What type of government is this?

I'm working on a sci-fi crime drama with a bit of a Western thrown in (I am not trying to rip off Firefly), and I'm not sure exactly what the interplanetary government/union would be classified as (it is set approximately 1000 years into the future of our world). It's a union of independent planets which has a constitution granting it actual power, modeled after the United States constitution. The planets are largely autonomous, but they're bound together in a way that prevents civil war (exactly how I haven't figured out yet), like a sort of "Mars Revolution" that I have involved in the backstory, which led to the "Milky Way Reformation."

My Milky Way is policed by a division of the Galactic Union Bureau of Justice known as the Galactic Ranger Corp, based partly off of the U.S. air force, the Houston Police Department, and the Texas Rangers. They have jurisdiction over the entirety of Galactic Union territory.

My basic question is what sort of government is this? It is like a more powerful, effective version of the U.N., or is it a looser version of the United States? I think that at first it was formed on very humanistic grounds, on the buzzwords of "Liberty, fraternity, equality" (a la The French Revolution) and what not, but the Mars Revolution made the leaders realize that they needed to rely on something more substantial than mere platitudes to maintain unity. Thus, the Milky Way Reformation, which cleaned up the Constitution in a way which made most people happy, similar to the aftermath of the American Revolution where the Articles of Confederation had to be thrown out to make way for an entirely new governing document, the Constitution.

As for who ruled the planets, I'm still figuring that out. Would the planets be a hodgepodge of nations, depending on who got there, or would there be one planetary government? Would that/those government(s) be subject to the Earth power(s) which sent them, or would they break away and form their own government? So many questions to deal with.

My current theory is that this Galactic Union is a confederate democratic republic, but I could be wrong, which is why I am asking for help. Just what sort of government is this?

X

A classic sci-fi federation. Call it a Federal Republic if you have to.

It's whatever you want it to be. You ask too many questions and don't really give enough information for me to attempt an exact classification or comment on how it would work.

What you are describing sounds something more like a "Union". This implies separate nations. This is agnostic about whether planets have single governments or not. Whether a planet has a single government depends largely on history, years since colonisation and telecommunication technology.

Federation, Confederation have shared governments. The entities will not be autonomous without serious problems and political paralyzation.

History: Whether planets have single or multiple colonisation ships that come from different social entities

Years Since Colonisation: The longer the planet is around, the more chance it would become united (but have more internal factions)

Technology: Fast, easy and cheap intra-planetary travel would lend make it easier for planets to be a single political entity

^ sorry to be a hard ass, but the word you're looking for is "ambiguous," not "agnostic." Agnosticism is a fiercely debated word, and it's not a synonym for "ambiguous." Not trying to be a prick, just OCD about language.

For what it's worth, I think that breadloaf's usage parallels usage elsewhere, specifically in computer science in such terms as "platform-agnostic" ("not tied a specific platform"). (I'm presuming that the intended meaning is "unrelated to"; I'm not sure that "ambiguous" is quite right in that context either.)

If we wanted to go by a dictionary definition, the closest that I see on Dictionary.com is "holding neither of two opposing positions".

edited 13th Oct '13 7:52:07 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Indeed, Ars explained it well enough. By agnostic I mean it doesn't care about what type it might be whereas ambiguous means you don't know.

That right there gives you:

Though I feel the need to point out that this line:

Isn't one I would put much credit in. The only thing preventing civil wars are lack of reasons to fight and lack of people willing to fight for them.