On Political Regime in Fantasy & Sci-Fi

Assessing the patterns and believability of political orders in fantastical fiction.

May 26, 2023

Précis, aka TL;DR: in which we discuss the subject of politics - and specifically, political regime - in fantasy and science-fiction writing. Three points are highlighted. First, that generic politics in fantastical or speculative settings tend to coalesce around variations on a few core regime-types: hereditary monarchy, elitist or closed oligarchies, and totalitarian, ideocratic dictatorships. This is due to the ease at which an author can place these particularly evocative types of political order into a story, as well as their structural tendency towards decisiveness as a feature of government, which has narrative utility. Second, that these same variants of stable political order share a particularly mechanical and structured element that writers are drawn to for story purposes, which also fits how most think about ‘worldbuilding.’ Finally, we consider why electoral democracy - or electoral authoritarianism for that matter - are relatively rare in fiction writing, and when it is encountered it tends to be very handwaved and barebones. A brief collection of new publications concludes, as usual.

Fantasy, Science-Fiction, and Government

What kind of political order shows up in fiction most often, and why? It will not shock anyone to discover that many political scientists are interested readers of fantasy, science-fiction, and other common forms of speculative fiction such as dystopian tales. And in many cases, while few writers in these genres are social scientists themselves, they often have quite detailed views on what politics looks like in the worlds they create. There is a very clear connection between the type of story that comes out of fantasy and sci-fi writing and a care for illustrating politics and political systems within these sorts of narratives.

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This is no surprise and has long been part of the nature of these genres. While a mystery novel or a horror story does not need clear statements about who rules and why, fantasy and sci-fi rely heavily on allegories, implicit comparisons, and speculative criticism about existing or past societies to explore whatever themes the author is interested in.

While there are many ways to explore how the political interacts with narrative choices and frameworks, this essay looks at regimes themselves - a common background element to storytelling and ‘worldbuilding’ in these genres. We do not need to engage in deep literary criticism to note that specifying political regime often matters a great deal for the backdrop for fantasy and sci-fi writing.

What is most interesting, however, is that really only a small subset of political orders shows up with particularly great frequency in these genres - the vast majority being authoritarian, and not always portrayed in a normatively negative way. In fact, when democracy - or any system of popular or electoral rule - does show up, it is most often very handwaved or only briefly touched upon. Why is this?

Although it would be very silly to build out a single, motivating theory as to why we tend to find authoritarian regimes of very different stripes in most fantasy and sci-fi, a few points are worth highlighting.

First, these sorts of regimes tend to be evocative: absolute monarchies and dictatorships are far removed from the political experience of modern Western writers, yet easily stand in for various virtues and vices that might make for good narrative storytelling. The Good King or the Vicious Tyrant are ancient archetypes, after all. And so when building out fantastical worlds, it is unsurprising that we find these sorts of regimes to be particularly common. Their aesthetics are also compelling or revolting in equal measure, a trait that contemporary democracies or electoral authoritarian regimes often seem to lack.
Second, they are associated with decisiveness: the authoritarian ruler tends to rule him or herself, the blood aristocracy is the affirmed ruling class by its very nature, the oligarchic council is a single institution that commands obedience through custom, wealth, and power, the ideological regime has a coherent and oppressive hold on society. This makes the regime work easily as a single, unitary actor in the broader story. And when the story requires divisions within the regime, or vying factions, or a revolt from below, the unitary nature of the political order gives clear bounds on who is in and who is out, who is incumbent and who is challenger.
Third, they are very structural: fantasy and science-fiction storytelling is often built out as a series of systems, patterns, and labels with meaning that can be grasped by the reader. This is important, as the world itself is fictional and the reader has no first-hand experience with the reality of that world until he or she is introduced. So the reader’s introduction is often systematic and ideal-typical. Learn the system (magic works this way, the society is built that way, religion is based on these principles, technology is at this level, and so on) and you can extrapolate across the fictional universe. Regime is thus a system-level heuristic: here is the kingdom ruled by the king, there is the corrupt oligarchy who are corrupt and oligarchic; here is the rebel group, there is the empire; here the society exists in peace, there the society lives for war.

