Glastieve

Republic of Glastieve
Motto Glory to the Independent
Anthem TODO
Official language(s)	None, but English used for administrative purposes
Official religion(s)	State secularism Glastieven mythology (as a cultural tradition rather than a belief system)
Demonym	Glastieven
Government	Democratic republic led by the Cabinet of Glastieve
- Executive Councillors	Jack Ballard Will Campbell Robert Catcheside John Matthews Tom McMillan Isabella Wall
- Last election	- September 2018
Established	23 February 2017: Founding of the Glastieve Cultural Association 1 January 2018: Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Glastieve
Population	19 citizens
Currency	Luach (GLL) Pound Sterling (GBP)
Time zone	Glastieven Standard Time (GST; UTC-2 in winter and UTC-1 in summer)
National sport	Undertale (unofficial)
National dish	State Ice Cream (unofficial; triple scoop or triple cone with with mint chocolate chip, vanilla and honeycomb
National animal	Liger Peacock
http://www.glastieve.org/

Glastieve, officially the Republic of Glastieve, is a micronation-state on the Atlantic Archipelago in north-west Europe, with its non-contiguous territory considered by the wider international community to make up an integral part of the United Kingdom. Divided into four constituencies, each of which has a distinct culture and history associated with its own cultural group, Glastieve first began when Acteriendians founded the Glastieve Cultural Association in February 2017 and declared independence as the Republic of Glastieve in January 2018. Chartersville and Glastieven Manchester became constituencies in August and Northllando became one in November, with all four bringing with them their own histories and traditions.

The country is led by the directly-elected Cabinet of Glastieve, which is the national legislature and the source of executive authority. The Cabinet appoints the top-level officers of the bureaucratic central government, the Government of Glastieve. Each of the three constituencies is governed by a locally-elected constituency executive responsible for providing some public services to each constituency and representing them in the central government. The judiciary is independent and at present consists of a single court, the Central Court, which is known within Glastieve as the Murus. All citizens are automatically members of the General Assembly, which convenes once a year to perform democratic functions.

Glastieve has a traditional secessionist foreign policy, and the only non-UN members it recognises are Austenasia, Palestine and the Sahrawi Republic. The government encourages citizens to participate in the wider micronational movement, and Glastieve is sometimes recognised as part of the MicroWiki sector, where it traditionally wields a degree of soft power. Glastieven contributions to the micronational community include the economic Glastieven Model, the micropatrological theory of New Secessionism and the international journalism of The Glastieven, with other proposed community projects including the online news hub MicroNews, the satirical YouTube series Glory to the Independent, and intergovernmental organisation the Intermicronational Association.

History

Main article: History of Glastieve

Glastieven history is multifaceted, as each constituency has its own history, and stretches back several years before the modern state was created in January 2018. The name 'Glastieve' and the conception of it as a nation independent from the cultural groups that preceded it was first developed in February 2017 with the founding of the Glastieve Cultural Association, primarily by Acteriendia, although the GCA was also at times connected loosely to Glastieven Manchester and in its earliest days was associated with an association of three cultural groups called the Superstructure. The GCA did not declare independence from the UK, instead describing Glastieve as a 'domestic dependent nation', although it did participate in the MicroWiki community.

The eight-month history of the GCA is a discipline in its own right, and the nation of Glastieve was first built around the organisation, with separate entities like the Mythological Foundation growing out of a flourishing civic society and a political culture developing around the uncommon directorial model of cabinet governance without a single leader. The development of Glastieve through the GCA was driven by Acteriendia, although the cultural group and now constituency in the era of the GCA is considered separately as Glastieven Acteriendia. Despite significant successes, however, the GCA's leading figures struggled to maintain support for Glastieve within Acteriendia, leading in November 2017 to the organisation's collapse.

Shortly before the end of the GCA, however, 81% of its members voted to declare independence from the UK 'as the Republic of Glastieve'. Leading figures from the GCA created the Glastieve Planning Board to plan for the creation of a new republic based on the constituencies model, and a representative of Chartersville joined the Board to help achieve this. A largely uninterested Acteriendia mostly ignored the Planning Board and its work, although by January ill-feeling from the GCA's collapse had mostly dissipated, and eight of the constituency's nine current citizens signed a declaration of independence that created the Republic of Glastieve. This early period before the revival of the constituencies model and the creation of the modern republic is often called "Acteriendian independence".

