Worldbuilding Governments in SSF

My MA is in international relations so, really, this is what I’m qualified to talk about far more than writing per se. Indeed, governments and politics are the things that enthuse me about worldbuilding beyond anything else. How we are governed, and how we might be governed in other situations, is at the core of my interest in speculative fiction. I therefore love the turn we are seeing in modern fantasy towards the political: political intrigue seems now to be a mainstay of the genre. With that said, sometimes governments and politics aren’t worldbuilt the best. Or they’re just boring - generic absolute monarchy with nothing interesting going on has apparently become the standard and I’m taking a stand against it. Setting aside the issue of politics - by which I mean the personalities, ideologies, and such forth - I hope to lay out a framework for how a writer can worldbuild interesting and viable governments - by which I mean the structures rather than the people who populate them. So, without further ado…

Now, I’m not going to give you a crash-course political science education. Frankly, modern political science is all but useless in questions of wordbuilding governments for speculative fiction. Why? Well, modern political science exists to analyse modern politics and modern governments. The problem with that is almost every modern state either is or claims to be a liberal democracy. That is considered the default and the style of governance than modern political science focuses on studying. There are a few states that don’t fall into this category, a little more than a dozen all told, and they are either communist states (of which five remain), non-constitutional monarchies (depending on how you count it there are between half a dozen and a dozen, e.g. Saudi Arabia), or the couple of non-democratic religious republics (Iran and, as of recently, Afghanistan). But still, modern political science focuses on a very particular kind of governance and so cares a lot about things like the three branches of government (legislative, which makes the laws, judicial, which interprets the laws, and executive, which carries out and enforces the laws) or the concept of checks and balances. These are all modern concepts almost unique to liberal democracies developed originally by writers like Montesquieu and Tocqueville in the 18th and 19th centuries.

So, if we cannot look to modern political science to help us, we have to go back… (imagine a flashback effect)… to the Aristotle. And Rousseau (a contemporary of Montesquieu); he broadly takes Aristotle’s ideas and develops them. We’ll be talking about both.

Aristotle did some of the first political science when he divided government types into six. First, you divide by who holds sovereign power: either one person, a group of people smaller than half the population, or half the population or more. Then, he further divided them basically based on vibes - are they cool or not? One guy but he’s cool? That’s a monarchy. One guy but he’s cringe? That’s a tyranny. I kid somewhat but only because we don’t care about that second division, only the first: the division into monarchy (rule of one), oligarchy (rule of a few), and democracy (rule of the people).

Rousseau takes this idea but asks how these people achieve their power. Is it hereditary? Are they elected? Appointed? Some other system? It’s important to note that for Aristotle and Rousseau, democracy only exists when a majority of people are actively involved in decision-making: what we would call a direct democracy. What we would call a representative democracy, where people elect politicians to make decisions, Rousseau calls an elected oligarchy (actually he calls it an elected aristocracy, which is the term Aristotle uses for an oligarchy that passes the vibe check, but I’m not using that term as it has connotations of hereditary privilege in modern English, even if it literally means ‘rule of the best’). Rousseau also tried to get all mathematical about it, and argued that the greater the population, the fewer hold sovereign power - so city-states are more likely to be democracies and empires are more likely to be monarchies. This does seem to be true, but I’d argue not for the pure mathematical reasons that Rousseau thinks it is.

Now, I think these ideas are much more flexible than anything modern political science has and much more useful for worldbuilding more varied worlds, from fantasy to far-future sci-fi. Broadly what I’m saying is, in the first instance, think about who holds power. In the second instance, how they attain power. In the case of the generic monarchy: there is one person in power and they attain it through hereditary right. In the case of modern liberal democracies: there are a group of people in power and they attain it through election.

Now, that’s a start. It’s a way we can think about things. But next, a problem. This framework assumes all governments are a monolith, with one institution holding absolute sovereign power (what Rousseau calls ‘princely power’). And they don’t, not in any government ever. All governments are made up of different institutions - and that is what makes the generic absolute monarchy you find so often in fantasy so boring.

