Hey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming crosspost from before the Itch page went live!

Last time we took a look at the formation of the Galactic Authority, some of its earliest and biggest roadblocks, and the state of the galaxy post-ascension for the children of Terra. Today we’re going to take a deeper look into the biggest power player in galactic politics and delve into how the Galactic Authority functions. Or… how it doesn’t.

Enter the Bureaucrat

Politics gets a bad rap. And… it deserves it.

… okay, I can’t just leave it there.

A few things make the world turn, no matter if that world is a nation, a planet, or a galaxy. Money is the key to the age-old adage, but it’s hardly the only one. Knowledge is power, might makes right, and it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. In the Galactic Authority, all of these things are true at all times, but which is most important depends as much on where you are as what the Authority itself thinks about things.

The Galactic Authority, as we discussed in the last entry, is a multi-world-spanning bureaucracy that holds sway over the entire civilized galaxy. Planetary representatives are (usually) democratically elected to (hopefully) serve their (oft frustrated) constituent worlds at a planetary level in the Galactic Parliament. These representatives debate policy and doctrine, cut deals, align themselves with various parties and groups of similar interest, and generally speaking earn a frankly embarrassing amount of money for work that essentially boils down to getting angry at what their peers are saying and doing.

It’s good work, if you can find it. It is also, unfortunately for representatives, a volatile position. All their perks and pay and privilege can be thrown out on the whims of their constituents, and the whole Parliament finds itself up for reelection once every three standard years. Thus, representatives that do not adequately deliver for their homeworlds can find themselves swiftly replaced by an apathetic voter base. Despite a lack of term limits on these representatives, many find themselves either advancing within a couple of decades, fading into obscurity, or leaving politics entirely.

That said, many long-time members of the Galactic Parliament fight as hard as they can to advocate for their people, their needs… and of course for the interests of those who front the creds for their campaigns. Many do this because they simply wish to maintain their position, but some have loftier ambitions than simply sitting a parliamentary seat. Some set their sights much, much higher.

Not My Department

But before we get deeper into the politics of the Galactic Authority, the bureaucratic monolith that drives its various ministries is worthy of note. After all, it’s the politician’s job to argue loudly in front of the holocorders all day, and to get those soundbites for the next news dispatch. It’s not their job to actually manage the functions of the galaxy at large, as that joy belongs to the various departments to steer the ungainly beast that is the GA.

And beyond that, high-level roles with many of these departments confer far more benefit and power than can be achieved by any mere member of the Galactic Parliament. For those who want to move beyond the battle for electorates and the votes earned by the goodwill and hope (or fear) of their populations and secure some real power, this is a viable avenue. While there’s multitudes of different departments in the Galactic Authority, I’ll touch only on some of the biggest and most influential of them here.

The Department of Fleet Command oversees the entire military arm of the Galactic Authority, and is widely considered to hold some of the greatest sway with the political bodies that run the Authority itself. Contrary to its name, the DFC does not limit itself just to starships and their operation; all military matters in the Authority are conducted to some extent through this department.

The Department of Commerce is widely considered to be a joke among the people of the galaxy, as this department exists solely to serve as a regulator over the efforts of various commercial and trade organizations that operate within Authority space. The joke is the idea that they might ever actually do that job, as most members of the department also hold down advisory jobs with various megacorporate interests, like with the ubiquitous Trade Coalition, or megacorps like BSS and Cyner Solutions.

The Authority Intelligence Bureau is the intelligence service of the Galactic Authority, and also oversees Galactic Security, or GalSec; the galaxy-wide police force. Split into Acquisitions (handling spying operations on various entities), Management (dealing with active operations against specific targets) and Security (GalSec operations), the AIB is unofficially referred to as the Department of Security by most common people. It’s worth noting that GalSec and the Authority Star Fleet have a long-standing and sizable rivalry, with the former seeing the latter as the favored operation who gets the best toys, while they’re forced to do their job understaffed and underequipped. Public opinion often sides with GalSec’s assessment.

