The founders of the Combine adopted a quadripartite structure which is still in use today. Its component sections are the executive, legislature, judiciary (all imported from human governance) and the council, a balla institution. During times of growth, government functionaries build bureaucratic empires, poaching budgets and mandates from rival departments. In the present time of contraction, the ministries of the Practilate furiously dump burdensome responsibilities. Most Bleed-related matters have been consolidated — some might say swept under the carpet — in the Ministry of Settlement. All of the matters that would be handled by ministries such as Finance, Environment, or Defense have been transferred to Settlement. Practilate employees working for one of these departments understand that getting moved to the Settlement and the Bleed desk can be a career-killer. The best and the brightest stay where they are, while the incompetent, war-shocked, and corrupt get moved to Settlement.
It's Practilates And Councils All The Way Down:
Although lasers rarely if ever interact with the Proper, its governmental structure is relevant to them because it is replicated in many planetary governments. Most heavily-populated worlds of the Bleed follow the Practilate-Conference-Council-Bench structure. Politicians used to move seamlessly from planetary to Combine government. This is now uncommon, as bonds between individual planets and empire fray. Combine planets are not required to use this structure, so long as they subscribe to it on the interstellar level. Synthculture planets in particular modify the system to suit the periods they're emulating. A medieval world might be led by a Pontiff, administered by a council of kings, and advised by chancellors and viziers. Bleedist activists agree that the Combine model of goverment has to go, but have reached no consensus on what ought to replace it.
The Practilate
The executive branch is known as the Practilate. A directly elected leader, the Practitioner, oversees a body of technocrats appointed to carry out the laws of the legislature and policies of the council. Reporting to him are the heads of various bureaucratic bureaus, known as Sub-Practitioners. They and their bodies of aides and staffers are appointed by the Practitioner. The millions of functionaries toiling below them are hired as employees and remain in place when administrations change. Most government workers, including naval officers, are employees of the Practilate. Major ministries include Finance, Defense, Exploration, Technology, Justice, Health, Sustenance, Well-being, and Leisure. The navy answers directly to Defense but is often assigned missions by the other ministries, most typically Exploration, Technology, and Settlement.
The office of Practitioner was conceived as being an impartial implementer of directives from the conference and council, above the pressures of mere politics. This goal was achieved only during the Utopian era and has since gone by the wayside. Wherever there are resources, and those resources are limited, you find lobbyists and networks of patronage. Although party politics are officially forbidden, the Practilate candidates align themselves with the two key factions of Proper politics, the Originalists and the Realists. The current Practitioner is Ereb Glendon, a soft-spoken human left deeply scarred by a Mohilar bomb. He rose to the level of Admiral in the Combine navy before resigning to pursue a political career. Like most naval personnel past and present, his sympathies lie with the idealist Originalists.
Originalists And Realists:
It is still taboo for Proper politicians to associate themselves with parties or ideologies. Both are seen as divisive and a source of armed civil conflict. However, everyone knows that there are two basic tendencies in contemporary politics, aand can tell which side of the spectrum any well-known leader occupies. Originalists believe that the Utopian Era can be regained in a generation or two. They fight any effort to permanently alter the Combine system. Originalists oppose many of the moves toward stripped-down governance in the Bleed. They'd sooner establish nothing than create new institutions that might later prove difficult to eradicate. Realists assume that the Utopian Era is over for good, and that compromises to reflect a new period of scarcity and competition are in order. They're the architects of the skeletal, improvised form of government currently found in the Bleed. Both factions resolutely decry secession efforts of any kind, whether by individual planets or on behalf of the Bleedist movement.
The Conference
The legislative branch is made up of hundreds of thousands of directly elected representatives called Conferees. Each represents a constituency of a billion people, or a single planet with a population of less than a billion. Planets with less than a million inhabitants are represented by second-class conference members, each of whom gets a fraction of a vote. The Conference writes the outline drafts of the Combine’s laws, and then ratifies the detailed versions returned to them by the Council. Back when the Combine operated under a harmonious consensus, membership in the Conference was a cozy honor requiring little effort.
With conflict creeping back into the strained system, the Conference has become increasingly fractious. Now that it’s more than a rubber stamp for received wisdom, a younger, more ambitious crop of Conferees has appeared. If a Bleed world still maintains formal affiliation with the Combine, it sends representatives to the Conference. Vastly outnumbered, Bleed conferees expect to see their interests ignored. In pursuit of leverage, they’ve turned to bloc voting. Bleed Conferees are tightly allied even when their worlds are not. Leading the body is its Chief Conferee, a tavak woman named Kavot. Although her people lean toward Originalism, she herself is a hard-headed, unsentimental Realist.
The Council
The Council is an unelected body of experts, each assigned to a committee relevant to their specialties. They are selected (and removed) according to a complex computer algorithm, based on writings, public statements, academic achievements, and psychological profiling. Council committees receive broadly outlined pieces of legislation from the Conference. They then fill in the details, avoiding unintended consequences and weeding out provisions meant to favor vested interests. They then return the detailed legislation to the Conference for ratification. Councilors are kept honest by their professional associations, who zealously critique the scientific validity of their proposed implementation procedures, and police their ethical practices.
If they arouse enough informed criticism, the Council computer replaces them with the next most qualified candidate. As politics return to the Combine, deadlocks between Council and Conference have become more common. Conferees add provisions to favor their patrons and advance their ideologies, and Councilors steadfastly weed them out. The vas mal are mostly unrepresented in Combine politics due to their tiny numbers and new arrival status. However, as soon as the computer began to consider them as candidates, a disproportionate number of them were invited to serve on the Council. Among these was its present leader, Adelard Clapton. The position is mostly administrative, allowing the diffident Clapton to shun the political limelight.
The Bench
The judiciary, arranged in ascending levels of jurisdiction from the local to the interstellar, adjudicates civil and criminal cases. In so doing it may rule that the laws of the Conference and Council, or the rules and regulations of the Practilate, contravene the Combine constitution. The Interstellar High Court consists of twenty-five justices, traditionally split five ways between the founding peoples of the Combine. It rules almost exclusively on cases in which one of the fundamental rights outlined in the Combine constitution conflicts with another. The current Chief Justice, the kch-thk Zd-Kht, is known for the dry asperity of her remarks to the intimidated lawyers who appear before her.
