Also called simply the Empire, it is a federal constitutional monarchy with a mixed economy and varying levels of participation for member states. It is nominally led by the Emperor, a hereditary position dating back to the end of the Two Century War. The Empire arose from the earlier Genetic States of America. The population as of the last census was 657,329,812,477, with slightly over 10% of the population being a part of the Imperial Defense Force.
Economics
The Imperial Federal government owns approximately 30% of all resource-production operations within its borders and a significant share of resource-production operations elsewhere, including food and mining. It maintains a 5-20% market share in numerous consumer-oriented industries throughout human space, a state which allows for strict and effective control over the price of most goods and services and the ability to exert considerable economic pressure on other nations. Lower- and middle-class citizens receive an Imperial Basic Income if they live in a participating member state, which provides enough money to live comfortably. The percentage of benefits collected scales inversely with the citizen’s income from other sources, but only vanishes entirely for the wealthiest 20%. The wealthiest 10%, who own the majority of capital pay extremely high tax rates, but enjoy access for their businesses to an enormous, stable and ever-growing market. Tax fraud is punished on a sliding scale, with the largest dollar amounts of fraud possible to result in a life sentence in a penal institution.
Government
The Government itself consists of two parallel institutions. The most visible one is a representative democracy, with elected representatives in Congress, elected High Judges and elected Executives at levels ranging from city Mayors to regional Governors to planetary Administrators to the Prime Minister of the Empire. The second is composed entirely of purpose-built AI systems, designed to operate as an impartial check on the power and influence of elected officials, and it follows the same architecture. Both institutions consist of three branches; The Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, modeled after the system of the former United States of America.
The intent of the Paired Institutions was to eliminate corruption, but owing to the capabilities and objectivity of the AI systems, it has become the de-facto decision making body, and its suggested laws, court rulings and executive decisions are frequently approved and adopted by the elected government.
The Emperor
The Emperor is the ceremonial head of state and Commander of the Imperial Defense Force, though the latter role is mostly ceremonial as well. The Emperor has little authority in the actual governance of the Empire, but is empowered to take partial or full control of the Imperial Federal government under certain extraordinary circumstances. The Stark family is the current and only Imperial dynasty, and the current Emperor is Andrew Stark III. The Imperial title is ‘Emperor of Earth and her colonies, Commander of her Military and Protector of her People.’
Military
The Empire is generally very progressive in its policies in comparison to other Terran nations, but is widely regarded as having tendencies as Imperial as its name would imply. The enormous military maintained by the Empire, the Imperial Defense Force, is often considered regressive and barbaric, as most militaries in Terran space are mostly -and occasionally almost entirely- autonomous in nature. Nonetheless, the Empire is the greatest military power in known space, and possibly in the entire galaxy.