Headcanon - Federation Government
Dec 14, 2021 4:27:10 GMT
Thea Baker, Matthew Harmon, and 1 more like this
Post by Judith Eastman on Dec 14, 2021 4:27:10 GMT
Frontier isn't a political RPG, but in planning and exploring stories involving a civil servant (Judy) and/or a politician (an NPC Matthew Harmon plans to introduce), James and I developed quite a bit of headcanon to get a working grasp on how the Federation's government might work. I thought I'd share some of it (the relevant stuff), as a sort of reference.
I compiled this, but a lot of the good ideas came from James, so big credit to him.
The shows and films establish that the Federation has a President (an executive) and the Federation Council with representatives from member worlds (a legislature).
The Federation is a democracy. As its name implies, it's a Federation, meaning the member worlds are partially self-governing. It's safe to assume that there's a wide variety of types of planetary governments, influenced by local traditions and institutions.
We've assumed that, as in virtually all countries, the Federation President has a cabinet; we've chosen to refer to cabinet members as "Ministers" in a sort of arbitrary judgement call. Even countries without a Prime Minister, like Brazil, use this word for cabinet members.
Reading from the tea leaves of the shows and our own missions, we've found some issues that might be prevalent in the Federation:
We've also made the assumption that in a country as large and spread-out as the Federation, there are many different factions and groups, and you need the support of a lot of them to have a majority in the council and pass laws.
In particular canon we've used, the 2381 election resulted in a new President and in a narrowly divided Federation council. The new President's agenda includes moving some of the Federal bureaucracy to the periphery, which is how Judy's new job came to exist.
Judy, specifically, works for the Ministry of Economics and Development. This ministry deliberately has a very broad scope, so as to fit into all sorts of plots.
An important guiding principle for speculation of this sort is that the Federation is not just Earth, much less just the Anglosphere. There are definitely some things going on there that are very different from anything that has existed in our reality.
I compiled this, but a lot of the good ideas came from James, so big credit to him.
The shows and films establish that the Federation has a President (an executive) and the Federation Council with representatives from member worlds (a legislature).
The Federation is a democracy. As its name implies, it's a Federation, meaning the member worlds are partially self-governing. It's safe to assume that there's a wide variety of types of planetary governments, influenced by local traditions and institutions.
We've assumed that, as in virtually all countries, the Federation President has a cabinet; we've chosen to refer to cabinet members as "Ministers" in a sort of arbitrary judgement call. Even countries without a Prime Minister, like Brazil, use this word for cabinet members.
Reading from the tea leaves of the shows and our own missions, we've found some issues that might be prevalent in the Federation:
- Localism vs centralism: how much power should rest with the central government of the Federation, as opposed to the planets.
- Periphery vs metropole: rivalries in terms of how much the core worlds should be expected to support the newer members and the colonies.
- Humans vs others (and Vulcans vs Andorians): Humans appear to be a very prominent race in the Federation, and they're annoying.
- Defense: after Wolf 359 and the Dominion War, how much more militarized should Starfleet be?
We've also made the assumption that in a country as large and spread-out as the Federation, there are many different factions and groups, and you need the support of a lot of them to have a majority in the council and pass laws.
In particular canon we've used, the 2381 election resulted in a new President and in a narrowly divided Federation council. The new President's agenda includes moving some of the Federal bureaucracy to the periphery, which is how Judy's new job came to exist.
Judy, specifically, works for the Ministry of Economics and Development. This ministry deliberately has a very broad scope, so as to fit into all sorts of plots.
An important guiding principle for speculation of this sort is that the Federation is not just Earth, much less just the Anglosphere. There are definitely some things going on there that are very different from anything that has existed in our reality.
