See, the thing is, I would argue that political parties are the only rational response to political actors with limited resources trying to engage in the goal of effecting a consistent ideological agenda in a democratic political culture. I'm getting a bit off-topic, so I'll put it in spoiler brackets if you're interested.
Speaking personally, my biggest issue with political parties is that they represent the creation of a consistent group identity and therefore, given the tendency of most people to define themselves and the world in terms of membership blocs, they take on a life of their own. They encourage a sense of exclusive belonging, and that's not - to be blunt - an aspect of psychology that can be trusted in the political arena. Politics must be the process whereby problems are solved to everyone's benefit (or at least to no one's excessive loss), and group affiliation is at odds with this, because the goal in such cases will always be to benefit the in-group. When a group identity is established, in any situation, the overriding purpose of that group is then to ensure the maintenance, defence and expansion of the group's own power and influence. Rather than a means to an end, the influence of the group becomes an end in itself. To form permanent affiliations is to turn political discussion from a process engaged in by members of a community to a way of life and a measure of identity. The self and the political should, in my opinion, remain separate. Politics is something that is done, not something that someone
is. Permanent group identity is a trait that evolved as a competitive survival instinct; it is combative and destructive, and above all selfish. I have difficulty accepting that any long-term good can come of its inclusion in politics - an exercise that is by definition cooperative and pluralistic.
I suspect it would be akin to convergent evolution -- subjects facing similar environmental pressures would naturally evolve to adopt the same behavioral strategies.
I imagine that the specific form the parties take may vary from world to world, but it seems to me that, ultimately, there are basically only X number of policies that can be pursued, and that humanoid psychology--whose differences in Trek are broadly cultural rather than physical--naturally attracts people to certain related policy concepts ("ideologies"). As such, in a democratic society whose political actors favor competing ideologies, the necessity of gathering resources, of running candidates, of effectively communicating messages to the public, and of making sure the public has a broad sense of a candidate's ideological tendencies, necessitates the formation of permanent political alliances (which we in English call "political parties").[/Spoiler]
Again, though, I would hope that the Federation worlds generally know better than to assume that beneficial policies can be pursued by established, permanent groups - because once the group exists, more and more of its efforts will be directed toward its own maintenance and expansion, or reward for the membership, until the actual direction of policy is best defined not as a destination to be reached or an outcome to achieve, nor as a problem to be solved, but as a teat from which an continuous supply of public attention can be milked. Since to me politics is a problem-solving exercise for community benefit, encouraging this sort of arrest seems counter-productive. If multiple people within a community have similar ideas and policy goals, they can easily cooperate without drawing a wall around themselves. They can function as a group to promote their ideas and gather resources, or work together on a large-scale project toward specific goals, without locking themselves into a shared identity. If they
can't, then how on Earth (or Tellar, or Bajor, etc.
) can they be expected to cooperate or work for mutual benefit with all the people who are
not part of that group identity, i.e. not of the party or interest group? If they have to have their claws into one another to function together, what hope is there of their functioning with everyone else who has different ideas or values? I suppose one answer is a perceived "overtribe" or membership in a specific democratic structure that trumps the lesser affiliation, but in such cases the tendency will surely be toward homogeneity and enforced stasis.
(I think there's a simple reason why a democracy tends to be replaced with a repressive dictatorship: the democratic system becomes about myriad groups fighting for ever larger slices of the pie regardless of how the pie is made, and in reaction the boot of enforced unity comes down, particularly when the economy is in tatters.
I shall decide how the pie is cut. Stop squabbling, children, Authority is here).
In any democratic society with diverse political ideologies, these pressures will exist, and will be permanent. One cannot advance a particular ideological agenda without permanent political allies--temporary ad hoc political alliances and factions would rationally never be sufficient to marshall the necessary resources and acquire the necessary political influence.
Despite what I'm saying here, I pretty much think you're entirely right in this, and it's a continuous source of frustration for me. I've seen any number of initiatives and positive efforts at change fail and be relegated to the dustbin of history because tribal-minded groups seized onto an issue or observation, coalesced around it, and made it into a permanent tool for their own expansion, power and control, farming the public sentiment and instincts as they go.
I think some of the surest signs of the necessity of political parties in a democratic polity are the real-world societies that have experimented with not having them. Either the attempt to rid themselves of those parties fails--as in the United States--or the state itself because anti-democratic, as in numerous Third World dictatorships where opposition to
political parties ended up becoming opposition to dissent.
