One-Party States

Some countries in A House Divided are one-party states — regimes where a single party (the ruling party) controls government formation, executive offices, and legislative direction, while other parties may exist in tolerated or banned forms. China (CN) is the first country modelled this way; the system is generic and any country whose governmentType is "onePartyState" follows the same rules.

The three party tiers

Each party in a one-party state carries a regime status that determines what it can and cannot do:

Tier	Color	Who	What they can do
Ruling	Green	The single party in government (CN: CCP)	Everything — forms government, fields executive candidates, proposes/votes on bills, invites coalitions, accepts donations, holds cabinet
Approved	Yellow	Tolerated minor parties (CN: CDL, CNDCA)	Hold seats, run candidates for legislative offices, propose/vote on bills, accept donations, sit on cabinet — but cannot form government or field executive candidates
Banned	Red	Outlawed parties (CN: none seeded; player-created NPPs land here)	Nothing. Cannot field candidates, propose or vote on bills, accept donations, or hold cabinet. Existing seats are vacated immediately when status flips to banned.

The badge next to a party's abbreviation on its profile and on the parties list shows which tier it belongs to.

What a one-party state changes

Compared to a parliamentary democracy, several mechanics work differently:

Government formation: only the ruling party can form government. Coalition-loss does not collapse the government — the ruling party keeps its mandate through internal confidence (see below), not through legislative majorities.
VONC (vote of no confidence): only the ruling party may initiate one. In CN, the standard VONC mechanism is disabled entirely (confidenceVoteMechanism: false) so the gate is effectively never hit.
Coalitions: only the ruling party may create, invite, or join a coalition. Banned parties are barred from any coalition role.
Snap elections: not available (supportsSnapElections defaults to false for one-party states).
Cabinet: members of banned parties cannot be appointed.
Executive offices (Premier in CN): only the ruling party may field a candidate.

Player parties (NPPs)

When a player creates a new party (an NPP) in a one-party state, the new party is automatically marked banned at ratification time. The charter detail page surfaces a clear explanation panel after the third signature lands, describing what the new party can and cannot do.

A banned party can be promoted to Approved by a game administrator or — once the regime is under pressure — by the ruling leader through the selective-concession liberalization reform (see below), which picks a specific banned party to legalize.

The regime-legitimacy model

The ruling party isn't immortal. Two coupled scalars drift each turn and govern the regime's survival:

Popular Legitimacy — how the public reads the regime. Driven by the economy, repression intensity, policy alignment with the country's priority profile, and the credibility of elections.
Party Confidence — how stable the ruling party is internally. Driven by intra-party bleed, policy alignment, and a coupling input from popular legitimacy itself: if the public turns on the regime hard enough for long enough, the party starts to crack.

Both scalars also receive a small natural-recovery pull each turn so a single bad event doesn't permanently scar the regime — but recovery is slow enough that reform actions stay meaningful.

The four-stage escalation chain

As the scalars degrade past thresholds, the regime moves through a four-stage escalation chain:

Public Discontent — early warning. Citizens are unhappy, but the regime is in no immediate danger.
Mass Unrest — sustained unhappiness. The leader is offered a decision event with multiple response options (concessions, repression, distraction).
Internal Challenge — the party itself is splitting. A faction split auto-fires at this stage, spawning a defected approved party. The leader is offered a decision event with multiple options to respond.
Forced Collapse — the regime falls. The leader chooses between two final-stage options that determine how the conversion happens.

Stage transitions require a dwell window — the regime has to sit in that band for a sustained stretch of turns before progressing — so a single bad turn never collapses a regime. Each stage offers the ruling leader a decision event with a single-slot queue; if the leader ignores it past the timeout, a default plays out.

Liberalization reforms

The ruling leader has a five-action menu to trade intra-party confidence for popular legitimacy:

Legalize a banned party — pick a banned party to promote to approved.
Reduce vote multipliers — make elections more competitive.
Hold an honest by-election — surrender control over a specific race.
Anti-corruption purge — burn internal favor to clean up public image.
Constitutional amendment — restructure the regime's formal rules.

Each action has its own cooldown and a per-turn boost effect that decays over time. The Regime Health tab on the executive hub shows a multi-turn projection of where each reform pushes the scalars before you spend it.

Voluntary constitutional convention

Rather than waiting for collapse, the leader can announce a constitutional convention — a voluntary off-ramp. The convention runs through three states (announce → draft → ratify); the draft chooses the target government type and reserves a legacy seat package for the former ruling party. On ratification, the system flips to the target type and parks a snap-election marker.

Forced conversion at Stage 4

If the leader doesn't avert collapse, the Stage 4 decision triggers a forced conversion through the same underlying driver as the voluntary convention. The post-collapse regime is whatever the country's collapse-target config specifies — for CN, that's a multi-party parliamentary system.

Player surfaces

Country overview: the public Regime Stability panel shows a high-level severity-colored stage chip and a LARP blurb describing what's happening, without exposing the raw scalars.
Executive hub (Premier only): the Regime Health tab shows raw scalars, the active escalation stage, the next reform's projected effect, and the action buttons. Selective-concession reforms ask which banned party to legalize at the time of action.
Approved-party leadership: a Regime Offers inbox surfaces any open offers from the regime — e.g. seats reserved in a constitutional convention.
Admin (CN executive hub): a red Admin tab lets admins force a stage transition, set scalars directly, or trigger a forced conversion.

Currently supported one-party countries

China (CN) — Chinese Communist Party (ruling), China Democratic League and China National Democratic Construction Association (approved), no parties banned by default. Premier is the head of government, elected by NPC delegates. Collapse target: multi-party parliamentary republic.

The system is generic. Any country whose governmentType is "onePartyState" inherits the same escalation chain, liberalization reforms, convention pathway, and decision-event handlers.