Sol Alliance

The Alliance of Sovereign Solarian Nations (ASSN), commonly referred to as SolGov, the Sol Alliance, and sometimes the Alliance, is a federal union of 125 member state star systems, and 212 dependencies, which themselves can vary between undeveloped star systems, outposts on asteroids, or even micro-nation space stations. The capital of the Sol Alliance is the bustling Unity Station in orbit over Earth. 52 Alliance states and 25 dependencies are located within the Inner Colonies. The remaining dependencies are located within the Mid Colonies and outer colonies. With control of hundreds of systems and a large population of about 20.8 billion, the Sol Alliance is by far the largest nation within all of known space. It is arguably the most culturally and linguistically diverse entity within known space, owing primarily to the age of its colonies and its control over the Sol system and Earth.

General

Economics

The economy of the Sol Alliance is dominated almost entirely by the biggest four megacorporations: Nanotrasen, Einstein Engines, Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals, and Hesphaistos Industries. Nanotrasen is the largest of these mega-corporations, utilizing its monopoly on plasma to keep the Sol Alliance firmly reliant on them for intergalactic travel.

The Alliance never fully recovered from the Second Great Depression of 2260. That economic collapse and the resulting civil war left confidence in the Alliance economy extremely shaky. The Alliance has an extremely condensed cycle of boom and bust, with a brief year of growth followed by two years of recession, on average. This is partially the reason that trans-stellar corporations are so powerful and influential: With Sol Alliance bonds or ventures radically decentralized and untrustworthy, the resilient economic strength of trans-stellar corporations makes them a much more lucrative investment.

The prosperity of the Alliance is extremely centralized to the inner colonies, most notably the Sol system, which benefit from their proximity to Earth and being the commercial and industrial centers. Farther away from Sol, the average wealth of systems gradually decrease. The frontier of the Sol Alliance territory tend to be far less wealthy than the inner colonies. In some extreme cases, travel to and from these systems can be made difficult as maintenance of bluespace beacons or shuttle services are the responsibility of individual systems. The only assurance in all Alliance systems is the presence of the federally funded Extranet post-service, allowing messages, if not people, to go from one end of the Alliance to the other.

Politics

Overview

The Sol Alliance operates as a hybrid between a Federal Democracy and Westminister system, while at the same time also being an alliance between systems, hence its name. Being the result of original negotiations on Earth to create a new world order between over a hundred nations, including the former United Nations, and the resulting few hundred years of development has left the Alliance government a nearly impenetrable labyrinth of complexity and seeming hypocrisies. An ongoing joke by seasoned politicians is that no one elected to an office actually knows what they're doing.

Senate and Parliament

The government as a whole is extremely decentralized, but operates as a Federal Democracy. The federal government consists of a bicameral Senate, split between the upper Senate and the lower Parliament. The Senate is made up of 129 Senators, one from each member state, and four from the Sol System. Each member state elects a single senator to serve a 3 year term.

The lower Parliament is made up of 218 representatives, and represents the dependencies of the Sol Alliance. Each dependency has its own governing parliament, and their Prime Minister becomes a Member of Parliament for the federal Parliament, and serve as long as their term as Prime Minister in their respective system. The Prime Minister of the Sol Alliance is, confusingly, also a member of the lower Parliament, and counts as 6 representatives, one for Earth, Mars, Europa, the Moon, and Unity Station, giving him 6 effective votes in the lower parliament, because each of these locations are individual member states of the Alliance.