The Outer Limits part 2

The Federation sees itself as the center of the galaxy, and more importantly, the center of humanity. Its capital system, Sol, is the birthplace of humanity. It prides itself on its democracy, freedom of speech and the high level of living standards for its citizens.

Other political factions (like the Alliance) see the federation as an old, decadent, corrupt establishment, which will probably fall apart of its own rot and decay.

Both versions are more or less true. Although the Federation has a strong navy, and promotes patriotism to drive its peoples (as opposed to genetics or internal repression (See Empire)) it suffers the fate of all large, hierarchical empires, which include corruption, state secrecy and the triumph of wealth over justice. Whilst not unique to the Federation, they still represent a challenge to its idealized self-image.

The Federation's attitude to the Empire is of implacable opposition, as the Empire represents opposition to all the Federation's ideas. The less charitable also note that the Federation psyche has not yet got over the insult of the original Achenari "insurgency" many hundreds of years ago. The two powers are locked in an almost constant state of Cold War, with occasional flare-ups of armed hostility. This spills over into many areas of Federation cultural and political life, which leads to significant distortions of public life and policy.

The attitude to the Alliance is considerably more ambivalent. Despite the fact that the Alliance was formed as an attempt to resist both Imperial and Federation dominance, the relationship between the two can be described as more or less friendly rivalry, which has not spiraled into direct conflict yet, although the increasing clout of the new and relatively uncorrupted power has provided significant areas of tension and border incidents.

Independent worlds have generally been safe from Federal conquest, if only for the reasons that such activity would quickly attract the Imperial and Alliance war fleets. Whilst the Federation would not object (per se) to their addition to the list of aligned worlds, the Federation is generally too big and too politically inert to take any actions to bring this about.