Parliamentary Government

Current behavior for parliamentary-country government formation, head-of-government appointment votes, Votes of No Confidence (VONC), Confidence Motions, and the legislation freeze. It applies wherever isParliamentarySystem(config) is true: parliamentary monarchies, parliamentary republics, and one-party states. This includes the UK, Japan, Germany, Ireland, and one-party countries that seat a head of government through the shared path.

Core collections#

• governmentFormations (_id: CountryId), current government state. Key fields: status ("pending" | "formed" | "collapsed"), pmCharacterId, pmName, governingPartyId, coalitionId, coalitionPartyIds, formationType, cycle, seatsByParty, pmVacancyDeadlineTurn, collapsedAt, formedAt, formedTurn.
• pmAppointmentVotes, active / resolved PM appointment votes. 24h duration (PM_VOTE_DURATION_HOURS). Gains an isConfidenceMotion?: boolean flag in the S#17 work.
• noConfidenceVotes, active / resolved VONC docs targeting a sitting PM.

Confidence Motion#

When a lower-chamber general election resolves and the incumbent Prime Minister retained their seat, a Confidence Motion is auto-filed in the pmAppointmentVotes collection with isConfidenceMotion: true, the incumbent as nominee, and a 24h duration. The PM stays in office (gov.status remains "formed") during the motion window.

Vote resolution branches:

• Passes (votesFor > votesAgainst) → PM stays. Concurrent alternative appointment votes are cancelled by the existing "first-to-pass cancels siblings" logic.
• An alternative candidate's vote passes first during the motion window → alternative is seated via appointPrimeMinister. When the confidence motion later resolves as failed, the resolver re-reads governmentFormations; because gov is already formed under the new PM, the motion's failed branch skips the vacate.
• Fails with no alternative passed → unformGovernmentAndVacatePM fires with reason: "confidence-motion-failed". Gov goes pending, cabinet cleared, 96-turn vacancy clock re-armed, legislation freeze activates.

If the incumbent lost their seat in the election, no confidence motion is filed; the government stays formed with a seat-mismatch state until the next PM action (resignation, VONC, etc.).

NPP PMs: pmCharacterId is null for NPP-held PM seats, which means no confidence motion fires (the helper's no-incumbent guard).

Data-flow entry point: runPostElectionGovernmentPhases in src/lib/turn/countryPhases.ts2d ago → openConfidenceMotionForIncumbent + updateSeatCountsOnly (the latter refreshes cycle + seatsByParty + governingPartyId without touching PM state).

Legislation Freeze#

While governmentFormations.status === "pending" for a parliamentary country, legislation is strictly frozen:

• Route-level gates (return 400 with "Government is in formation; legislation is frozen until a PM is seated"):
  • POST /api/country/[code]/legislature/bills (bill proposal)
  • POST /api/country/[code]/legislature/cabinet-bills (cabinet bill proposal)
  • POST /api/country/[code]/legislature/cabinet-bills/[id]/vote (cabinet bill vote)
  • POST /api/country/[code]/international-organizations/[orgId]/propose-leave (propose leaving an international organization)
• Turn-phase gates: Country bill-lifecycle configs with skipWhenGovPending: true, including UK_NATIONAL_CONFIG and JP_NATIONAL_CONFIG, are skipped by src/lib/turn/billLifecycle/engine.ts9d ago while government is pending. Bills in flight stay in their current status until the freeze lifts.
• NPP path: NPP autonomous bill sponsorship (src/lib/turn/npp/billSponsorship.ts9d ago) calls isLegislationFrozen directly to skip the country during the turn loop, applying the identical rule as the HTTP gate so the two paths cannot drift apart.
• Lift is automatic: the next turn tick sees gov.status === "formed" and processes normally.

Non-parliamentary countries (US, CA) have no governmentFormations.pending state in normal play, so the freeze never applies. One-party states (DD, CN, RU) count as parliamentary for this purpose since they seat a head of government the same way, so they can be frozen too. DE (Germany) is a parliamentary country and is subject to the freeze; it is not exempt.

The shared gate helper is checkLegislationFreeze(countryId) in src/lib/api/parliamentaryFreeze.ts9d ago, which wraps the underlying rule isLegislationFrozen(db, countryId) in src/lib/government/legislationFreeze.ts9d ago.

VONC-Parallel PM Nominations#

PM appointment votes can be filed when either:

• governmentFormations.status === "pending" (classic post-election / post-collapse window), or
• governmentFormations.status === "formed" and an active VONC exists for the country (parallel-nomination window during a VONC).

Implementation: the gate in src/app/api/country/[code]/pm/appoint/route.ts10d ago checks both conditions; a 400 is returned only when neither is true.

VONC resolution interaction#

• VONC passes → incumbent removed, gov transitions to pending via unformGovernmentAndVacatePM. Parallel appointment votes keep running on their existing timers and resolve normally in the new pending window.
• VONC fails → the sitting PM survives. All active PM appointment votes for the country are cancelled (status → "cancelled", closedAt = now) and each nominee receives a notification explaining why.

Related systems#

• snap-elections.md, PM snap trigger, auto-snap deadline, dissolution slate-clearing.
• uk-pm-no-confidence.md, VONC mechanics.
• bills-legislation.md, bill lifecycle + chamber transitions.