The main one is, how do you preserve individual freedom if you have no institutions, particularly one of law and order, to guarantee that freedom? How do you prevent the right to be free from devolving into the right of the strongest to be free? The individual freedom anarchism strives for is only possible when individuals live in a social vacuum.

And then of course there are the more practical questions of who is going to pave the roads and pay for healthcare and collect the garbage. Anything above the most basic hunter-gatherer society needs some sort of overarching structure to make society run smoothly, in other words, some form of institution.

Anarchy is the larval stage of feudalism. It is not a system of governance but, instead, the absence of a system of governance. It lasts only for as long as it takes for rudimentary states to form around the individuals or groups with the most and/or best resources, the willingness and ability to take and control resources, or both.

edited 15th Dec '17 3:33:57 PM by TobiasDrake

Left-anarchy such as anarcho-syndicalism doesn't advocate for no government so much as non-hierarchical societal organization, so I imagine they would still have institutions capable of doing those things. I don't think it's actually been pulled off outside of cooperatives or local cities and the like though. Nothing as far ranging as an entire nation or city that's for sure.

Hakoda was only chief of his village and presumably Sokka too was not chief of the entire tribe either. Before Tonraq became the first appointed chief of the Southern Water Tribe the nation as a whole was apparently governed by a council of elders.

edited 15th Dec '17 3:55:57 PM by lycropath

Doesn't seem like a ton of thought was put into Republic City's government, no, again going back to them not knowing if they'd get more than one season while also knowing that they were going to blow it up by the end of that season. But they could've explained it after the fact, if they'd wanted. There are four Nations, in theory, but in practice, the Earth Kingdom is a lot more diverse and fractious, the Fire Nation is more monolithic thanks to the their hundred years of empire, but either one seems a lot more powerful than both Water Tribes put together. I could imagine the Southern Water Tribe and Air Nomads getting honourary seats as part of reparations for the war. Tenzin's also pretty clearly there for the sake of continuity with the the Avatar *and* the Air Nomads— there may not be many of them, but memorializing them in this way provides the side benefit of hopefully preventing any one nation from creating a voting bloc.

"What if the UN Emergency Council ran a city" is the basic idea, here. But despite technology advancing incredibly rapidly, Avatar World is at a much more rudimentary stage in developing democracy. It doesn't really seem like any part of this world ever really had that, even before the Hundred Year War, so their ideas of how to run a free society are a little formative.

Same goes for Zaheer, really. He's an intelligent man, but what he's trying to do is unprecedented, especially at the scale at which he's attempting it. He's seen that people are willing to fight for their freedom, but he assumes that they're as willing as he is to keep fighting for it day after day, that they view it as a good unto itself, like he does. Hence Kuvira, because while people might prefer freedom to the life of a serf or slave, they want comfort and security even more. And so the cycle continues.

I'm sympathetic to what Zaheer wants to achieve. His mistake is assuming that people are better than they are. Also all the murder and terror.

edited 15th Dec '17 10:29:10 PM by Unsung

The last ATLA comic, North and South, explicitly states that the Southern water tribe was more of a council of tribal leaders, with no single head of the entire South, but one was appointed after the war ended.

That makes sense. Adds another layer to why none of the other villages moved all the kids and Gran Gran out of the village or moved in themselves, if they were all pretty isolated and equally under threat from the Fire Nation.

Any point Zaheer had was undermined by him being a terrorist who is willing to murder children to get what he wants. Remember that the whole reason Korra spent most of her life secluded in a compound was because the Red Lotus tried to enact their "kill the Avatar" scheme when she was a child.

Zaheer's a clear "ends justify the means" guy, but I can appreciate him as well executed even if I disagree with both. He doesn't act inconsistently, basically, which is key for this sort of character to work properly. The part where Korra meets him in the spirit world in Book 3 is one of my favourite Lo K scenes.