Lets take a historical example: the Ancien Regime (that is, France before the French Revolution), the archetypical absolute monarchy. Except was it? So there was a king, a hereditary monarch with substantial powers especially over the central government. But then there were the various regional powers: each province had a council called a parlement who were a court that also had to register the king’s laws before they could take effect, and often refused to do so. Power-struggles between the king and parlements were what led directly to the estates general being called and the French Revolution beginning - the king decided to call in a higher body that could overrule the parlements because he couldn’t (well, he could, but I’m not going into the intricacies here), and then it hugely backfired. As well as the parlements there were the nobles and the Church both of which still retained much of their medieval privileges and immunities and owned most of France’s land. One of the king’s problems was his inability to tax these guys who held most of the country’s wealth. Indeed, when the wealthy middle class got wealthy enough, the first thing they did was to buy their way into the nobility basically as a tax avoidance scheme. So we see that this absolute monarchy was not all it’s cracked up to be - it was instead a network of different institutions wielding power with and often against one another.

And that’s the thing: no state has ever really been an absolute monarchy in which one person holds all the power. The totalitarian states of the 20th century are the closest we ever got, but all governments are made up of networks of institutions. In our modern liberal democracies, there are three main important institutions, the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judiciary. The legislative are characterised by an elected oligarchy with power over making laws. The executive is either an elected monarchy (presidential system, e.g. the USA), where the elected monarch (President) can appoint the rest of their government, or an appointed oligarchy (parliamentary system, e.g. the UK) where the appointers are the legislature, or both (semi-presidential system, e.g. France). In all cases, they have the power to implement policy within and according to the laws. The judiciary is an appointed oligarchy, usually appointed in a way to guarantee their independence and impartiality (unless you’re in the US where they’re appointed in a way to guarantee the opposite). Beyond those three branches, we tend to have government at different levels: national and regional or federal and state, along with municipal governments. In other words, lots of institutions.

So, here’s what I want you to do: think of what institutions might exist in your government, characterise them along Rousseau’s framework (how many and how do they get their power), and also think of what powers they hold. Different institutions often exist to represent different types of power and influence and are often intentionally created to balance each other. For example, western European medieval monarchies operated the three-estates model in which the clergy, nobility, and cities could each petition the king. The king relied on them for taxes and to raise armies, so they developed institutions to discuss and negotiate with the king, often agreeing to his requests in return for greater privileges and immunities. That was needed because of how much power those groups held - feudalism was incredibly decentralised and, without a standing army, the king’s power came entirely from the support of his nobles, the church, and the cities, which collectively controlled the realm’s land, manpower, and wealth.

As well as there being different institutions at the central level, almost all governments have institutions at regional levels. Today, countries usually decentralise to allow local people a greater hand in local decisions. However, before instantaneous communication, local governance was needed because the central government just could not make all the decisions. You needed someone local to respond quickly to local issues. This means, unless your world uses magic to communicate, your governments will need decentralised provisional institutions. The same goes for your sci-fi empire stretching over thousands of lightyears. Frank Herbert’s Dune, for example, has great government worldbuilding in which the future is feudal: each planet being basically a feudal fief held by a noble family because the Emperor could not possibly rule it directly due to lack of instantaneous communication. When thinking about sub-state institutions, remember that minority groups may be especially keen for local government, and ideally self-government, so may push for greater autonomy from the central government. They might achieve that or it might lead to a protracted conflict.

Broadly, think about the polity’s: history, geography, economy, values, homogeneity/heterogeneity, etc. and come up with different interesting institutions that represent all that, rather than just setting up yet another generic monarchy with nothing else going on.

So lets take our generic monarchy and make it a little more interesting. To start, our most important institution is still the monarchy, which is hereditary and has broad power over the central government. The king (or perhaps queen) can rule by decree in most cases, declare war and make peace, and generally has almost full legislative, executive, and judicial power. He cannot rule alone, however, due to time constraints if nothing else, and so appoints people to run the treasury, courts, and so on. Let’s say that, in this world, magic exists and is an incredibly powerful force. Mages are crucial to military success and magic is the backbone of the economy. So, it’s safe to say that mages would be pretty powerful. So maybe they have an institution, the Council of Mages, made up of the hundred most senior mages in the kingdom, who serve for life. Every time a seat is vacated, the mages in the Council gather to decide who from amongst their brethren should take the open seat. The Council has broad powers over magic and mages: all laws related to magic must go through the Council, mages accused of a crime can be tried before the Council rather than the mundane courts, and they bargain with the monarch to gain even more powers in return for serving in his army and using their magic more generally to help the kingdom. Our kingdom also governs a minority group who speak a different language, follow a different religion, and live up in the mountains that were recently conquered from a different kingdom. They used to have self-government under their old king, being able to govern themselves and send a representative to the king in return for guarding the mountain passes and serving in the army. But under their new king, they are treated like normal subjects. This leads to a guerrilla war ultimately ended when the king agrees to give them all the privileges they had before.

