While the Pact and the Alliance have multiparty democracies, the
Comintern and the
Great Powers are defined by either officially entrenched single-party systems or by overwhelmingly strong dominant-party systems. Sometimes this is the result of the fact that the largest political force is a big tent or catch-all party, able to accommodate diverse tendencies into a single cohesive whole, while in other cases this state of affairs is maintained either through state power or as an aftereffect of an opposition too small and fractious to amount to a credible electoral threat. Aside from this political tendency, the three Great Powers are set apart by their large amount of regional and global clout and de facto independence from the three ideological blocs of the Strange Aeon, though the OTO and the GEAC-PS are nominally observers (but not members) in the Alliance for Democracy.
The Comintern has perhaps the most unusual electoral landscape on Earth, an outgrowth of the tenets of Marxist-Trigonism. While the vanguard party has been maintained as a political necessity, inherent distrust of the ossification of the Party, born out of an observation of the Soviet Union under Lenin, the Spartacist Republic under Goebbels and the Social Republic under Mussolini, has seen restrictive rules put in place to ensure proper obedience to the social base and the active cultivation of alternative centers of power to check and balance it. The erosion of political boundaries between the Comintern members has seen the gradual replacement of more traditional national legislatures with proportionally representative councilist ones arranged along linguistic lines, with these nested councils carrying out the necessary business of government from the local level upwards. The government of the Comintern proper is made up of members elevated from these national councils, setting policy for the bloc as a whole and conducting its business entirely in Esperanto. This level is open to Marxist-Trigonist parties existing outside the bloc, such as the Persian
Tudeh Party and some factions of the
African National Congress who, in the name of proletarian solidarity, are allowed to fully participate in the setting of Comintern policy* more broadly in proportion to their membership.
- The Monda Komunista Partio is the only sanctioned political party within the bloc, originally formed through the fusion of the various communist and anarchist parties and factions of the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Spain. As the most conventional electoral branch of the Comintern political system, the World Communist Party best illustrates the divide within society between the Continentalists, who favor a focus on domestic issues and the final eradication of the few remaining remnants of bourgeois repression, and the Internationalists, who favor the expansion of the Comintern and a robust foreign policy. The Continentalists contain the majority of the Rational Anarchist-aligned Nihilists undergoing a renaissance within the bloc, giving them the numerical strength to outmaneuver the Internationalists, who, barring Mussolini's acquisition of Libya, have few successes to point to.
- Solidareco is the umbrella organization for the Comintern's diverse ecosystem of cooperatives and labor unions. Organized on a hybrid one big union-industrial union model pioneered by the IWW, Solidarity has staked an aggressive claim on outlining and directing the Comintern economic policy.
- The result of the grand Vorticist experiment, the Monda Akademia functions as a combination of a humanist church, a comprehensive education system, and a series of research laboratories analogous to the American Science Cities. Aside from providing for the education needs of the Comintern member states at all levels, the World Academy also operates an international network of free colleges and education programs abroad and provides the bloc with the majority of its technological research and development.
The
Indian Union is listed first among the Great Powers because in spite of being two years old the new nation's sheer size and impressive potential for rapid material development have already placed it on a trajectory to reach the level of the Five Eyes within a matter of a generation. Add to that a military larger than any single other Great Power and its placement on this list is secure. Officially a multiparty democracy, the nation is a defacto dominant-party system in the face of the vast
Indian National Congress, a scenario unlikely to change soon. As a result of the party's size, internal fractions within in it are large and active enough to be considered parties unto themselves, with the fractions unified on the broad domestic goals of the Union but divided largely around foreign policy.
- The Requisitionist faction is the faction of Premier Gandhi, favoring an official alliance with the Comintern, the devolution of power to the labor unions, and the adoption of an educational system modeled on the Monda Akademia, properly adapted to the Indian national character. Most popular in the south of the Union, proximity to Kumari Kandam has given the region the most strident opposition to the Franco-British Union and has cultivated an outspoken disgust of their island neighbor's Objectivism.
- The Organization faction is the resident pro-Fascist bloc in the country, advocating a less sweeping nationalization regime than the Requisitionists while still wholeheartedly supporting massive land reforms, a broad social safety net, a massive increase in the size of the Indian Army, and the development of domestic Science Cities. Broadly popular in the center of the Union, this fraction has made a point of reaching out to ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities to its north to broaden its base of support and suppress the specter of nationalist factionalism.
- The Irredentist fraction is the odd man out, not only for its advocacy of an alliance of equals with the FBU but also for its uncomfortable tolerance of ethnoreligious nationalism within the broader Union. Membership of this fraction is the smallest, ensuring they are kept far away from power, though their support is strongest in the northern parts of the Hindi Belt and they maintain small branches catering to Muslims in East and West Bengal and Sikhs in Punjab who agree on the fraction's central goal of increased ethnoreligious segregation and autonomy. There is a real concern they are receiving covert funds from the Entente Renewal Front in a bid to weaken the former Dominion, further limiting their broader appeal.
The
Oriental Treaty Organization is the largest political faction formally outside the three superpowers. Political development in this bloc has been largely shaped by the experiences of the
Ottoman Empire, which has capitalized on a sixty year reputation of neutrality to carve out a niche for itself and its allies on the international stage.
- The largest political party in the Ottoman Empire, the Committee of Union and Progress has been the central driver in the Empire's sweeping half-century of reforms and has become the model for like-minded parties in the OTO. Occupying the political center, the CUP advocates for the preservation of the current constitution and the monarchy's role in it and pursues a growth-oriented agenda focused around modernization and the shrewd management of oil and other vital resources. Affiliates:
- Emirate of Jabal Shammar- Committee of Union and Progress
- Empire of Ethiopia- Ethiopian Democratic Union
- Sultanate of Somaliland- Committee of Union and Progress
- Forming the official opposition, the Ba'ath Party is a secular social democratic party advocating for an expansion of the social safety net and public works programs, greater democratic accountability, and an increased voice for the Empire's ethnic minorities. Affiliates:
- Emirate of Jabal Shammar- Ba'ath Party
- Empire of Ethiopia- Nationality Democratic Association
- Republic of Greater Egypt- Ba'ath Party
- Sultanate of Somaliland- Ba'ath Party
The
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere has fallen quite a long way from its height during the Second Clash of Civilizations and consists of only two members at present, the
Empire of Japan and the
Kingdom of Thailand. The Japanese
Liberal Party and the Thai
People's Party exercise defacto one-party control over their respective states, with a broad set of policies similar to the CUP. While the Thai opposition is too fractured to matter much, the Japanese Empire faces recurring opposition from the
Heimin tō, the electoral arm of the Heiminshugi branch of Rational Anarchism largely centered in Korea. While the majority of political parties have paramilitary wings, the Liberal "
Special Unit" is particularly feared, seeing itself as the last bastion against anarchy in the Empire.
*This was inspired by an OTL suggestion by Amadeo Bordiga that the USSR, as the bastion of the global proletariat, should be ruled collectively by the world's communist parties. TTL the American affiliate is the Socialist Labor Party, though their membership is so anemic they don't have many votes and have never been elevated to the Comintern's Central Committee.
