Bills & Legislation

Most laws in A House Divided start as bills drafted by sitting national legislators. The route after proposal depends on the country's configured legislature and government type: unicameral bills need one chamber, bicameral bills need two, and only presidential systems send ordinary bills to an executive signature or veto stage.

Who can propose bills

Admins can propose bills from any country at any time and are exempt from all proposal costs.

Bill structure

Every bill requires:

• A category: agriculture, defense, economy, education, environment, foreign policy, healthcare, immigration, industry, infrastructure, public safety, social, tax, technology, or trade. The category controls which legislation types can appear as provisions.
• One to three provisions: each provision is a legislation type (e.g., "Minimum Wage", "Income Tax") paired with a policy option that defines its ideological direction. Bills are capped at three provisions total.

Provision types

Bills can contain the following kinds of provisions:

1. Policy provisions: the standard legislation type + policy option that changes national or state metrics. Most categories use these.
2. Tariff provisions (trade bills only): set import tariffs scoped to an entire economy, a specific sector, an origin country, or a single corporation.
3. Subsidy provisions (industry bills only): direct government subsidies to an economy-wide sector or a specific industry.
4. End subsidy provisions: repeal an existing subsidy.
5. Embargo provisions: enact a durable trade embargo against a target country (by commodity or all trade).
6. End embargo provisions: repeal an existing trade embargo.
7. Nationalize provisions: transfer corporate assets or an entire sector to state ownership.
8. Privatize provisions: spin state-owned assets out into a new private corporation (IPO or auction).
9. Designate strategic sector provisions: mark a sector as strategically vital, arming nationalization triggers.
10. Union-law provisions: set collective-bargaining bias, ban unions, or repeal a ban.
11. Electoral-law provisions: change voting age and voter-registration access.
12. Central-bank independence provisions: grant or revoke independence where the bank is not shared across countries.
13. Declare-war provisions: created through the executive foreign-policy flow and requiring two-thirds support in every chamber.
14. Join-conflict provisions: created from a passed international-organization resolution, not from the ordinary bill composer.

Proposal costs

Proposing a bill costs 10 action points plus national influence for each provision:

Tariff provisions do not cost national influence: only action points.

Your action and national influence balances are shown in the bill proposal form before you submit. If the bill is eventually enacted, both the action points and NPI spent are refunded to the sponsor.

Policy options and the dual-axis grid

Each legislation type has policy options ranked on two axes:

• Economic axis: negative = left (more spending/redistribution), positive = right (less spending/free market)
• Social axis: negative = progressive, positive = conservative

US tax types use a bracketed scale. All other types use a 7-option scale (3 left, 1 center, 3 right). The option you select determines what happens to national metrics when the bill is signed.

Bill guards

The system enforces several hard constraints on bill proposals:

• One first-chamber bill per sponsor: in a bicameral system, the sponsor may propose another bill once the earlier bill clears its first chamber. Unicameral sponsors remain limited to one active bill through completion.
• Pending parliamentary government: if the government has no seated PM, Chancellor, or Taoiseach, all new proposals are blocked and active bills pause until formation completes.
• Whip cooldown: after a whip directive is issued, a cooldown period applies before another can be sent to the same target.
• NPP catch-up: every turn, the system ensures NPPs that gained seats after a bill opened still vote before it closes.

The bill lifecycle

Bills move through a strict status pipeline managed automatically by the turn processor each hour.

Step 1: Proposal

Submit the bill from the Congress or Parliament page. On submission, the bill immediately enters active status with a 24-hour voting window. There is no cooldown before a bill becomes active.

Step 2: chamber vote or votes

While voting is open, members can vote For, Against, or Abstain and can change their vote before the deadline. Ordinary bills use a simple majority. Nationalization, privatization, and declarations of war require two-thirds of For plus Against in each required chamber.

Step 3: second chamber

In a sequential bicameral flow, passage opens a fresh vote in the second chamber. Some country configurations vote in both chambers concurrently. Unicameral countries skip this step.