This is all very abstract, but the tendency is very clear. So what does this look like in practice? When does it work, and in what ways does this sort of approach run into believability problems?

Sketching Out Trends in Fantastical Political Orders

Despite the huge array of political regimes on offer across human history, a few common regime-types stand out in both fantasy and science-fiction: hereditary (and usually feudal) monarchies, elitist or closed oligarchies, and totalitarian/ideocratic dictatorships. Fantasy is well-acquainted with the first two, while science-fiction leans towards the latter two.

For fantasy, the dominance of monarchy is striking - if unsurprising. After all, monarchy is the most common form of premodern political regime, and by default fantasy is a premodern setting. That is not a particularly valuable insight, but the treatment of monarchy is very distinct in fantasy. In short, for a great deal of fantasy writing, variations on monarchy is not only all-pervasive but normative. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is very likely the canonical case here, having fundamentally influenced well over a half-century of fantasy writing as well as most roleplaying games, from which new generations of fantasy have in turn grown out as well.

The Tolkien approach to monarchy has set the modern fantasy agenda, which portrays monarchy as a good and just form of rule (the normative) as well as simply the universal default (the all-pervasiveness). Yet it has a larger and older legacy in prewar fantasy as well, which tapped directly into national myths of founding monarchs and lost golden ages. Think Arthurian legend here just to start. Howard’s Hyborean Age, Sanderson’s many polities in the Stormlight series, Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Sapkowski’s Witcher series, and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire universe also all rely on monarchical or monarchical-aristocratic political structures as the assumed baseline. And large, militarized land empires holding to variations on fundamentally monarchical principles also show up with frequency, such as in Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen (which I have not yet read).

The second regime-type that is common in fantasy is the elitist or closed oligarchy. From the council that runs the city-state to the landed aristocracy that commands the countryside, this is the other default for fantasy settings. It also fits with the other common form of governance across premodern human history, which was dominated by council government in localities or bound up in warrior- or blood-based elite cohorts acting as a special societal stratum across larger territorial spans. For example, Pratchett’s Discworld series explores oligarchic city rule with particular interest over many volumes, even while poking fun at it the entire time. Council government also shows up in monarchy-dominated worlds like those of A Song of Ice and Fire too, alongside set-offs in society for certain tiers of aristocratic blood-nobility. Interestingly, the innate oligarchic patterns of premodernity also bleeds into fantasy set in the modern era as well. Rowling’s wizarding world of the Harry Potter series is quite obviously a distinct, self-governing magical aristocracy with all the trappings of exclusive social position and special, innate gifts held by a society of the best and privileged men and women (i.e., the aristoi). There is nothing demotic about wizarding elites, whether portrayed positively or otherwise.

If we shift over to science-fiction and its speculative, dystopian, and adventure-fiction related sub-genres, the pattern shifts towards political regimes that are closer to modern authoritarian regimes, if often exaggerated. Most notably, totalitarian and highly ideological closed regimes crop up with great frequency. Almost all dystopian literature relies on variations of repressive totalitarianism, from Orwell’s 1984 to Collins’ Hunger Games. And as we explore space, it seems that we cannot escape harsh authoritarian realities. The Galactic Empire in Star Wars, the Terran Federation of Starship Troopers, and the Imperium of Warhammer 40k are highlights of very forthright depictions of space authoritarianism, although only the last is truly totalitarian (and highly theocratic at that). Another interesting quirk here is that particularly far-flung science-fiction universes often blend elements of modern authoritarianism (such as ideocratic regime legitimacy and advanced surveillance) with feudal monarchy, such as the Corrino Empire of Dune or the feudal space nations of the BattleTech universe.

Variations on this pattern can bring in a more oligarchic element, with star alliances, confederations, and federations populating many fictional universes. The Star Kingdom of Manticore in the Honorverse, the UN and Mars in the Expanse, the Galactic Empire of Foundation, and even the Federation of Star Trek make the most sense from a conceptual lens as retro-aristocratic or highly technocratic elite oligarchies, depending on the setting.

