Professor Bainbridge joins in the fun over the interstellar politics of the SW universe. (non-scifi geeks can move along, this isn’t the post you [...]

Mrs. Director and I tried to figure out the politics over cocktails afterwards, but as Poliblog noted, they just don’t make sense.

I find very little entertainment value in discussing a government system described in a screenplay, especially in scripts that are as badly written as the Star Wars scripts. You will inevitably find yourself injecting far more meaning into the story than the author(s) brought to the job.

My high school friends and I still argue about things like this from time to time, but nowadays we concentrate on the ideas put forth in books that have gone to the trouble of developing an idea with some degree of consistency. Our current favourite is The Culture from Ian Banks’ books.

Or what’s left of it.

The writing/thought issue aside (which is the real problem) the funny thing in terms of Lucas is that in III he makes a big deal about the death of democracy and protecting democracy, but there isn’t much actual democracy on display.

Could it still be a form of federalism (democracy) if the Senators are appointed by the governments of their own planets, rather than appointed from the top down? In that case, though the affairs of the individual planets may not be democratically managed, the affairs of the Republic (a representative democracy, not a true democracy) were (i.e. voted on democratically in the Senate). An imperfect analogy, I grant you (analogies, by definition, are), but remember that our U.S. Senators were originally supposed to be elected by the state legislatures, not the public.

This post constitutes the sum lifetime total of time and effort allotted to me for the contemplation and expression of the politics of Star Wars.