The Economy and Politics of Luna

Political and Economic Systems of Luna

Political Systems

Luna has a President and a Vice President, who have four-year terms and a two-term limit. The President runs alongside a Vice Presidential candidate; these positions are elected through a popular vote. All citizens over the age of 17 can vote. 

The current regulations for presidential candidates are: being over 18 years old, having Lunar citizenship for at least three years, being a current resident of Luna and having no serious criminal charges.

The legislative body, known as the Lunar Parliament, consists of one hundred members, with varying numbers from different cities based on the population of the city; Parliament members have five-year terms and a two-term limit.

Citizens may petition the government to address issues or propose potential bills that would benefit the people or the nation; elections are held in the Parliament to vote on bills.

Economic Systems

Lunar economic stances can best be categorized as having a Scandinavian or Nordic economic model, sometimes considered a social democracy*. Welfare, healthcare and other necessities are paid for by the government; tax rates are relatively high. However, there is a free market, and production of goods is generally privately-owned as opposed to being state-controlled. In essence, the Lunar economy is a mixed-market economy on a continuum, with less of a laissez-faire government than what is utilized in some other capitalist nations.

Governmental restrictions are placed on large corporations in order to ensure environmental protection, preservation of local business (protecting local businesses and culture from market domination by larger corporations) and general livability for the working class by providing welfare/healthcare/education.

While private schooling exists, the majority of Lunar students attend public elementary, middle and high schools; secondary education is not completely free, but mostly paid for by taxes and widely available for most citizens. Education and literacy rates are very high.

*While Luna has previously been categorized by other nations as democratic socialism, the nation is, in reality, not socialist, and instead follows a more capitalist system under a Scandinavian economic model.

2083 Lunar Political Report

A poll of Lunar citizens shows similar results to past years: a generally liberal majority, with mostly Democratic Party members. Partisan distribution is as shown below.

Andromeda and Cerulea are Luna's generally conservative cities, while most other cities are left-leaning in terms of political/social stances. Asteria is another notable exception, as the city tends to have a very even divide between left and right-leaning citizens. Note that this map does not show specific political parties, but instead overall opinions on a left-right scale. Blue areas are majority-liberal, red areas are majority-conservative and purple ones are moderate or very close. Grey areas do not have polling data (ex. the Stygian Wildwood).

Sorry for the bad map -- I didn't have a blank copy of my original map saved (I drew out this map by tracing Greenland's borders a while back...) so I had to draw in all the different areas and then erase every bit of blue/red/purple that was outside the borders. This took quite a while because of that...

Percentages of liberal/conservative voters for various age groups are shown in the table below. One pattern often noticed in Luna is that a large number of currently prominent politicians are in younger age groups; this has been attributed to these groups having grown up during the revolution, and, as many revolutionary leaders were on the liberal side*, this could have impacted this age group's general voting patterns.

*The former government was known to be very socially conservative, while the revolution was more diverse in terms of stances, but many leaders (including Luna's founder, Lily Aquilla) were generally liberal.

*Liberal, Moderate and Conservative are defined based on where citizens self-identified according to census reports. Initially, the department intended to place each on a sociopolitical spectrum to place different stances, but this method proved flawed as some citizens were moderate with conservative leanings, for example. Instead, census questions asked people to identify which category they best fit under: liberal, moderate or conservative. Once again, this chart does not show specific parties but instead political stances and ideologies, as Luna does not operate under a bipartisan system and therefore has numerous smaller (but still significant) parties.

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Political Report data gathered by the Lunar Census Department. Compiled and written by the Lunar Post.