And so on. You can see how by considering who might hold power or want to hold power and creating institutions to represent them, we have have a much more interesting and vibrant government. Add a few more and you’ve got a much more authentic feeling government that will be much more interesting to explore and provide a better backdrop for political intrigue. Indeed, political intrigue might even be informed by the power-balance between the different institutions or by who they fail to represent - maybe younger mages get angry at the old boys club that is the Council of Mages, for example, and politics follows.

Lastly, though, I would like to say that obviously a writer should focus their worldbuilding on what is plot relevant in their story. I don’t mind a generic monarchy in a story that isn’t about politics at all. It is only when politics is the focus of a story, as it so often is these days, that I would encourage writers to take some more time to flesh out their government and its different institutions. Make that monarchy a little less generic - maybe even (shock horror) make a government that isn’t a monarchy at all.

I’ll end by sketching out a government that I’ve made using these considerations, that of the Grand Republic of Xhodesi, whose politics featured in a short story I released on this website called ‘Rule of the (Best) People’.

Xhodesi is a city-state republic situated on an island in the middle of the Gulf Sea, which is a network of trade. The city itself is a centre of trade, making it comparatively wealthy. Its religion is polytheistic and state religion plays a large role in government. More than a thousand years ago, it revolted against its hereditary prince and has been a republic ever since; the leader of that revolution, Markomones, has been deified and is considered a patron god of the city. The modern day in this world (the same one most of my short stories and novels are set in) is technologically equivalent to our 18th century, at the cusp of the industrial revolution. Its government institutions are as follows.

An appointed/elected oligarchy, the Tetrarchy is a four man council that leads the republic. The four men are: the lord chancellor (in charge of domestic affairs), the lord steward (in charge of the treasury), the lord ambassador (in charge of foreign affairs), and the lord merchant (in charge of the ports, tariffs, and trade). They each have power to act as an executive over their policy areas but also make large decisions together and present legislation, treaties, and declarations of war to the Senate. Each serve three year terms and cannot serve consecutively.

A hereditary oligarchy, the Senate is made up of 200 men who hold senatorial writs. Each writ is transferable, usually passed down within a family but sometimes also sold as an act of desperation by a senatorial family down on their luck. The senatorial families make up the senatorial class, a wealthy hereditary elite. The Senate debate and pass or decline to pass legislation and other business presented to them by the Tetrarchy. They can also scrutinise and censure the Tetrarchs and they appoint the lord steward and lord ambassador. They meet in the Grand Temple of Erpia and Terpsi (twin goddesses who, according to its mythology, were instrumental in founding the city) and are older than the republic, originally being set up, though with less power, by the princes who ruled before the revolution.

A limited democracy, the Chamber of the People is made up of all adult men who own or rent property and are citizens of the republic (sorry women, the very poorest, and foreigners), though in practice it only represents those in the city, rather than the farmers in the countryside who cannot up sticks and go the city every time it meets. They may veto any decision made by the Senate, such as the passing of laws or the censuring of the Tetrarchy, but have no power to implement laws themselves. They also elect the lord chancellor and a figure called the popular magistrate, who presides over their meetings. Theoretically they meet in the hall the institution is named after, located in the Temple of Markomones, but as the city and its population have grown they have been forced to meet outside, on the Grand Square of the People’s District, around which all the institutions of government are located. The Chamber was established after the revolution.

A plutocratic oligarchy, the Trade Council is made up of the city’s merchants. It operates mostly as a chamber for discussion between the city’s plutocratic elite, though the true wealthiest of the wealthy buy their way into the Senate which precludes them from sitting on the Trade Council. It has some power over tariffs and can petition the Tetrarchy. It appoints the lord merchant and meets in the Temple of Xysos, god of commerce. The lord merchant is a more recent addition to the Tetrarchy, which was originally a triumvirate, given a place to represent the growing power of the merchants. It was a sly move by the Senate, answering calls to reduce their power by the Chamber, and doing so without increasing the Chamber’s own power, instead giving even more power to the city’s elites.

Overall, these institutions aim to show the three segments of the cities population: the working class majority, the upper middle class mercantile families, and the true elite of the senatorial families. It also shows how power is heavily weighted in favour of the wealthy and old money families in this plutocratic and aristocratic old republic driven economically by trade. These institutions also set up obvious political conflict as the majority seek to gain representation equal to their population and the minority seek to retain their privileges.