Governments are governments, right? A thing is what it is. But.... even in our world things aren't that clear-cut. The dons of Cambridge University, for example, might be hard put to it to define the relationship of the colleges to the University with any great degree of precision.
Construction of governments is a frequent pastime and necessity for science fiction writers. I suggest that the mysterious ambiguity of an Overgovernment - an authority lurking beyond the workaday idea of government - gives you the writer elbow-room in plotting; allows you to haunt your readers with an extra dimension to the imaginary society you are creating. I am not simply talking about the tension and ambiguity inherent in any idea of a federation - though that is an interesting theme in itself, and responsible for such titanic events as the American Civil War. I am talking about an overgovernment so lofty that it can seem to float above normal ideas of sovereignty.
In Cordwainer Smith's series of interconnected far-future tales the Lords of the Instrumentality watch over mankind. They influence, but except in moments of unusual crisis they do not seem to govern in the ordinary sense. They are responsible for the Rediscovery of Man - that epic return to danger and hardship, undertaken in order to free humanity from the stultifying results of bland utopia. You get the feeling that a Lord or Lady of the Instrumentality is pretty much allowed to do what he/she likes; if you get to that position (Smith nowhere says how you get there) you presumably can be trusted.
In Jack Vance's "Demon Princes" and "Gaean Reach" novels the functions of governmental sovereignty are to some extent assumed by a technically private detection agency, the Interworld Police Co-ordination Company (IPCC), which came into existence through necessity: the task of bringing criminals to justice had been rendered all but impossible through the ease with which anyone could procure a spaceship and disappear into the Beyond. Crime, violence and injustice abound in Vance's plots, but it is significant that we do not find planets warring upon one another.
The interstellar Federation of the Hub in the universe invented by James H Schmitz has its own special character, perhaps influenced by the fact that psi talents seem to be possessed by many of its members. This is not a point that is rigidly worked out in the stories. The Overgovernment theme is left vague, as it should be, and as it would be in reality, if it were to be effective. The reader is not even sure (at least, I'm not sure) how far the Overgovernment and the Federation Government are coterminous. Certainly the people aren't told everything - that's par for the course in real life - but the main thing is, the regime is accepted because it works: it keeps things running, it keeps criminality within bounds, it even benefits from the way crime keeps people on their toes - this is not a regime that shies from allowing people to defend themselves. And when it is attacked from without, it benefits from the individual initiative thus bred in the population - as in the novel The Tuvela (also published under the title The Demon Breed).
In the Ooranye Project the 25 disc-on-stem cities of Ooranye (Uranus) are government by Noads ("foci") who are the heads of these independent city states. But there is also a Noad-of-Noads, a focus-of-foci, called the Sunnoad. During the enormously long history of Uranian civilization (lasting over a million years) various arrangements have evolved and been tried for the election of Noads and Sunnoads. But in almost every case the Sunnoads have not "ruled" in the normal sense. They are more analogous to popes than to presidents or kings. Yet their leadership in crises is accepted without question. That is what they are for. A Noad does not think of it as an infringement of his city's sovereignty, if he/she is called upon to obey a Sunnoad in time of war. On the contrary it is regarded as one's right, to obtain the leadership services of a Sunnoad. This being the attitude and the belief, how would we define such a system? Not as a federation, certainly. Yet the city states are united in some sense that is a bit more than merely cultural. The fact is that the Uranian system does not correspond to anything that might function on Earth. We do not have the Uranians' inner social radar, their sense of what is fitting, their knack for being at the right place at the right time - that sense known as lremd which they have to have for survival on their giant mysterious world.
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