Basic Trope: The galaxy is too large for feasible government.
- Straight: A Galactic League actually consists of mutual trade agreements and provisions for succoring citizens of other planetary systems. Its attempts to govern politically soon foundered.
- Exaggerated: Alisander sets out to conquer the galaxy; he starts with unifying his home planet, only to find himself bogged down with the process of governing what he's conquered before he finishes even that part.
- Downplayed: Star systems far from the central government have a lot more freedom than it quite likes.
- Justified: Even a planet-full of people makes it difficult to control them, and this consists of billions of such planets.
- Inverted: It's almost too easy to set up a Galactic Assembly staffed by democratically chosen representatives from each planet.
- Subverted: Planets seem to be totally disjoint, but anyone who digs deeper finds that a secret organization is actually controlling most of them.
- Double Subverted: But the factions within the organization prevent its actually governing them, and there's several factions per planet.
- Parodied: Alisander spends most of his time trying to discipline the various colonies like a galactic Badly Battered Babysitter.
- Zig-Zagged: Most of the "conquered" planets are just small, single-city settlements, so there is basically one government. However, there is much unrest and a lack of faster-than-light communications, meaning the military is constantly busy traveling between planets to discipline them and bring news. Ergo, enacting any sort of major legal change is very hard, and regional governors have lots of freedom to enforce laws as they see fit ... although they're quick to tidy up when the fleet arrives.
- Averted: Galactic Superpower
- Enforced: The game designers want an adventure-friendly cosmos.
- Lampshaded: "The Galactic Emperor does not rule so much as 'quietly make suggestions.'"
- Invoked: Those with anarchist tendencies set out for the stars; in a galaxy so big, there's surely room for them to live the way they want to.
- Exploited: Captain Blackheart raids freely throughout the galaxy, only taking care not to pirate any one planet too often, because they will not be able to organize an effective resistance from all of them.
- Defied: Alexander the Star-Conqueror sets out with new enhanced AIs and surveillance equipment to control with more than human ability.
- Discussed: "Stop while you're ahead, Alisander. There are a million different races out there, on a billion different planets. Even if you could conquer it all before dying of old age, you wouldn't rule for more than a week before it all came apart."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob says he's a member of the Galactic Assembly. "It's the easiest job there is. We don't even have to sit in a room and legislate like normal politicians."
- Deconstructed: When a disaster strikes the galaxy, the Assembly can't propose or authorize payment for a solution because it can't govern properly.
- Reconstructed:
- The Assembly never tries to extend its reach past the solar system of Alisander's home planet.
- Ungovernable effectively means unkillable. The myriad polities that make up the galaxy are able to work together when there's a real threat, but they're so different and so independent that it's impossible for any one disaster or enemy to take all of them out.
- Played for Laughs: The Terran government tries to meddle despite being 4000 light years away and keep on sending messages that are completely irrelevant and have no force. By the time they send military fleets in response to behavior the issue is either resolved or their fleet is inevitably absurdly obsolete as they are incapable of matching a full planet system in research and development while traveling. They immediately surrender, let them know what their mission was and trade their mission ships for scrap to buy far smaller modernized civilian craft to get home rather than try to enforce anything as they are hopelessly outmatched by local civilian crafts.
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