Terran faction

The **factions of the Assembly** are the main political groupings within the Assembly of the People and by extension in the Terran Federal Republic. They are comprised of many smaller political parties and coalitions and represent broad ideologies on the political spectrum. The Assembly traditionally puts forward a member of the dominant-faction as candidate for Chancellor of the Federation. As it is rare that a faction has an outright majority in the Assembly, they almost always assemble in coalitions.

Citizens of the Federation do not vote for the factions but rather for the individual parties which make up the factions. These parties can either be independent or branch parties. Independent parties are often present on a single planet and willingly participate in a faction, whereas branch parties are local branches of the faction itself.

## Major factions today

There are currently five factions in the Assembly, not counting independents. These are: Federalists and Various Associates, the Technocrats, the Social-Liberal faction, the Democratic faction, the Radical faction and the Socialist-Labour faction. The first two are in a coalition and form the Terran government, and have done so for all but six years in the past 250 years. The other factions with the exception of the SLF forms the opposition in a coalition.

### Federalists

The Federalists are the traditional conservative faction of the Federation. They promote aggressive foreign policy, corporate power, social conservatism and militarism. They have existed since the Technocratic schism in 2121, representing the old Technocratic moderates. Despite this, they are in a perpetual state of coalition with the Technocratic faction. They have been the dominant faction for the past three centuries. They are also the only faction to have won an outright majority by itself after the 22nd century, doing so in seven elections.

### Technocrats

The Technocrats are a small but highly influential faction. The faction has consistently received around a tenth to a quarter of the seats in every election since its creation. Unlike other factions, they do not have a defined policy. Rather, their primary goal is to keep the intervention of the Assembly to a minimum and to let the technocratic branch of government do most decision-making. They are traditionally not evaluated on the left-right spectrum, as it doesn't apply to them effectively.

### Democrats

The Democratic faction is the major centrist party of the Federation. They are similar to the Technocrats in the sense that their principal policy is to reinforce the actions of the Assembly and elected officials at the detriment of technocrats. However they still have a defined policy as a faction. They promote high government spending, higher corporate taxes, cooperative foreign policy and pacifism. They are traditional allies of the Social-Liberal faction.

### Social-Liberals

The Social-Liberals has been the largest opposition faction in the Assembly for the past hundred years, and even formed a government in the 2703-2709 Assembly. Their platform is based on social-liberalism and expanded citizen rights. They share the democratic outlook of the Democrats as well as their pacifistic foreign policy, but they are more fiscally conservative. However they wish to abolish the Terran forced-labour prison system as well as the mass-surveilance of the Terran population by the government and its various intelligence services. The Social-Liberals also aim to reduce regulations in areas such as drugs, sexual expression and prostitution, which have always been harshly repressed in the Federation. They do not wish to raise corporate taxes, but they do wish to break the monopolies, which they claim encroach on the liberties of citizens.

### Radicals

The Radicals appeared in the aftermath of the Technocratic schism. They are a grouping of parties whose principal aim is to create a second Terran Republic which would be free of the technocrats. The faction is extremely small, and has never received over a dozen seats out of 675 seats in the Assembly. Beyond this, they have no defined policy.

### Socialist-Labour faction

The Socialist-Labour faction, often simply referred to as SLF, is the faction which has traditionally been furthest left in the Assembly. It has a similar policy to the Democrats, whilst also promoting many of the personal freedoms of the Social-Liberals. Their main distinguishing point is that they wish to nationalise most corporations or turn them into Terran corporations. They also include most regionalist parties of the Federation.