Acteriendian independence

The Republic of Glastieve declared independence on 1 January 2019, with eight of the nine current citizens of Acteriendia signing the declaration of independence and becoming citizens. Joe Bradstreet, now the constituency co-ordinator of Chartersville, also signed the declaration and became a citizen, promising that he would soon encourage other members of Chartersville to join the constituency as citizens. For the first few weeks, the new republic was based on the constituencies model and official literature made extensive references to Chartersville and its equal importance to the republic. Over the course of January, however, this faded away as Bradstreet mostly ignored Glastieve, and by the end of the month all official support or references to the constituencies model had been completely dropped.

Traditionally, the period of Acteriendian independence is subdivided into shorter periods: the Vernal Period from either 1 January or 23 March to late May, and the Quayside Period from late May to mid-August. There is a gap in the recorded history of the early republic between 1 January and 21 March; the end of this gap coincides roughly with the launch of the Second Phase Initiative on 23 March, which led to the total restructure of the state away from a GCA-like model into the basis of the system used today. Sometimes, therefore, the poorly-recorded period before the SPhI, characterised by the Acteriendia and New Secessionism Crisis and a different system of government to subsequent periods of of Glastieven history, is considered as a subdivision in its own right, called the Revived GCA Period or the Crisis Period.

Very little of importance in the early republic was properly codified or reliant on legislation. The declaration of independence did not define the physical territory of the republic; the Planning Board had intended for 'North Dartmoor' (roughly equivalent to present-day Glastieve) and 'the Campsie Fells' (a hilly region in Scotland) to be the territories of Acteriendia and Chartersville respectively, and these rough descriptions of the claims were used officially for the next few weeks. Whilst codified through flow diagrams and an encyclopaedia article, the Planning Board's system of government was not legally defined, and the GCA's conventions were used to fill in the gaps, giving significant undefined power to the Planning Board's members, who were broadly the same as the GCA's elite.

As such, from the beginning the new republic was seen by ordinary Acteriendians as a revival of the GCA, and was very much dominated politically by Robert Catcheside, Tom McMillan and Will Campbell. This left the politics of the new republic exceptionally vulnerable to the negative effects of a significant disagreement between these three individuals, and about a week into January such a disagreement over the relationship between the nation and the cultural group grew into a national split and period of instability and controversy, known as the Acteriendia and New Secessionism Crisis, or just the Crisis. Broadly speaking, the dispute was between two groups: the Acteriendian Seccessionists and the anti-Glastievens, who disagreed on the actual and best possible relationship between Glastieve and Acteriendia.

From the perspective of the Acteriendian Secessionists, the Crisis was a dispute between secessionism and simulationism: the Acteriendian Secessionists endorsed a Glastieven variation of New Secessionism and saw the declaration of independence as a mandate to engage in meaningful governance; the anti-Glastievens wanted Glastieve to exist as a standalone model country project without any connection to an organic culture or nation, aimed to end the use of the flag and name of Glastieve outside of activities connected with hobby micronationalism, and believed that only those enthusiastic about enaging with this micronationalism should hold citizenship, essentially leaving Glastieve as a simulationist model country and returning Acteriendia to the position it held before February 2017.

From the perspective of the anti-Glastievens, it was a dispute over the fundamental nature of cultural groups. Catcheside and Matthews, who used the term 'friendship group', argued that friendship groups and micronations were entirely different in character, and that it destroyed the former to try to force it to conform to the expectations of the latter. They refused to directly attack New or Acteriendian Secessionism on an ideological level as they felt the whole idea of ideological exploration of friendship/cultural groups was a fallacy that tried to force politics on to a fundamentally disorganised structure. This was also the basis of the claim that the GCA had 'caused' controversies: the politicisation of disputes legitimised them and 'stifled' the organic nature of their natural resolution, they claimed.

Following the resolution of the Acteriendia and New Seccessionism Crisis in mid-February, the government of the republic was in essentially the same position that the GCA had been in before Project Zeta: the country was led by the Cabinet, which was composed of ministers who took responsibility for a certain field and officially led one- or two-person 'departments'. Little is known about the state of civic society in this period, although literature from the early Vernal Period in late March talks about the recovery and growth of the cultural group. the next major event in Glastieven history was the Second Phase Initiative (SPhI), publicised on 23 March, which established the present-day model for the central government, replacing Cabinet ministers with Executive Councillors and separating the Cabinet and government.

