So far (unless I've missed something), this discussion has been exclusively about the United Federation of Planets as described in ST:TNG and its spinoffs, the Trek movies, and various Trek novels. Nobody has so much as mentioned the original series, in which the Federation was presented only in the vaguest of terms.
Watching TOS back in the 1960s, I was always under the impression that, outside of its authority over a quasi-military policing force in the form of Starfleet, the Federation was a rather weak and ineffectual organization -- more along the lines of the United Nations than the European Union (which, of course, at that time didn't yet exist). Federation officials were often depicted as stuffy, self-important bureaucrats whose primary function was to be a thorn in Captain Kirk's side. And the main job of Federation diplomats seemed to be attempting to prevent interplanetary wars -- with only occasional success.
I don't think that the Federation of the TOS era is quite as weak as you're characterizing it as -- and the Federation Starfleet is an out-and-out military, not a quasi-military -- but I think you bring up a
very good point! The Federation during the time of TOS seems to be less powerful, both
de jure and
de facto, than it does during the TNG era. In "Journey to Babel," for instance, the Federation is on the verge of civil war over the issue of whether or not to admit Coridan as a Federation Member because some Federation Members will lose out on their ability to economically exploit Coridan for its dilithium (including a founding member, Tellar, which has gone so far as to claim Coridan as a part of its territory).
Even in TOS, though, we see major indications of the powers of a state being exercised by the Federation. "Errand of Mercy" features the Federation Council deciding to go to war with the Klingon Empire, for instance -- a
major power of state, and there's no evidence the Council consulted the Member State governments to make the decision.
I also think that the fact that the Federation has had its Starfleet from the very beginning is a huge difference between the U.F.P. and the United Nations, though. The United Nations, after all, remains an intergovernmental organization that is only able to operate at the whim of its member states. Given different circumstances, it
could have evolved into genuine statehood, but it has not, and the lack of a military is an important difference.
Ultimately, I would interpret the Federation's apparent relative weaknesses during the TOS era as being part of the Federation's process of making
de facto its
de jure status as an interstellar state. Even if it was legally a state in its own right upon its founding, it would almost certainly have had to undergo a long process of actually,
practically, accruing the powers of a state that it would initially possess only on paper.
Gene Roddenberry had a tough enough time just selling the idea of a future United Earth to TV network executives. IIRC, the UFP didn't appear at all until the show's second season.
The Federation was first mentioned as "the Federation" in "Arena" (episode 19 of Season One) and was first called by its full name, "the United Federation of Planets," in "A Taste of Armageddon" (episode 23 of Season One). Before that, the
Enterprise was described as a United Earth ship in "The Corbomite Maneuver" (episode 2); when the subsequent series assumed that the Federation had existed prior to "Arena" (which TNG's "The Outcast" and ENT's "Zero Hour" did in establishing the Federation to have been founded in 2161), they were pretty much retconning the
Enterprise into having always been a Federation starship rather than a United Earth starship.
As for the topic, as Mr. Laser Beam pointed out, the United Earth government seemed to be a parliamentary republic with a Prime Minister (though I don't ever remember seeing or hearing about a President),
I would point out that while I have no problem with the idea of using info from the novels -- including the United Earth President, United Earth Prime Minister, and United Earth Parliament -- none of that has been established in the canon. The most that was established in the canon was when ENT's "Demons"/"Terra Prime" established that Nathan Samuels's title in the United Earth government was "Minister." This
implies a parliamentary system, but that's as far as it goes. Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't include info from the novels, just that we should remember where that data came from.
which makes me wonder how they decided to move away from that and use a presidential system for the Federation government.
Well, why would the United Earth system be more likely than any other to influence the Federation's system? After all, United Earth was only
one of the Federation's founding states. There's also Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar (and, if you go by the novels, the recently-independent former U.E. colony of Alpha Centauri), and each of these other governments would be just as likely to influence the Federation's eventual shape as United Earth's.
For some insight, the novels have established the following tidbits about these other Member governments:
* The Andorian Empire is established in
Andor: Paradigm by Heather Jarman to be a constitutional monarchy, with a deliberately empty Throne left as the legal head of state, and a Chancellor (established in ENT's "The Aenar") serving as head of government. The Andorian legislature is the Parliament Andoria, and the Federation Councillor from Andor is determined on the basis of which party has a majority in the Parliament Andoria. The capital city is Laikan.
* The Confederacy of Vulcan's system is still largely unexplored, but
The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing establishes that it is headed by the Administrator of the Confederacy of Vulcan, who seems to be a prime ministerial-like head of government, working with the Vulcan Council (established in ENT's "These Are the Voyages...") as the legislature. The capital city if ShiKahr.
* The United Planets of Tellar's system is almost completely unexplored as of yet.
