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Having addressed some of the preliminary issues, and having decided that this setting will deal with political and ideological struggles, it’s time to let the rubber start to hit the road. I prefer to start with the big ideas first and then see how multiple big ideas influence one another to determine the details.

Today, then, we’re going to look at politics in the setting.

I’ve done a fair bit of research on the speculations of political scholars and futurists about what kind of government systems the future will hold. Here’re some brief conclusions from that research that will influence the choices that follow:

(1) Francis Fukuyama’s “End of the World” hypothesis is dead. In fact, I’m of the mind that it was DOA.

(2) A number of writers see an end to nationalism in the globalization of society because technology allows us to form bonds that transcend national boundaries through newfound communicative outlets. These writers see ideologies and interests as the boundaries on which future sociopolitical groups will define themselves.

At the same time, we’ve witnessed in the start of the 21^st century a decided throwback to nationalist sentiment, largely as a response to mass emigrations of refugees from middle-eastern countries in conflict, but also as a response to a feeling that the East is reaching greater parity in influence with the West, ending centuries-old Euro-/Anglo-centrism. We can point to Trump’s election and the rise of extremist nationalist organizations (some of which ought to be classified as terrorist groups) as well as the growing anti-immigration, cultural-supremacy and nationalist sentiments expressed in Germany and France.

I am curious as to whether these phenomena represent the death throes of historic nationalism or refute the “end of nationalism” theories espoused above.

(3) If nationalism does—at least for the most part—die in our future, what do governmental systems look like?

Some of the writers above see a sort of neo-feudalism in our future, where patron-vassal relationships on various scales replace strict national boundaries.

Other scholars note growing dissatisfaction (justified or not) with the ability of governments to effectively provide the essential services demanded by their citizens. These thinkers see an increase in private organizations providing services formerly the purview of government agencies. There’s plenty of evidence to support this—Space-X and Blackwater come immediately to mind.

While this latter idea appeals to my inner cyberpunk, I have significant doubts about the extent to which corporations and other businesses would insert themselves into direct governance. Why? Because the goal of corporations is to make money; the bureaucracy of governance and the tasks associated with providing for the common good are good ways to sap the bottom line. If recent American politics is any indication, corporations seem to be better served wielding great influence over governance without the attached responsibility.

With those things in mind, here’s what I’ve decided on for this sci-fi setting:

Free Association and Tiered-Relationships: I’m going with the idea that enhanced communication, the interchange of cultural ideas and opportunities to colonize other worlds and/or find secluded places for experimental societies will indeed cause newer communities to form based on ideological constructs over nationalism. Of course, some of these ideological constructs will be based on religion; ethnicity and traditional language and culture and even, sometimes, nationality. But, on the whole, we would expect to see a greater number of smaller ideologically-organized communities rather than a smaller number of larger “nations.”

Economics would dictate that these smaller communities would find an advantage to organizing for the provision of traditional governmental services—infrastructure, defense, etc. Those communities closest to one another (provided that they can get along) will have a common interest in local matters and may have resources enough to direct provide some services to citizens either collectively or individually.

For larger scale needs—long range shipping and post, military defense and security, medical care and the like—the average small scale community cannot provide alone. By collectivizing—at least in terms of bargaining and paying for traditionally-governmental services—small communities may retain their individuality and autonomy while enjoying infrastructure and services benefits formerly only provided by larger-scale government organizations.

Not all services would be bargained for at the same level. A collection of a handful of communities—micro-city-states, if you will—might band into an association for the provision of waste removal services and local utility provision. For larger scale needs, though, they need a larger collective, so their association joins with other similarly-sized associations to form a bigger bargaining bloc—a higher tier of collectivization. This larger association may then negotiate for the provision of more expensive services—long-range communication or healthcare, for instance.

Three or four tiers of associations would be sufficient to provide for the majority of services and governmental functions needed by the average community, meaning that a community (in addition to being an autonomous “local government”) would belong to several tiers of organizations, each higher tier acting as a sort of patron to its lower-member tiers in what we might call a collective feudalism.

Privatized Service Providers

Some corporations have developed specifically to provide various governmental functions by contract with the tiered associations described above. One corporation might specialize in security and law-enforcement services, another in medical services and hospital maintenance, another in data-management and bureaucratic processes (licensing, maintenance of health and safety codes, etc.) and a fourth might maintain s standing army for the defense of its contracted communities.

Of course, the savviest corporate directors and executives will diversify their business interests, with a “mega-” or “hyper-” corporation having a plethora of subsidiaries involved in various fields. By forming subsidiaries to provide governmental services, these larger corporations enjoy a number of benefits. They gain influence over civilian governments while being paid by those same communities for the privilege of the services. This allows the corporations an influential role in many aspects of daily life without requiring a loss to the bottom line for purchasing such influence. Additionally, when a subsidiary provides government services to a community or association, that naturally creates a market for the goods and services of the corporation’s other subsidiary operations.