Contemporary period

In November 2018, Northllando joined Glastieve through the Northllando Act 2018. The Northllando Act made provision for the consitituency to have a highly organised local government structure with both an elected constituency council and an appointed constituency executive, as had been proposed for Glastieven Manchester before its representatives in the Expansion Committee had rejected the idea; the intention was for all future constituencies to have variations on this structure and to be integrated through written legislation that governed local politics. The six-person constituency was led by Charlotte Sutton, who joined the Cabinet and central government on the same day as the constituency was integrated.

Politics

Main articles: Politics of Glastieve and Foreign relations of Glastieve

Governance

Glastieve is governed under a directorial system with no head of state. The central administration is led by the Cabinet of Glastieve, which is elected once every three years at the General Assembly of Glastieve, and

Law

Irishman's Wall, where the Murus (the Central Court of Glastieve) convenes. The wall itself is often used as a symbol of justice or the judicature in Glastieve, like the Supreme Court building in the United States or the Old Bailey in the United Kingdom.

Glastieve has a common law system based on English law with some references to Scots law. Governed under an uncodified constitution, there is no supreme law in Glastieve, although works on aspects of the constitution, such as William Allen's unfinished Law of Glastieve or government white papers, are sometimes referenced as authoritative. In addition, the Public Administration Act is sometimes viewed as a constitutional document, although it can be amended by the Cabinet like any other Act and only governs the interactions between various branches of government.

Legislation is not the only source of law in Glastieve, as customs and conventions can also be binding provided that they do not contradict statute law. The traditional customs of cultural groups that become consituencies are also recognised as consuetudinary law. In order to ensure calm relations with the United Kingdom, the Murus also recognises under this principle the law of the UK as Glastieven law except where it comes into conflict with legislation or custom; it is held that as the law of the UK was recognised as binding by the pre-Glasteiven cultural groups that became constituencies (opinio juris), it makes up part of the same consuetudinary law.

According to the government's Communications and Logistics Executive, there are five sources of law that the Murus would be expected to consider, in the following order of precedence:

• Primary legislation, enacted by the Cabinet of Glastieve;
• Secondary legislation, enacted by constituency councils (in Acteriendia, this includes the English stannary law);
• Case law, which refers to the precedent set by previous decisions made by the Murus;
• Constitutional conventions, which it was established in Campbell vs McMillan can be derived from the GCA; and
• General customs, which includes the consuetudinary law of cultural groups before they became constituencies and any laws of the United Kingdom.

The Central Court of Glastieve, known in formal and informal contexts as the Murus, is the supreme court in Glastieve and hears both criminal and civil cases either at its venue at Irishman's Wall or over Facebook Messenger. At present, the Central Court is the only judicial tribunal in Glastieve, although it has been proposed that constituencies could choose to establish their own courts with a right of appeal to the Central Court and judges appointed by the constituency councils.

Geography

Main article: Geography of Glastieve

Economy

Tom McMillan panning for tin to be sold commercially at the Vexsol extraction point of the Ivy Tor Tin Mine.

Main article: Economy of Glastieve

Glastieve has a market economy based on a modified version of the Glastieven Model, an economic system for micronation-states first proposed in April 2017. The currency of Glastieve is the Luach, a name which dates back to February 2017 and means "value" in the Irish language. Both private sector companies and state-run enterprises exist in Glastieve, although state-run enterprises are generally used only to finance the Government or to finance the import of goods that would otherwise cost Pounds Sterling into the Luach-based domestic economy. All private companies in Glastieve describe themselves as either partnerships, individual ventures or workers' co-operatives, although as each only has between one and three staff members, the only practical difference is in whether or not they are able to sell shares. The economy of Glastieve incorporates all three sectors: the extraction of raw materials (primary) through tin and clay extraction, manufacturing (secondary) through the working of extracted tin and the production and sale of some food products and jewellery, and services (tertiary) through a wide variety of services paid for in Luach.

