Essay - Analysis of the Success and Failure of Micronations

First things first. A micronation needs citizens. When a nation is the result of a merger between two or more smaller ones, this aspect will probably already be there and one needn’t worry about it. But most nations start off as a one or two man nation. If this is the case, the keyword is attractivity. The nation must appeal to the potential citizen. There are lots of factors that influence the attractivity of the nation, and I’ll only cover the most important ones.

There is the medium. This document is mostly based on analysis of forum based nations, so the medium will almost always be a “discussion board”, either EzBoard or a php-based discussion board (like InvisionBoard). Very important about this board is the layout. It gives a first impression of the nation. Layouts that aren’t easy on the eye will not help the recruiting of citizens (same for the website by the way, but who looks at those, these days…).

Also important is the number of forums. If there are lots of forums with only a few posts, the nation will look “inactive”, and thus cause it to actually be inactive. A nation with only a few forums will look more active and thus create activity. The medium should be easy to use as well (which is OK for EzBoard. InvisionBoard is a bit harder to figure out, but once you get a hang of it it’s fairly easy.) Also, beware of EzBoard's advertisements. They kill your nation’s activity and attractivity in no time.

Another thing which is very important: a theme, a purpose. Special aspects about the nation. Good examples are: Amerada; almost everyone thinks it’s a “bug nation”, but it still is a fairly thriving micronation (because of its mix, US + Canada, it still attracts fresh micronationalists.) Also, there is Menelmacar; although I’m not sure if the Tolkien-theme was the main attractive element there. The theme should also play an important role in the nation (e.g. in Amerada, the names of cities and colonies are based on the theme.) If it does not, one gets a boring nation, of the “yet another” kind. A theme that doesn’t play a leading role is to help to a nation’s attractiveness. The ideals and the purpose (here, Baracão is the ultimate example) can also help. Try looking up communism on ForumFind and you’ll see what I mean. Sometimes, reputation can help. (Audentior: the nation was very famous in the past. The citizens came flooding in a few moments after founding!)

Promotion of the nation is important. NO SPAMMING! Well, refined spamming. Spam that can’t be called spam; official press releases, and in the appropriate forum.

Furthermore, we have the government. One should start small and grow as the number of citizens grows. A nation with a huge government and only a few citizens has to wait long until the government can function. By the time it has enough citizens, most of them are inactive because nothing happens in the nation anyway. Furthermore, complexity isn’t very attractive. Some potential citizens won’t be prepared to analyze complex government structures, to see if the nation is one of their liking.

A nation has to be kept running. It will be in need of a few active citizens, who keep coming up with new ideas (a theme can work as a source of inspiration for those ideas) and the nation should take a stance on international issues. Flexibility is important: when the number of citizens decreases and there aren’t enough to run the nation properly, the nation should be able to decrease the size of its infrastructure (government) accordingly.

An economy can only work with a sufficient amount of (interested) citizens. If an economy works, it can greatly help to increase the activity of a nation.

Compared to the total amount of forum-based nations, the amount of successful ones is rather small. And this is how it’s supposed to be, because the success of one nation requires the failure of many others. If every nation around would be “perfect”, micronationalism in its integrity would be a failure. There are simply not enough micronationalists to fill all micronations, even with the loose dual citizenship laws that forum based nations have in most cases. The activity of one micronationalist is spread over all the nations he is a member of. the more nations he is a member of, the less activity one micronationalist brings into one micronation. If, for example, to fill all nations with a decent amount of citizens, every micronationalist would have to have 10 citizenships, each micronation would get 10% of his/her attention. This is very little, and it wouldn’t be enough to keep up activity in a nation.

I hope that those who want to start a new nation have become a bit wiser of my analysis, and that the more experienced micronationalists have become a bit wiser about micronationalism. Thanks for reading!

- Sander Dieleman