Step 4: executive action

In presidential systems, a bill that clears every required chamber is enrolled. The president has 10 hours to sign or veto. If no action is taken within 10 hours, the bill is automatically signed.

Parliamentary executives do not receive an ordinary bill veto. Their bills enact after the configured chamber and cabinet stages complete. International-organization membership bills can also skip presidential action under their special lifecycle.

US Senate filibuster

Any seated US Senator may invoke a filibuster while a bill is actively before the Senate, unless Senate rules have abolished it. The action costs 25 AP and 5 NPI, extends the vote by about 12 hours with a Statecraft adjustment, and can be invoked once per Senator per bill. A filibustered Senate vote passes only when For reaches three-fifths of For + Against + Abstain. Members who never vote are excluded, but abstentions raise the threshold.

How NPPs vote

Non-Player Politicians (NPPs) vote on every bill automatically. Their votes are determined by a cross-pressure model that weighs four forces:

• Ideology: alignment between the NPP's policy positions and the bill's direction
• Whip: party and caucus whip directives
• District: the demographics of the NPP's home state or region
• Donors: corporate and interest-group alignment

The four forces are summed into a single score. If the total is strongly positive the NPP votes For; strongly negative means Against; near-zero produces Abstain.

• NPP blocs holding multiple seats contribute their full seat-count weight.
• A catch-up run every turn ensures NPPs that gained seats after a bill opened still vote before it closes.

For full details on whip mechanics and the force model, see Voting & Whips.

What happens when a bill is signed

Metric effects

Each provision applies its policy effects to state or national metrics. Federal US bills divide their effect by 50 (one per state); UK national bills divide by 12 (one per region). Effects apply each turn the policy is active; see Policy Effects for the full math.

Archetype approval for legislators

Legislators who voted For the enacted bill receive demographic archetype approval changes based on how far the policy shifted on each axis:

• impact = shift × affinity × 0.15 × positionMultiplier, clamped to ±10 per bill
• The positionMultiplier is higher for extreme options (1.5 at the far ends) and lower for centrist ones (0.5 at the center), so bold shifts create stronger reactions.
• A bill moving education policy two steps rightward gives evangelicals (affinity +35) roughly +10 approval and public-sector archetypes (affinity −40) roughly −10 approval.

Bicameral strategy

Building votes

You need majorities in both chambers plus executive support. Strategies:

1. Whip allies before the vote. Use whip directives to push your party's members. See Voting & Whips.
2. Propose in your stronger chamber first. If you have a House majority but shaky Senate support, introduce in the House so momentum builds before the Senate vote.
3. Keep provisions focused. Each extra provision adds national influence cost and gives opponents more to vote against. A narrow one-provision bill is easier to pass than a three-provision omnibus.

Parliamentary differences

In parliamentary countries (UK, JP, DE), the lower chamber (Commons, Shūgiin, or Bundestag) does most of the legislative work. The upper chambers (Lords, Sangiin) can also vote on bills; the Bundesrat is appointed by Land governments, and players cannot interact with it directly. If the government has no PM/Chancellor seated (including the window after a successful no-confidence vote or a snap dissolution), legislation is fully frozen: no new bills can be proposed and active bills stay in place until the freeze lifts.

Viewing bills

Every bill has a detail page at /congress/bills/[id] showing:

• A timeline stepper from proposal through enactment
• Live vote bars (For / Against / Abstain percentages) for both chambers
• A live countdown timer while voting is open
• The presidential action panel (Sign / Veto), visible only to the executive

Related pages

• Voting & Whips: Whip directives, how party discipline works, how to influence NPP votes
• Policy Effects: How signed bills change national and state metrics each turn
• Congress Leadership: Speaker, floor leaders, how leadership shapes the legislative agenda
• Committees: National party committees now; committee-stage bill flow is not live
• Government Formation: Parliamentary government status and the legislation freeze