In Particracy, your party’s identity won’t just be a number in your country’s parliament. You’ll be able to actively construct your party’s campaign profile, and build your team of politicians. Your party’s politicians will have a name, personal traits to specify their strengths and weaknesses, and will grow old and retire at some point. You’ll be able to track their progress through the legislative and executive careers as you appoint them to high office or run them in elections.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.Charles de Gaulle

Your politicians will have a home in one of your nations’ territories, so that if they run in an election there, they’ll get a small bonus from the locals. They’ll belong to a particular ethnic and religious background, and if your country has significant tensions in those areas (representing for instance a separatist sentiment), that may matter too.

In addition to their background, politicians will have a date of birth, and will age as time goes on, so at some point they may retire or pass away. You’ll be able to recruit fresh faces to your party, of course. The complete picture about recruitment hasn’t been worked out yet, as it’s going to be tricky to balance it just right, but your party’s standing in terms of how much power it has will give you a bonus in how many politicians you can recruit.

They’ll also have a personality, expressed by three traits: Integrity, Expertise and Charisma. These match the three pillars of the election and campaigning mechanisms: Ideology, Governance and Populism (all these names may not be final yet). The first depends on how well your party matches ideologically to the voters, the second judges how well country has been administered by those in power and the last is influenced by how likable your politicians or your party is. You have some influence over the balance between these three factors, by shifting the emphasis of these three factors. Of course, if you make one more important, the others become less important proportionally, so it’s up to you try and find how to best present your party to the virtual electorate.

The main use of your politicians will be to assign them to elected or appointed offices, including the head of state (e.g. a President), cabinet ministers, representatives in the legislatures, and even ambassadors to foreign nations. The politicians will learn on the job, so appointing them to office will offer them an opportunity to train their expertise, which will in turn have an impact on how well that job is done. For instance, an experienced Minister of Finance will result in a lower tax evasion rate, providing more tax revenue for the government.

I also envision a system of party actions, where you can instruct your politicians to participate in a certain event. This could be a campaign meeting, a fundraiser, or even an attempt to coax another party’s politician into joining your party. All of these need an appropriate balance of risk and reward, of course, and failing at such a task could have significant impact on your party.

Even in countries with a monarchy, rather than an elected head of state, the king or queen and the royal family will be represented as (non-political) individuals, with rules of succession and all that.