Well, about the opposition to political parties morphing into opposition to dissent - that's because a tribal group cannot tolerate the existence of a rival group, or rivals. It's not really about banning parties, but banning every party except yours. To be honest, if tribal affiliation is an inevitability in politics, then conflict leading to destructive outcomes, blurring of parties into a default single party (i.e. complaints of American "Republicrats") or total exclusion/destruction of competitors is also inevitable. Arguing that we need to have parties - that is, tribalist behaviours - to guard against monolithic power structures - another tribalist behaviour - seems to me a little nonsensical. Unless the argument is to arrest tribalist action in an eternal conflict that no player can win. While I can see the appeal of such, it also suggests to me a government system that can never actually get anything done or work effectively but instead spends its time checking itself into gridlock. Again, politics should be a problem-solving process, not a struggle between power blocs, and if we're spending all our time dealing with the effects and problems arising from power blocs or trying to suppress their acting out rather than actually working on politics, then I don't see why we should have the blocs to begin with.
I suppose it depends on how you view politics, really. To me, selfish pursuit of influence, resources, power or favour is at odds with the whole point of politics. To many, I think, it rather
is the whole point of politics.
So, yeah, my argument is that political parties are an inevitable response to the universal pressures of democratic politics, and that thus any democratic polity would by necessity have political parties.
Like bats and birds independently evolving the similar skeletal structures necessary for flight, political actors on multiple democratic worlds would by necessity develop political parties. (And likely political parties that have ideologies analogous to those of parties on other worlds.)
Is your position therefore that democracy is a model of governance that only works for tribalists? That those without the urge to exclusive membership or identity are uninterested in inclusive communal structuring? Or is it, as I might be reading, more that it's an inevitability that such behaviour will exist and will prove the more successful approach, to the extent that if you refuse to play the game it will be played without you and you'll lose?
Again, I should probably be clear here that I totally understand what you're saying,
Sci, and for the most part I think you're probably entirely right. Unfortunately, due to my own position on things, that's not a worldview I can hold while remaining optimistic, so I tend to try and oppose it.
It's slightly unclear if the Aenar community is considered to be part of the Andorian Empire or if they're considered a separate, sovereign nation. If the latter, Jhamel may also be a "friendly foreign witness" rather than signing as a representative of a founding Member State government.
It would be interesting to see how this plays into the later rule that a planet be politically unified before it can join the Federation (part of the odd tendency in
Trek to see the planet - nothing smaller, nothing larger - as the base model of an individual, sovereign nation. It's even explicitly a Federation of
Planets. Do all groups not affiliated with a mostly-global government have to send witnesses? Did someone track down the jungle peoples of South America, say, and ask them if they were keen on this Federation business, even if they don't even participate in United Earth (we know from
The Sundered that many local cultures in places like the Amazon prefer to live more-or-less insular, traditional lives)?
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?: In looking up the info on the Articles from To Brave the Storm, I noticed that that novel establishes United Earth's currency to be the United Earth credit. Which, again, is basically just taking a piece of Federation minutiae and retroactively making it an Earth thing the Federation adopted. (I always kind of liked to imagine that maybe U.E.'s official currency was the United Earth peso, or the United Earth dinar, or maybe the United Earth yuan.)
The pre-Federation currency of Earth is the
Root of All Evil. 100
Roots to an
Evil, 100 Evils to an
All Evil. A simple, effective system.
As someone that hasn't gotten there yet in my own Trek reading, how incompatible is the Rihannsu series out of curiosity? I always heard that it was, if nothing else, a strong inspiration for Romulan culture in the books that followed it even up to today?
So, I haven't read
Rihannsu in full, but I feel like you can probably squint a bit and "broad strokes" it into continuity. Maybe ignore the references to how the Romulan government is set up, but assume that the basic gist of the story of Ael coming to power as Empress is one in which she overthrows the current imperial dynasty and founds her own, which then ends up contesting with the subsequent Praetors and Senates as per usual but is itself somewhat more benign than what came before (which might explain why Shiarkeik seemed much nicer than his Praetors in the 2300s).
Personally, I go by the
Rihannsu/
Spock's World vision of Vulcan and Romulan history. I'll squint a bit if there's a perceived incompatibility with ENT's depiction of ancient Vulcan.
The
Vulcan's Soul books will basically follow the
Rihannsu model of Vulcan-Romulan history as close as remains possible, with new tangents on the formation of Remans, etc. Most of the Exiles' story is clearly based on the
Rihannsu backstory; S'Task, T'Rehu, the Iruhe intellivore, etc. The language Rihannsu is used pretty consistently across the Novel 'Verse. However, to me this is all to be taken as homage, and not any attempt to keep
Rihannsu compatible, and I feel that the differences are just too pronounced to justify the series' inclusion here.
(Empress Ael will show up in
Myriad Universes: The Chimes At Midnight, though. So in at least one timeline something akin to the Rihannsu Civil War occurred).