The New Transparency

The system of collective bargaining with privatized service providers does not provide corporations with a tyranny over civil life. Because they operate by contract, they have a responsibility to their customers to show that they are providing for the consumer’s best interests and performing their functions efficiently and effectively.

In theory, this is simply a formalization of the social contract philosophy espoused by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Some scholars argue that, at least in the abstract, this system provides definite democratic advantages—the governed may sever the relationship with a governmental agency that seems inept or corrupt without the necessity of bloody revolution—renegotiated contracts and legal maneuvers now serve a function that formerly required musket or machinegun.

In practice, however, the system—like perhaps any human system of government—has its share of flaws and disadvantages as well. At their heart, corporations are driven by the profit motive rather than a desire to selflessly better the lives of others. While many corporate directors hope to accomplish both ends simultaneously, there is a natural conflict of interest here that requires strict scrutiny from the governed to keep in check. The less scrupulous see only the need to provide the appearance of a fair and equitable provision of government services, and the governing ideals of some communities and associations reject traditional democratic ideas anyway, allowing for as broad a range of abuses and exploitations as any found in the 21^st century.

Subscription Citizenship

While the diversity of ideologies behind the myriad communities in existence across known space makes generalization a typically foolhardy task, it is nevertheless true that the majority of autonomous communities have resorted to subscription memberships for citizenship rather than traditional taxation. Beyond the general idea of “pay to belong,” are an ever-expanding list of variables in how citizenship subscriptions are handled, including: non-monetary contribution requirements, exclusivity of citizenship, the effect of criminal conviction, whether tiers of citizens are available, the method of calculating the cost of a citizenship subscription and the scope of governmental services provided for citizens.

Citizenship in a particular community naturally entails membership in the tiered associations to which the community belongs—allowing both associations and individual communities to deal with non-citizens based upon the legal and economic relationships between the various associations at each tier, much as certain countries once favored some foreign nations over others.

Additionally, a community’s attitude toward and treatment of those without any citizenship varies greatly, with some communities or associations requiring the provision of at least basic support and rights to those without citizenship and others treating them as non-persons.

Those who lack citizenship in any collective or combine—and there are plenty—are known by various names: scavs, scavvers, wastrels, wastelanders, outcasts and more. As one might surmise, most of these epithets originate from the fact that these individuals often live in the wasteland between communities, where they must forage and scavenge for their basic needs. Non-associated communities—those who belong to none of the tiered collectives of mainstream communities, must be self-sufficient or rely upon the benevolence of other communities for their continued survival. Without a powerful defense force, these communities may be forced away from valuable resources or “annexed” by those communities whose ideologies make a place for slaves or other subclasses of citizens.

The largest corporations have citizenships of their own, though not everyone involved in their company (or companies) has (or is even eligible for) corporate citizenship.

If both communities and tiered associations allow, one may change one’s citizenship as easily as redirecting the destination of one’s subscription payments (and the amount, as necessary). The extent to which this is possible varies greatly even within the same associations.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

All of these contractual and negotiated relationships require some mechanism for their enforcement. To that end, several independent judiciary bodies have developed. Professional jurists and scholars of jurisprudence in the employ of these organizations have developed uniform codes of law and a privatized system of courts—based on the old concept of civil arbitration—to provide a framework for the relationships and contracts between communities, their associations, and service providers.

Each contract designates the specific organization whose law and arbiters will be used to resolve disputes and to control contract interpretation for that relationship. There are several such organizations, some specialized in particular types of law—interplanetary shipping, employment, healthcare, etc. The most powerful judiciary organizations are Curia Ultima, the Interplanetary Arbitration Syndicate (IAS) and Secured Transactions and Relationships (STR).

These organizations deal only in what we might call “civil” law—providing for money damages and the redistribution of property to compensate for contractual breaches or tort offenses—criminal punishment is not addressed by the arbitration organizations and is usually a matter of international diplomacy.

On the other hand, the arbitration organizations do have their own military forces and the ability to hire mercenary outfits to enforce their judgments. While small-scale skirmishes sometimes result when a losing party resists enforcement of a judgment, large-scale confrontations are rare as they are likely to bring the contracted militaries of the mega-corporations and community associations to bear for the sake of preserving this entire system, which operates based on consent.

The arbitration organizations are funded in several ways. First, those organizations wishing to use them must premiums—not unlike insurance payments—based on that organizations estimated use of the system. Second, the arbitration organizations are themselves the recipients of fines levied for bad behavior (as opposed to damages awarded to the other party as compensation for wrongdoing).

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