[Miller]

Well if the concern is mostly stagnation, leadership changing hands will do little to alleviate that as most of these nations tend to have close aides and are hardly the work of a singular person. 

The main issue that I see with nations on a larger scale is that there isn't much reason to seek out tension or conflict with another nation as every nation is set up specifically to be in a dead lock of sorts. The two 'opposing' nations are on the direct opposite side of the isle and the ruins aren't an accessible option, along with there being no real reason behind initial pre-established lore which set them at odds initially, which... didn't last very long. On the other hand, Duyuei has to maintain the wall and has assistance from both Telegrad and Geladyne, while Meiaquar would have reason to influence tension between Geladyne and Telegrad for monetary gain, a resource that we all have plenty of from just grinding. This is just going off of the base concepts for each nation and a bit of NPC text here and there.

Another core issue is that a fair amount of the player base either don't feel comfortable with large scale conflict and sometimes even small scale, not everyone is going to consent for danger level 3 or 4 as well, which is entirely fair! But this leads into another issue, sometimes there won't be enough players to sustain conflict. Not saying this is definitive by any means though but this circumstance can happen quite easily on a game like SL2, which is more relaxed compared to other roleplaying games of the same breed.

As for the election idea in the OP, it's kind of hard to get behind an OOC election; there was already a fair amount of controversy around the shifting of Telegrad's leadership in early Korvara which was ICly handled, it can very much come down to being a popularity contest rather than a proper transition of power. This is before accounting for issues such as players having a stake in multiple nations at a time and potentially being inactive in one they voted in.

Ultimately, there's no real singular answer to this issue that'd address everything, but having more reasons for nations and players to contest each other and build tension is a good start rather than trying to shift leaders around and see if they influence the world singlehandedly. In the end though, a lot of this comes down to the overall community; if they want tension or conflict, there should be more active pushes towards such, otherwise any new introduction that could potentially break the mold would have short-lasting effects in my opinion.