How would government be setup in a spacefaring society?

[Fukataka]

Would anyone know how would a spacefaring society operate in terms of governance? (For humans atleast)

I was guessing each planet would be autonomous due to space traveling limitations (unless faster-than-light travel is considered) with planets only cooperating when there is a threat or problem facing the society as a whole. I bet messages would be delivered by pony express like services with planetary systems acting as major stops along an intended route, limiting how the society's forces would react.

[ForgotPants]

It depends on a lot of things.

- Is there FTL in this spacefaring empire? Without FTL any kind of empire is not going to last long.

- Is there FTL communications? Same as above, without the ability to communicate the directives of an empire in a timely manner and debate on policy in real time, there can be no empire.

- Are the colonies self sufficient? A big assumption here that the new colonies can grow and build everything they need. Also they have the manpower for everything. If the colonies are self sufficient, they will govern themselves and are an independent colony. If they are dependent on the empire to deliver supplies then they might have no choice but to accept the empire.

- Is the same currency used across all colonies? Same problem as the three above, what kind of economy does the empire depend on?

 

In my opinion, SF aside, all colonies are going to be independent and will have to figure out supplies on their own. This will also lead to evolutionary drifting over the centuries and the residents of each colony will become more and more different from each other in their culture, habits, language and needs.

[Doktor Avalanche]

Much depends on social and cultural adaptations, as a government adapts to the environment it contains.

[ComradeMilton]

If you mean colonies off-Earth, depending on size probably a kind of benevolent authoritarianism similar to how the Shuttle crews operated.

[Caecus]

The future of mankind is a dystopian dictatorship ruled by an alien overlord where half of the humans are used for futile hard labor mining planetary crusts for resources and the other half are used for comfort food to fill the gullets of our technological superiors. Humans will be conscripted into slave armies to fight other races and do the bidding of our superior alien overlords. History will be the first thing that the aliens will destroy and contort, and people will forget humanism and human identity. This super, galaxy-wide alien empire will then collapse several centuries later, leaving humanity as a race of slaves without any collective identity. In the end, our species will die out from a lack of identity, our progeny constantly seeking to find new star lords to submit to. 

Sad. 

[Auctor]

The machines will have long since concluded we're not cost effective to take to space with them.

[ComradeMilton]

7 hours ago, Caecus said:

The future of mankind is a dystopian dictatorship ruled by an alien overlord where half of the humans are used for futile hard labor mining planetary crusts for resources and the other half are used for comfort food to fill the gullets of our technological superiors. Humans will be conscripted into slave armies to fight other races and do the bidding of our superior alien overlords. History will be the first thing that the aliens will destroy and contort, and people will forget humanism and human identity. This super, galaxy-wide alien empire will then collapse several centuries later, leaving humanity as a race of slaves without any collective identity. In the end, our species will die out from a lack of identity, our progeny constantly seeking to find new star lords to submit to. 

Sad. Dude! The lizardmen are already here, don't let them know you're onto them even with the human disguises.

 

1 hour ago, Gabranth said:

There's been an agreement not to make off-world colonies country specific, so a colony on Mars would either be mandated by the UN or by private companies. Like colonies of the past, they would likely have a very strict hierarchy until the colony is sufficient enough to govern itself. If there was some other threat in the galaxy, we'd likely not be able to effectively deal with it considering we don't have the resources to fight a threat that seeks humanity's destruction, with the primitive space faring craft we'd be using to colonise IDK about a formal thing via the UN or anything, but we're pretty much in a mild Cold War with Russia and they continue toot  handle transporting of (primarily) Astronauts and Cosmonauts the ISS and are actually still selling us the massive rocket things we need they make to launch satellites. AFAIK the ISS control center has at least two Russian liaisons present.

 

[Quichwe10]

On ‎7‎/‎31‎/‎2017 at 1:19 AM, Fukataka said:

Would anyone know how would a spacefaring society operate in terms of governance? (For humans atleast)

I was guessing each planet would be autonomous due to space traveling limitations (unless faster-than-light travel is considered) with planets only cooperating when there is a threat or problem facing the society as a whole. I bet messages would be delivered by pony express like services with planetary systems acting as major stops along an intended route, limiting how the society's forces would react.

How does communication work? Depending on how fast that is, it would change how things would work, as faster communication lines have also done so for us. Slower lines of communication will probably make them be de facto independent, as they barely have any contact with back home while faster lines of communication will lead to more centralization.

[Rozalia]

Think feudal times, except in space.