There are various departments that fall broadly under the Department of Citizen Affairs, each one delineated cleanly by astrographic location. Clusters of systems are collected together under grouped headings where their official role is the assessment of citizen concerns and the liaison between other GA departments and those worlds for the resolution of disputes and the maximization of positive outcomes for all. In reality, the various subdepartments of the DCA become everyone’s punching bag more often than not, as worlds find their concerns lost in the noise and the Galactic Parliament harassing them for not doing more to help their constituents. It’s said that no one takes a job at the DCA unless they’re a masochist, and few are the workers there who could contest that assessment.

Finally (for this brief look, at least!), there is the Department of Law. Charged with overseeing a galaxy-wide judicial system and the standardized enforcement of the Galactic Authority’s law, nothing tries their patience than the legal rights of birthworlds; those worlds where the Seeds were placed and the children of Terra were raised. These birthworlds all too often prefer to do things their own way, and have little interest in the galaxy around them as long as their traditions can be upheld. This forces the DoL into a difficult position, as unlike the rest of the galaxy where GA law can be reasonably enforced, founding principles of the Galactic Authority constitutionally protect the traditional practices of the birthworlds. These contradictions cause the majority of legal friction for the department, who are more often than not powerless to prevent birthworlds from acting in their own interest and not the Authority’s.

The Department of Law is also intimately tied with the Galactic Parliament, as it’s their job to rule on the laws passed by the government. Even more intimately than the Parliament, they are also deeply involved with the ones who hold the Parliament’s leash: the Ruling Council.

The Will of the Council

The Ruling Council is a tightly-controlled body that consists of a limited number of seats, with Councilors drawn from all over the Authority’s administration. Council seats are filled by majority vote from the existing members of the Ruling Council from shortlists put forward by the seat’s representative department of government, but exceptions exist. For example, the Grand Admiral’s seat on the Ruling Council is traditionally only ever held by the current holder of that rank within the Authority Star Fleet. Generally the Ruling Council chooses from among the candidates who best should lead, and that person is installed in that rank and granted their seat on the council.

When it works, this meritocratic oligarchy results in the most apt person filling high-ranking roles in the Authority government. When it doesn’t, this results in cronyism and abuses of power. The Ruling Council tries to keep its preference picks nice and quiet to avoid stirring up backlash from the general public. That said, the Ruling Council is an extremely insular body. Those elected to its ranks are elected by other Councilors, and a Councilor may only be removed from their seat by a 51% vote in the Ruling Council, or a 67% vote from the Galactic Parliament. This has happened only very rarely since the formation of the Authority, despite their similar lack of term limits as the members of the Parliament.

Councilors are not only drawn from the branches of government, however. Powerful corporate entities such as BSS and the Trade Coalition hold influential council seats by virtue of their thorough integration into the galactic economy. A few seats are even elected to the Ruling Council by majority vote in the Galactic Parliament, elevating a member to their ranks to be a voice for the Parliament and the people they ostensibly represent. For those parliamentary members who are especially talented, this can allow them to skip the administrative busywork of departmental influence and secure some real power.

Only some, though. They call the head of the GA a Speaker for a reason.

I Am The Senate

The leader of the Galactic Authority is the Speaker, and there is no higher authority in all the galaxy. Elected to their position by majority vote of the Ruling Council, the Speaker’s job is to dictate policy and see it carried out by the efforts of the Ruling Council. This nominally-democratic role is held for terms of no more than five standard years, with a four-term limit on any Speaker holding the position to prevent prolonged abuse of their authority.

As implied above, the Speaker’s role is not to be a listener. Their role is to provide broad policy framework, and to be a spokesperson for the Galactic Authority as a whole. Far from being a figurehead role elected by the Ruling Council, most Speakers in Authority history have been very decisive with their powers. Graft and abuse of their power has been kept to either a minimum, or at the least a visible minimum.

Much like a Councilor, a Speaker may only be forced from their seat by a 67% vote in the Ruling Council. The Parliament requires a unanimous vote instead; neither has ever been done in the entire lifetime of the Galactic Authority. The closest that it came was the Speakership of Ulayrin Ozfik, who was at the time a significant beneficiary of the Jostari Raiders; a particularly cruel and elusive slave-running organization whom he had used the power of his office to protect and profit from. Even then, Speaker Ozfik was only able to secure 89% of the Parliamentary vote required to oust him; it took riots across seven core worlds for the Ruling Council to step in, and the threat of they themselves unanimously removing him from power was enough for Ozfik to resign instead.

