The Alliance of Independent Worlds is – shockingly – an alliance of largely independent solar systems. It exists mainly to facilitate trade and law enforcement that has a widespread effect. Among other things, they run the Patrol (in theory) to keep it neutral and dedicated to the Alliance as a whole.
Most systems in the Alliance are entities unto themselves. Typically (a slippery word on this large a scale) a state is an entire solar system. There will be a main world running the show, usually someplace relatively Earthlike where people can live without too much assistance, with the less-inhabitable worlds used as they see fit. Mostly that means strip-mining or NIMBY; nobody really cares if you screw up and nuke a crater into an airless, uninhabitable rock with no real minerals of interest. The main world tends to have a single government, but there are plenty of worlds where this isn’t the case. On at least one planet, the “planetary government” is a polite fiction that exists solely for Alliance administration purposes.
A system has its own laws, culture, and customs. Most have world or system-wide governments. There are similarities, especially among colonies settled by the same parent systems, but differences abound. Officially, the Alliance takes no issue with these differences unless they violate the Alliance Charter. Said violations are for severe societal issues – slavery and genocide are at the top of the list.
Member states can have nearly any government they want. Corporate states, federated republics, military dictatorships, tribal federations, etc. are all technically legal. The important part is that they follow the basic rights laid out in the Alliance charter. That’s where the “nearly” comes in. If a planet, regardless of governmental system, violates that charter there will be repercussions. Usually these are economic; nobody wants offplanet trade disrupted or other sanctions placed upon them.
Theocracies and organized religions interfering in people’s lives in general are largely frowned upon after a pretty nasty example left a few billion dead and a couple of planets utterly devastated. There are very few megachurches in the Alliance. A few non-affiliated worlds are effective theocracies, but they’re thankfully rare.
That’s how Halcyon gets away with being so backward. Unless and until they cross the line into something that openly violates the Charter – and someone in a position of power notices – they can do pretty much anything they want as long as it’s legal there. There are rumors of tiny colonies that just barely qualify for membership that exist solely as havens for fugitives who haven’t broken any Alliance laws, just laws on their homeworlds.
The downside to this laxity is that a number of member worlds have some very strange laws and customs. Most of these situations are the result of religious influences. Alliance law recognizes religious freedom, whether at the individual or world level. Since enforcement of certain religiously-based laws can be problematic, a number of state religions have become extremely oppressive. As long as they don’t cross certain lines, they get away with it though. Cynics joke that the line is throwing a full Celestial Host scale crusade.
Every system gets a certain amount of representation in the Alliance Council. This is based on their Membership Rating. Overall, long-standing, highly-advanced, civilized worlds get more representation in the Council than a “colony” consisting of a few families who found an unclaimed, marginal world and claimed it in the name of their little state. There will be a larger article on Membership Ratings and where certain notable worlds fall.
Despite worlds being technically independent, some smaller-scale alliances do exist, whether formally or informally. Some of these are simply strong trade partnerships. Some are allied through colonization. A few like Katzbalger are both. Katzbalger Industrie simultaneously funds colonies and makes them independent trade partners. Unless they break the Allaince Charter, this has no bearing on their status with the Alliance; most Katzbalger worlds are full Alliance members.
Part of this is due to the nature of FTL drives in the Alliance. It is difficult to intercept a starship as it travels from its origin to its destination (space is enormous and sensor ranges and budgets are finite), so any major conflicts will occur at one or both of those points. Because a jump can bypass worlds quite easily, a starship can effectively appear at any point of its choosing. Thus, systems have to defend themselves rather than rely on some distant defensive system like an interstellar Maginot Line. Such defenses are completely useless when they can simply be bypassed without ever coming within several light years.
Piracy is a different story because they either have inside information on where a valuable cargo will be headed or they’re engaging in fast hit and run raids against lightly-defended targets. There’s a reason no pirate has raided Tau Ceti II in a few hundred years and Captain Barton’s raid is the stuff of legends.
This is why one of the Patrol’s priorities since the Celestial Host War has been ever faster and more compact FTL drives. The Patrol is a rapid-reaction force intended to get someone into action as quickly as possible. While their lighter ships may not be the most heavily-armed in the galaxy, there are very few faster. When the difference between survival and disaster is measured in hours, the decision is easy.
Similarly, trade is much more scattered. When a shipment of supplies can be sent to or from any world, trade routes are far less important. Small cargo ships are incredibly common in the Alliance. They have two advantages over the larger bulk transports. A bulk transport, which can be the size of a city, requires significant infrastructure to conduct cargo operations in a manner that may even jokingly be described as efficiently. You can’t just drop out of orbit, find a nice open stretch of ocean, and sail into your destination port with a starship whose reentry would cause devastation on par with the K-T event. Smaller starships don’t have these issues. They can reenter the atmosphere of an inhabited world without causing an ecological disaster. Then they can splash down pretty much anywhere they want and be unloaded with forklifts.
Beyond that, smaller ships are effectively faster, making them perfect for courier duty. When your cargo is small enough, why send a bulk transport that will take weeks or months to get to its destination because it has to stop for several days at multiple places along the way – incurring port fees at every stop – when a much smaller ship can make the journey in a few days, stopping only long enough to recharge its jump drive before proceeding to the next stop?
That said, there are still bulk transports and ports to serve them. In densely-settled areas with low individual planetary populations (and the resultant lighter capacity of their infrastructure), so-called “trade worlds” exist as hubs for the surrounding areas. In these cases convoys of bulk transports offload mind-boggling amounts of cargo to port stations where the goods are distributed to much smaller ships for delivery to their final destinations. Similarly, when these smaller ships drop off cargo they usually pick up a load as well to be moved through a port station to a bulk transport.
Needless to say, these trade hubs are some of the best defended places in the Alliance. A significant part of the port fees paid by traffic passing through goes to maintaining these private navies. That the Patrol also tends to maintain facilities there certainly doesn’t hurt either. If pirates raid a major trade hub, it’s a covert operation much more like a jewel theft than an outright assault.