* The novel
The Next Generation: Losing the Peace established that Alpha Centauri is headed by an elected Governor, who has the ability to schedule plebiscites for issues he or she deems important to the populace. The capital city is New Samarkan on Centauri III.
Meanwhile, the novels
A Time for War, A Time for Peace,
Articles of the Federation, and
Bajor: Fragments and Omens establish that the Federation Council consists of one Councillor from each Member State, determined in whatever manner that Member State so chooses; Betazed's is popularly elected, while Bajor's is appointed by the First Minister after confirmation from the Chamber of Ministers, and Andor's is determined by parliamentary majority. The President is established to be popularly elected to a potentially unlimited number of four-year terms (each election takes over a week to fully tabulate by multiple independent auditing firms).
The relationship between the President and the Council is depicted as being more akin to that of a Prime Minister to a Parliament in some ways, though, because the President is required to serve as the presiding officer of full sessions of the Federation Council unless off-planet, and is required to nominate individual Councillors to serve on the Council's committees and sub-committees with the full Council's ratification. The President usually presides over key committees, such as the Security Council, and works closely with the relevant committees on any given issue. But the President also is ultimately the person in charge of foreign policy and has numerous areas under his/her exclusive jurisdiction, including the appointment of ambassadors, negotiation of foreign treaties, etc. -- the President is far more than just the Council's presiding officer.
So while the Federation President remains the head of government and head of state, in some ways, the Federation government is a sort of hybrid of the presidential and parliamentary systems (but isn't based on the French semi-presidential system, either).
It does seem that way. However, while the Federation has many characteristics of a federal state, there are some things that don't fit - like having Vulcan Ambassadors to Earth, Earth Ambassadors to Vulcan, etc. You wouldn't normally have ambassadors or need to establish diplomatic relations between federal constituents, unless they aren't really federal constituents but confederate sovereign states.
That's a valid question to bring up. Before ST09, I would have pointed out that there's some question as to whether or not there actually is a Vulcan Ambassador to United Earth -- the Babel Conference in "Journey to Babel" is explicitly described as convening because the Federation is on the verge of civil war, and as such the presence of ambassadors cannot be taken as an indication of how the Federation normally functions; and we never do find out what Sarek's full legal title is, as he's only ever referred to as "the Vulcan Ambassador" in the films -- but ST09 explicitly establishes Sarek to have been Vulcan Ambassador to Earth.
I'm not convinced that this is an indication that Federation Member States are confederated sovereign states, though -- if that were so, the Federation President would not be able to place Federation Member worlds under states of emergency (
de facto martial law) as President Jaresh-Inyo does in DS9's "Homefront."
We have a couple of different possibilities for interpreting Sarek's -- or at least nuSarek's -- position as Vulcan Ambassador to Earth.
1. We might assume that this position only exists in the Abramsverse timeline, but I think this is unlikely.
2. We might see this as an indication that Federation Member States retain their sovereignty and that the U.F.P. is more of an alliance than a state in its own right.
3. We might see this as an indication that the Federation is a state but that its member states retain more autonomy than presently exists in most federal states, possessing some sort of legal authority to conduct diplomatic relations amongst themselves under the larger jurisdiction of the Federation government.
4. We might view the positions of ambassadors from one Member State to another as mere institutional inertia with no real power or relevancy upon the Federation's founding.
5. We might view it as being a function of the sheer
size of the Federation and distance between Member worlds -- the Federation is simply too large for the Federation government to supervise all intra-Federation issues and it needs to delegate certain intra-Federation issues to the Member States to deal with themselves in order to function on the larger galactic stage.
6. We might view those ambassadorial positions as an indication of the Federation's gradual evolution from
de facto alliance/I.G.O. to
de facto state, with those positions eventually being eliminated upon greater legal consolidation of the Federation's authority.
I'm inclined to view it as a combination of 3 and 5, and possibly 6. I do think it's interesting to note that there's no canonical indication of there being intra-Federation ambassadors in TNG-era stories (though the novel
Hollow Men by Una McCormack did establish that there remains an Embassy of Alpha Centauri in London, and
Bajor: Fragments and Omens established that there remained a Bajoran Embassy on Earth after Bajor's entry into the U.F.P., where the Federation Councillor from Bajor was working).
Besides, Memory Alpha says that Federation members are free to use different economic models.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets This certainly sounds closer to confederation than a federation, whatever its name may be.
Memory Alpha is speculating when it says that. The presence of the Bank of Bolias is not an indication that Federation members can pick their own economic systems, because there are
numerous contradictions in
Star Trek about how the Federation economy works. Yeah,
Star Trek: First Contact and "The Neutral Zone" claim that they don't use money, but then episodes like "Journey to Babel," "Mudd's Women," "Author, Author," "Little Green Men," "The Gift," "The Magnificent Ferengi," and "The Price" establish that money still exists in the Federation.
