It wouldn't.
If one is into abusing terminology until it becomes unrecognizable, sure.
Do political parties exist in the world of STAR TREK?
- Thread starter dswynne1
- Start date
Because political parties are by definition not sovereign entities. They operate inside them with the aim to govern them. They generally do not conduct warfare and present themselves as sovereign entities by conducting diplomacy, and they certainly do not exert exclusive sovereign control over an actual territory. They do own property, like a building housing their headquarters or certain party-run media organizations, but that property is always subject to the laws and customs of the sovereign state the political party operates in. Starfleet or the surface of Planet Earth is subject to the control of the Federation alone, and the wider galactic community does not have any codified laws and customs that would supersede that. There is no unified law of the galactic community that would legally authorize the community as a whole to, for example, confiscate Starbase 73 if an investigation confirmed the Federation broke the galactic community's laws when building it.
A political party is an organization of people seeking to obtain political power over a given political community, generally a sovereign state or a supranational organization composed of sovereign states (like the European Union). This presupposes that the community they seek to govern is politically unified and organized, which the global community, or, in the context of Star Trek, the local galaxy is anything but. There is no unified legal, political and societal framework in which the Klingon Party or the Cardassian Party could participate according to codified rules to obtain that political power over the galactic community. The Federation or the Klingon Empire could only possibly be considered political parties if the galactic community were itself sovereign, which it is not.
You can say that the European Union is a wider community made of various countries. But there is a reason the political parties sitting in the European Parliament are called European People's Party and Party of European Socialists and not French Republic and Federal Republic of Germany. Simply because the former two are political parties while the second two are sovereign entities.
By definition, a political party is also just an organization furthering an agenda. For all we know, there are pro-Federation and anti-Federation parties on the same world.
But that's just not what a political party is. If any organization furthering any agenda would be considered a political party, then facebook groups organizing anti-government protests and youtube channels covering political topics would be considered political parties. Hell, the oil industry and Big Pharma would be considered political parties, considering they are organizations that seek to influence legislation that relates to them.
A political party is, plain and simple, is an organized and structured group of people with the sole aim of obtaining any degree of direct legal and political control over a sovereign entity, a constituent component of a sovereign entity, or a supranatural organization composed of sovereign states. Nothing less and nothing more.
The Federation has made it easy to migrate to any planet/colony. If you don't like the politics/policy, say on Earth for example, you are encouraged to leave and find another or set up a planet/colony more conducive to your beliefs. It's the "like it or leave it" policy. Removing the opposition is a political party's best friend. 
All sovereign states have their own agendas. This does not make them political parties.
The "local galactic community" is not a sovereign state, nor is it equivalent to a sovereign state, and therefore the actual sovereign states within it are not equivalent to political parties.
"An organization furthering an agenda" is a definition so broad as to be meaningless. By that logic, your local Girl Scout trope is a political party seeking to further their agenda of you buying their cookies.
Political parties are organizations that form for the explicit purpose of advancing a particular policy and leadership agenda within a government. Not the same thing.
Political Parties are a collection of Coalitions where if there's majority rule, then certain coalitions who don't fully agree with each other have to unite for something they do agree about, on some level, in order to get more than 50% of the vote. Where you don't need majority rule and you just need to get the most votes, coalitions won't matter as much, and the ideology of a party becomes more "pure".
In Star Trek, there's a competing idea between how Humanity has evolved and how Humanity hasn't changed much at all. And not even TNG Season 1 has total "purity" on the issue one way or another, although it comes the closest.
In Star Trek, there's a competing idea between how Humanity has evolved and how Humanity hasn't changed much at all. And not even TNG Season 1 has total "purity" on the issue one way or another, although it comes the closest.
If you can have it without parties, why are parties worth it?
Because parties create common ground, and allow people with shared interest to come together.
Because democracy is impossible without them.
Well, no. Freedom of association means I can move and work as I wish, including with people of similar goals.
Yes, when it was stated to outlaw parties.No one said you couldn't.
Are you sure you're still replying to the correct poster? I never said anything about outlawing parties. I'm at best ambivalent about them, I don't subscribe to the notion that they're necessary for democracy to function and thus can envision them not being a thing in the 22nd and/or 23rd and/or 24th and/or 25th and/or 32nd centuries, but just not how politics is organized then, not outlawed in some draconian attack on freedom.
That's literally what myself and another poster were discussing and what lead to my comment. Context.
Sci said:
Well, if you say so...
I don't say so. History says so.
Sci said:I don't say so. History says so.dupersuper said:Well, if you say so...Sci said:
"Things are only impossible until they're not."
This is a prime example of why I say it is impossible to discuss this topic without bringing in real-world politics. Suffice it to say that party-less democracy has been tried again, and again, and again, by multiple cultures at multiple points throughout history, and it has never worked. Democracy requires competitive political parties to function.
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