Another take on fictional authoritarian rule comes from science-fiction written with a political bent in the first place. This is most notable in libertarian-inflected speculative fiction, which combines social critique with working out the accelerationist promise of AI, nanotech, and other hyper-advanced technologies. Usually the solution is ‘Exit’ of some sort, or the creation of autonomous societies bound together by consent to some stable, de facto authoritarian vision of the good, such as in Stephenson’s Diamond Age or Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, among many others.

The Lure of Structure and Order in Fictional Settings

What should we make of this very regular pattern, or trope, in these fictional worlds? Again, for fantasy writing, the political orders of the human past impose fairly strong restrictions on believability. Feudal worlds or continent-spanning medieval empires seem destined to have kings and aristocrats, even if the author’s goal is to subvert the genre or highlight the hypocrisies, vices, and brutality of these systems (see A Song of Ice and Fire for a particularly amoral example). These settings also lend themselves to portrayals of highly inegalitarian societies, which return us to compelling logics of social stratification and differentiated hereditary classes.

The common premise of magic also shapes the nature of a believable politics in fantasy. If mages are powerful beings, it is hard avoid the implication that they would in one way or another be ‘on top’ in a given setting. Where they are not, that is usually a driver of conflict with traditional (e.g., monarchical) political orders - see the Snake cults of Set in Howard’s Conan, the maniacal wizards of Vance’s Dying Earth or any number of pulp-fantasy from the mid-century, or the Aes Sedai of Jordan’s Wheel of Time for some examples.

For our galactic empires, in turn, there is almost always an implicit or explicit logic derived from the basic premise of a star-spanning polity - whether totalitarian and malign or benevolent and even ‘progressive’ - that the vast distances covered and organizational complexity of technically-advanced governance make authoritarian rule more likely. That many are also allegories based in a broad-brush political history of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire (e.g., Star Wars, Foundation) or other imperial polities of the human past (Dune), also plays a structuring role here.

But there is also something about the other common element of science-fiction storytelling that lends itself to authoritarianism and highly coercive governance: the existence of active, aggressive, and malign alien presence from beyond the stars. This motivating premise often makes authoritarian political order a logical conclusion. Indeed, if your galactic empire is beset on all sides by evil gods, vile demons, and perfidious xenos set upon the utter annihilation of humanity, something like even the hyperbolic totalitarianism of Warhammer’s Imperium is hard to avoid, and internally quite compelling. Every book set in the 40k universe provides the same bracing intro: “IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR.” The reader encountering those words to start out, say, Abnett’s Eisenhorn trilogy, could quite plausibly expect political authoritarianism - and it will certainly deliver.

Where Is Democracy?

In fantasy and science-fiction settings, democracy is hard to come by, or at least the political regime that we call democracy today. In fantasy settings, something like popular or electoral political orders are almost always kept to small locations still replete with highly traditional social structures (such as Hobbiton, maybe) or really just oligarchies or tyrannies in practice, whether virtuous or otherwise (say, for example, Lake-town). Fantasy writers that capture a more early-modern or 19th century feel with their settings, such as McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy, can play with the idea of post-monarchical, revolutionary-populist governments (dare we say Caesarist) with interesting results. But these often still fall into the effective oligarchy camp or just modern authoritarianism outright.

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Science-fiction often makes a greater effort to assure the reader that there is something like democracy, even in space. Star Trek’s Federation is the prime case, with the Galactic Republic of Star Wars as a close second. Yet these space ‘democracies’ are so far away from actual democratic politics that it is usually just an assertion, rather than any real demonstration. Even using minimal criteria, it is just hard to find partisan elections or meaningfully changing governments in these kinds of universes.

If the show-writers did not have characters repeat that it was ‘democratic,’ the actually-existing Federation as portrayed in Star Trek would be tagged more honestly as a benevolent, progressive-socialist, bureaucratic-authoritarian military regime or a perhaps a very kind technocratic oligarchy ruled by a hyper-meritocratic overclass. The most politically-sophisticated Star Trek series - Deep Space Nine - is also its darkest - and one in which every showcased polity happens to be authoritarian in one way or another (one is space fascist, another a theocracy, and so on - there’s even an attempted military coup in Star Fleet itself!). And Star War’s Galactic Republic might have a Supreme Chancellor and a Senate, but labels do not make a democracy - as many “democratic republics” of the 20th century remind us. The vignette of the final years of Old Republic politics provided by the prequels gets us closest to a picture of hyper-pluralist galactic ‘governance,’ but mostly acts to showcase the extreme implausibility of the system as sketched out (let alone the believability of its thousands of years of perfect peace) - and the ease of its immediate collapse once any kind of narrative gets going.