It’s worth noting that the role of Speaker is seldom challenged. They are no galactic emperor, after all; there are limits to their power and what they’re capable of doing. Abusive Speakers like the infamous Ozfik tend not to last too long, because the clearing of one Speaker paves the way for another to take over. The Ruling Council is often full of ambitious figures with their eyes on the Speaker’s seat, and the knowledge that abuse of their powers could swiftly see allies turn on them to remove them from that power is oftentimes enough to keep them from straying too far. This honor system too is not foolproof; Ozfik still sat for two full terms before resignation in his third. It’s believed, though unproven, that enough members of the Ruling Council were in his pocket to keep them from supporting any vote to unseat him until the very end.

The notion that a Speaker might rise to power and so thoroughly corrupt the systems in place as to be all-powerful has yet to be put to the test, but conventional wisdom suggests that such a circumstance would be unlikely to occur. Such a repugnant, repellent Speaker would require cronies at every level of government to facilitate them, and that repugnance makes such a proposition unlikely at best. After all, even a system as volatile and laden with corruption as the Galactic Parliament could never stoop that low.

Perish the thought.

Yes, Minister

Scaling back from the chaos of the Galactic Parliament and the Ruling Council, I did mention that worlds mostly democratically elect their own representatives to the Parliament. While this is generally true, it only holds on a world by world basis. The Parliament itself is a representative democracy, but how representatives are chosen by their respective worlds gets considerably fuzzier.

While democracy is the norm across the galaxy, there are a handful of monarchies that still maintain either nominal or literal political power. In those cases, a representative is usually chosen from among the royalty by the sitting monarch. Very rarely will it be the monarch themselves, what with having a world to run, and all. Such things are very time consuming.

Still, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. The scope of the Authority is such that totalitarianism on a worldwide scale is more trouble than it’s worth. The GalNet, ubiquitous communications network that it is, cannot be easily severed from a people, nor is interstellar travel particularly difficult to obtain. Would-be planetary-scale warlords swiftly find themselves chewed up and spat out at the galactic level, usually by the Authority Star Fleet or by infiltration by Authority Intelligence Bureau agents.

That said, the Parliamentary member for a given world is often not the most powerful person from that planet. This honour goes most often to the Planetary Administrator (on core worlds), the Prime Minister (on mid-rim worlds), the Colonial Administrator (on freshly-founded colonial worlds), or… whatever passes for governance on semi-independent rim and fringe settlements.

Planetary Administrators and Prime Ministers are often elected by the representative bodies of the various smaller nations or domains of their worlds. Their role is that of the Speaker in microcosm, dictating policy to be implemented by their allies and fellows in whatever form of governing body their world possesses. This is a simple affair on most core worlds, who generally adopt a scaled-down equivalent of the galactic-scale system for use on their world. This works, and suffers, in the same way as it does for the Authority at large.

A notable exception is the core world of Torderra. The most important trade hub in the galaxy, Torderra is the trade gateway to the entire core sector, and has a long and sordid history with politics. Robust political discourse is the order of the day on Torderra, with the upper echelons of society rigorously engaging back and forth on the best way to approach societal problems. Politics on Torderra is as much as game as it is a serious matter, and as such it has a party-based system - in Torderra’s case built around pseudo-noble houses and the political dynasties that they spawn - that is unique among the core and much more common on the mid-rim. Its representative chambers are all democratically elected, and political theatre on Torderra is often broadcast for all the galaxy (and especially the core) to see. It’s often said that where Torderra goes, the whole core eventually follows. Some wonder if perhaps that’s why the Authority’s political system is so messy.

As a final note, Rael can be intimately familiar with such discourse; a Core-Worlder Rael grew up on Torderra, and boy oh boy, can he have thoughts about all of this. It is, after all, something of a Torderran tradition to have your opinions and to state them loudly.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look into the politics of the Galactic Authority! Continuing the theme of worldbuilding but in a manner that will be much more relevant to the story, next time we’re going to be talking about the Astrogation Guild; employers of Zuberi and his crew and the people responsible for Rael boarding the Dreamer in the first place! We’ll talk stellar cartography, the nature of FTL travel, and we’ll do our very best not to arrive before we start!

Until then, stars guide you.

 - Faora