The market economy of Glastieve is broadly describable as a market socialist system, although can also be considered a micronational adaptation of capitalism that incorporates the left-wing views held by the vast majority of ECs. The the majority of companies are simply individual venturers or partnerships where all "workers" involved own the means of production and equally share profits, although there is also stock exchange (the Crockern Tor Stock Exchange), where some of these businesses are listed. Bonds are traded on the same exchange, and there is a private-sector casino. There are other examples of what can appear to be a discordant blending of the two systems that results from the small scale of the micronation, the desire to emulate the economy of the United Kingdom, and the peculiarities of the Glastieven Model. Support for systems that mix left-wing and right-wing ideas to create a functional (that is, not merely simulated) market economy in a micronation is sometimes referred to as Glastievenism.

Market and currency

Interpreted through the lens of the Glastieven Model, the Glastieven economy can be divided into four sectors: the three pillars, and the reliant sector. The first pillar represents the market value of the Luach, with a key feature of the economy being the free-floating value of the currency (as opposed to its being assigned such a random or desired value, as is a common practice in other micronation-states). The Government's role in helping to maintain this value is to promote reciprocity in the economy by adjusting public service salaries and levying taxes to ensure that citizens spend all that they receive. The second pillar of the strategy relates to supply-and-demand: the underlying basis of the Glastieven economy is that the Luach's value derives from its usefulness as a unit of account and medium of exchange for transactions that would ordinarily be both gift-based and reciprocal. The third pillar of the economy is the state's interaction with the wider British economy, through investment and fundraising events.

The reliant sector is an umbrella term for other transactions that take place in Luach, including the buying and selling of goods imported from the United Kingdom or the exchange of financial securities, such as stocks or bonds. The value assigned to the Luach through the first and second pillars and the introduction of assets into the economy that would cost Pounds Sterling facilitated by the third pillar allow for the reliant sector to exist. Primary industry in Glastieve, such as tin mining, generally contributes to the third pillar and not to the domestic economy, although on the occasions where Glastieven-made goods are sold using Luach rather than Punds Sterling this is included in the reliant sector, as the fact of the Luach having sufficient practical value to be considered a reasonable payment for these goods is still due to the first and second pillars.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Glastieve

Internet presence

www.glastieve.org, the official government website.

As a micronation-state without international recognition, Glastieve has no country-code top-level domain and unlike some other micronations does not use a substitute ccTLD, such as .gl (Greenland) or .gs (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands); Government guidelines advise that businesses should aim to use neutral TLDs, such as .net, .com or .org, and should try to have their own web domain. The Government itself and The Glastieven, a newspaper, both follow these guidelines and use www.glastieve.org and theglastieven.com. Other companies, such as the Isotoniae Corporation, however, use free website builders that force the site to have domains such as .wixsite.com or .wordpress.org, including for internationally-facing sites like that of the Crockern Tor Stock Exchange.

The government owns and moderates two chatrooms for Glastieven use on Facebook Messenger, the Glastieven Lounge and the Grassy Hillside Club (Glasteive is a combination of the Anglicised placename elements glass and tieve, which are derived from the Irish glas and taobh that together mean grassy hillside). The Club is loosely-regulated, but in the Lounge the use of standard English is required. Theoretically, non-citizens are allowed to be members of these chatrooms, but on the rare occasions where citizens have had their citizenship rescinded this has coincided with a ban from the chatrooms. Internally, the government has a Slack workspace used for discussion and official communications.

Culture

Main article: Culture of Glastieve

Glastieven culture is a blend of that native to the region of Dartmoor before independence and the cultural group Acteriendia, which has existed in some form since 2014.

Literature

William Crossing (1847-1928), Eden Phillpots (1862-1960) and Beatrice Chase (1874-1955)

Mythology

Glastieven mythology, which came to Glastieve through Acteriendia, is older than the cultural group itself, with an early version of the BHH Cycle from which the rest developed having first developed in a recognisable form some time in 2012. Since independence, the Acteriendian mythological tradition has started to absorb and be influenced by the otherwise largely distinct folklore associated with the region of Dartmoor.

External links

• http://www.glastieve.org/ - the official Government website, branded as "www.glastieve.org"
• http://www.theglastieven.com/ - the website of The Glastieven, the country's main newspaper