How big could a star nation get and still function?

The Manticoran Alliance or Grand Alliance now has become the template for an interstellar polity. The premise for them is a mutual defense treaty for independent star nations. The Solarian League was largely created to serve the same function, but as was posted in another thread, the advent of the Washawrski sail and tuner made space travel much cheaper. Cheap enough to sustain a large interstellar trade based economy. That large interstellar economy could sustain a large bureaucracy and armed forces to secure the peace. This is now true for the GA as well as the Solarian League.

The difference is how limited is the central functions and how well defined those limits are. For the GA, the limits are pretty stark at self defense. For the SL, those limits are much more nebulous.

I suspect that the sparser the function of the central authority, the larger the sphere of the polity/alliance. The GA can span many hundreds of light years, if it remains a mutual defense pact. As soon as it ventures into what the SL tried to do with OFS, then its ability to secure those systems into a centralized polity diminishes quickly.

The SL ended up in its current situation due to having a completely unworkable constitution. No nation whatever its size could function without the power to tax or establish policy as the basis of law. In the case of the League, regulation replaced law and fees on service replaced taxes.

What was intended to be a relatively weak central government gradually turned into a monster as the central government expanded the size of the League with the protectorates whose resources it plundered to expand both its income and power. The constitution, conceded to be unworkable, is essentially ignored. Apart from exercising some care not to awaken the slumbering core worlds, there is no accountability at all to reign in the bureaucratic fiefdoms. Corruption eventually weakened what was already a bad situation. The combination set up the League for what is currently going on.

That in a nutshell is what happened to the League. None of this can be attributed to size. It's more of a case of decisions made which led to unanticipated consequences without providing any way to correct the situation when things went askew.

Don

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Corruption is function of how much money exists to be gleaned from the system and the internal controls to protect against it. The amount of money available is a function of size. The SL constitution did not envision space travel becoming cheap enough to require strong internal controls to prevent interstellar trade from fueling the growth of the central government into the Leviathan it has become.

What is now viewed as unworkable was a design feature of the SL constitution to prevent the cancerous growth of the federal government. Like all cancers, the SL grew beyond the parameters of its design/structure. Had interstellar trade remained limited by the huge expense of travel between stars, the constitution would have worked out just fine. The local star system would always have more resources to defend against any encroachment of the federal government than the federal government can bring to bear.

The advent of cheap space travel enabled not only interstellar trade and support of a very large federal government, but also the concentration of those immense resources against individual star nations. So long as those forces were focused on non-member systems, a few member nations could and would be bribed to veto any changes to the constitution prohibiting such practices.

The flaws in the constitution magnified by the changes in technology caused what the SL has become. The sheer size of the SL was enabled by hose flaws and the communication lags brought about by that size exacerbated those flaws. Just as a long enough communication lag will exacerbate flaws in any polities internal control systems.

PeterZ wrote:Corruption is function of how much money exists to be gleaned from the system and the internal controls to protect against it. The amount of money available is a function of size. The SL constitution did not envision space travel becoming cheap enough to require strong internal controls to prevent interstellar trade from fueling the growth of the central government into the Leviathan it has become.

What is now viewed as unworkable was a design feature of the SL constitution to prevent the cancerous growth of the federal government. Like all cancers, the SL grew beyond the parameters of its design/structure. Had interstellar trade remained limited by the huge expense of travel between stars, the constitution would have worked out just fine. The local star system would always have more resources to defend against any encroachment of the federal government than the federal government can bring to bear.

The advent of cheap space travel enabled not only interstellar trade and support of a very large federal government, but also the concentration of those immense resources against individual star nations. So long as those forces were focused on non-member systems, a few member nations could and would be bribed to veto any changes to the constitution prohibiting such practices.

The flaws in the constitution magnified by the changes in technology caused what the SL has become. The sheer size of the SL was enabled by hose flaws and the communication lags brought about by that size exacerbated those flaws. Just as a long enough communication lag will exacerbate flaws in any polities internal control systems.

Another sensible take on the situation... How about all of the above?

Don

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n7axw wrote:
Another sensible take on the situation... How about all of the above?

Don

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I'd settle for an e-ARC. The jitters are starting to -twitch- settle in and -twitch- wreck my day!