| Index | History | Sol System | Archipelago | Technology | Notes |
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Across most of Cis-Luna there are no governments: that is there are no bodies that enforce laws without prior consent, exact taxation and possess absolute authority over the governed. This is not to say that there are no laws, no charges for services, or no collective decision-making, but all such arrangements are freely entered into by individuals. Most of the functions of government bureaucracies are carried out by corporations, quasinations or phylai.
A political map of Earth is a patchwork of overlapping polities, with chains of claves across regional administration.
There are a myriad of sub-phylic economic pressure groups, campaigning on a wide variety of subjects. These groups achieve their ends by the targeted use of their spending power and the manipulation of public information and images.
Perhaps the last entity comparable to a global legislature is the Ecclesia. This consists of all sentient individuals on Terra, Luna and associated habitats. The currently accepted definition of sentience covers humans, dolphins, whales, chimps and artificial or non-biological intellects ranking 0.5 or above on the Adjusted Sentience Scale. All such entities have an equal vote. To put a motion to Ecclesial vote requires a petition of a million names. Although the Ecclesia has the power to legislate, such legislation is in no way binding; instead it serves as a philosophical consensus.
Ecclesial discussion ranges across public meetings, local intranets, virtual forums, the AI dataspaces, and the great parliaments of Berlin, Teheran, Athens, Washington or Beijing. The Ecclesia has seen a renaissance in the skills of argument and rhetoric: The great clashes and debates that cross the Ecclesia Chambers sometimes soar to the quality of Ciceronian Rome; history will not soon forget the subtle insights of Werner Scheer, the scathing polemics of Jessica2 Misaki, or the elegant koan-poems of Makanee Sunspeckled.
Unofficially attached to the Ecclesia and acting as an executive and administrative body is the Praesidium, the last remnant of the Eurasian Federation bureaucracy. The Praesidium is the largest and most powerful of the phylai. Control of the Praesidium rests with its Central Committee of a thousand biological sentients. This body was the original Praesidium; the complexity of its current structure grew out of its supporting bureaucracy.
Even before the disgovernance of the Federation, its government had been giving up powers for over a century, leading to ever greater liberties for its citizens and the transfer of services into the hands of transnational corporations and smaller bodies. Following the Shiva Event, the Belt intervention completed this process, handing over all economic resources of the Federation to the people. The Praesidium was formed by a large number of those previously employed by the EF government and civil service as a consortium dedicated to using its joint economic muscle to support rulings of the Ecclesia.
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