The most notable exception regarding democracy in science fiction largely prove the rule of its usual absence. This is the sophisticated depiction of civil-military relations found in Battlestar Galactica, which also includes a competitive presidential election for a fleet-based democratic regime under a general state of exception. Yet the time period is quite short, and the pre-war government is both more oligarchic than anything else (a ‘Quorum of Twelve’ serving to represent autonomous state-planets) and largely a backdrop using American-style institutions as a shorthand (a president, ‘Articles of Colonization,’ etc). Still, certainly an exception of interest.

In any case, it is certainly true that there are good narrative reasons for not working too hard at making democracy in these sorts of fictional settings believable. Actual electoral democracies have too many factions, too many competing groups, and too many daily political frustrations to make storytelling easy or enjoyable. And in truth, the same issue makes the electoral authoritarian regimes common in our corner of the 21st century similarly over-complicated for easy storytelling. Especially if we are looking to take the electoral element seriously as a core part of the political order.

There are presumably few readers and fewer writers who want long chapters detailing the proportional representation of many vying political parties, their shifting partisan histories, and the changing prime ministers or presidents that govern over just a few decades across many planets and alien races? No compelling setting wants to read like a ‘Comparative European Union Politics, 2000-2020’ textbook. Does the reader need to know what space-Croatia thinks about planetary enlargement policy vis-à-vis space-Italy? How many members of the space EU Council and space-EU Commission and space-EU parliament and space-European Court of Justice do you need to specify to make sure the reader is getting the full picture?

A reader might enjoy a quick flourish noting there’s some kind of a space-EU out there, but if one wants to have politics as a core or important element to a fictional narrative, having space-Russia, space-Nazis, space-Rome, or space-neomedieval empire is just much more manageable. The only place where this sort of fussy encyclopedism works is in setting books for roleplaying games (such as Dungeons & Dragons’ expansive Forgotten Realms world) - which are resources, rather than narrative fiction themselves. As someone whose own longstanding D&D campaign with politically-minded friends does involve a panoply of bespoke and confusing politics, turning it into a coherent written story would be an absolute nightmare.

Finally, in the rare situation where showcasing some ideal democracy is a core goal of the writer, it often becomes very cringeworthy very quickly. This is the antipole of libertarian-ish ‘Exit’ fiction, and tends to involve something like direct democracy created through advanced tech. I recently came across a summary of one such work:

“The deliberative technology in Half-Built is marvellous to read about, a beautiful stfnal dramatization of some of the most interesting ideas about ecological decision-making. The watersheds [ed: the political entity in this story] use "dandelion networks" to decide how to govern themselves: these are huge, democratically accountable, transparent, machine-learning-filtered message boards.
Users open threads on the subjects of the day, post comments on them, argue, learn, and vote, but with the volume managed by algorithms that (unlike, say, Facebook's) are trusted by and accountable to the people who use them.
Among the entities in these threads are machine-learning systems who post on behalf of ecosystems, speaking for trees and bacteria and soil and rivers, turning sensor data and historical trends into narratives and points of view that are part of the debate.”

Somehow, this is so much worse than just handwaving that Star Trek’s Federation is an interplanetary democracy. But then again, deliberative democratic theory is usually tremendously cringe and utopian itself, so it is not surprising that a fictional operationalization reads very silly. Still, I suppose that if your goal is exploring nonsensical utopian politics that just work out because you say they do, then there is fiction out there for you too.

Finally, it is relevant to mention science-fiction set in the modern era that does not deal with political regime directly, but highlights unaccountable bureaucratic entities acting in highly coercive and secretive ways - we might think of these as ‘authoritarian enclaves’ in nominally democratic polities. This is a core to ‘weird,’ or paranormal, fiction such as the X-Files, Crichton’s various books on secret government experiments and conspiracies, or rehashes like the Hawkins National Laboratory in Stranger Things. Here, the setting takes normal politics or ostensibly open regimes as beside the point relative to powerful, conspiratorial entities dealing with aggressive extraterrestrial, extradimensional, or otherwise hostile opponents.

Plausible Regimes and the Problem of Time in Speculative Fiction

As a regular reader of science-fiction and fantasy, I am always interested in how politics and political rule is portrayed. Authors use politics for a variety of reasons - to set the stage, to provide a compelling antagonist, or to explore the vagaries, potentials, and pitfalls of human society itself. Of course, the best fiction may have unbelievable worlds, but read wonderfully and are enjoyable and striking on their own terms.

The fact that the Ministry of Magic and the place of wizards amid regular human society is a bit nonsensical has no bearing on enjoying the Harry Potter series - and very much so not the point of the narrative. We do not need the Federation to make sense for fantastic adventures boldly going where no man has gone. The corrupt, fairy-tale monarchies of the Witcher provide an enticing background to an exploration of destiny, fate, and monster-killing. Sometimes the totalitarian enemy is just a stand-in for something evil to rebel against, and that’s fine.

The bar is ideally higher for those works that want to explore regime as such, at least in a believable way. Or for those authors who think particularly long and hard about the general background of the world within which their characters live and strive. What trips up these settings most often is the issue of time, and how it interacts with political regimes themselves. In essence, both fantasy and science fiction writers struggle to impart a sense of longevity or historical background without falling into a time trap in which nothing ever happens and systems are stable for hundreds or thousands of years, until the narrative starts up. This (un)believability weakness is entirely understandable - we are not reading a history book! - but it distorts depictions of political regime in odd, and systematic, ways as a result.

Tolkien is an example of both the good and the more troublesome here. The world of the Lord of the Rings is quite interesting and complex as far as regimes go: lost legacy kingdoms tied to a fallen but virtuous, kingly bloodline (Arnor and Gondor); a contemporary world of a failing monarchy beset on all sides, facing demographic collapse and existential destruction bound to ancient traditions (Gondor of the Stewards); distinct polities with different social structures and economic conditions (Rohan, Dale, Dol Amroth, Harad), and small, insular realms of strange races with their own histories (Rivendell, Lothlórien, the Lonely Mountain, Moria, the Iron Hills). All with plausible logics of monarchical or communal rule, and with clear dynamics of rise-and-fall for the realms of Men. This is part of what makes the world of Lord of the Rings itself compelling, after all.

But the political past built out further in the Silmarillion is harder to swallow, or simply more alien, with immortal elven kingdoms spanning ages of the world and a three-thousand year old Atlantean polity of Númenor that has little to no political trouble until its final century. Tolkien’s deep mythology of prelapsarian, inherently virtuous peoples of Good makes the grand story internally coherent, but less satisfying as an exploration of regime in fantasy. This does not undermine the quality of the masterpiece, but it lends itself more to an exercise in evocative, fantastical background. We are not simulating ‘real’ politics, but engaging in creative myth.

‘Galactic empire’ tales also suffer from the time problem. The Corrino Imperium of Dune is a fun depiction of a neomedieval empire derived in part from Islamic history, but its core moving parts - the near-perfect, thousand-generation plan of the Bene Gesserit, the unchanging super-dynasty and static ‘Faufreluche’ class system of ten-thousand years - is eye-wateringly distant from the real. The Galactic Republic of Star Wars also falls in the category of absurd timelines and handwaved perpetual stasis and peace. Warhammer 40k’s explicitly over-the-top Imperium at least has the benefit of constant war, division, separation, rebellion, and reconquest intervening across its grotesque spatial and temporal bulk. Insofar as writers here wish to explore real politics (and ‘rise and fall’ galactic empire stories ostensibly do intend to), these stretched background conditions can get in the way, or render things a bit absurd.

Still, none of this is necessarily a problem for the stories set within these universes, especially if we think of regime and political order as just the backdrop to adventure and thematic exploration. And it is a thankless request that fantasy and science-fiction require believability for their speculative, fictional realms. Nevertheless, political order remains a staple of the genre, and it is interesting to think about how they are portrayed, and why.

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