League of Autonomous Peoples
After the Long Quiet, the PDF (Planetary Defense Force) took control of interplanetary justice and safety issues. In the vacuum of Alliance influence, the management of interplanetary trade, justice, disputes and the like fell on its shoulders. Various civil leaders got together on Meridian and formed a loose coalition know as the League of Autonomous Peoples or (Méng de Zìzhì Chénmín MZC in Chinese). This organization is anarcho-democratic, with no elected representatives and no official government. Local principalities such as towns and cities on some worlds manage themselves, some worlds, such as Highgate and Meridian have their own planetary governments. Any person residing in the Blue Sun system can participate in the votes on various matters and a simple majority and a staged run-off system wins in every case. Elections are handled electronically, and with the Cortex down, collected locally and managed by the MZC (with the assistance of the PDF) over the course of a week or so for each decision.
The MZC is empowered to command the PDF which in turn acts as a sort of guarantor of individual freedoms.
The MZC has a small bureaucracy occupying existing Alliance offices and a few others which continue the work they did under the Alliance, but with considerably more autonomy. Appeals of bureaucratic decisions follow a procedure designed to put control primarily at the local level, subject to regional, planetary and system wide appeal.
MZC justice involves a: a mediator, two advocates, and a jury of at least 7 people, with no maximum (an entire town could sit on a jury, but you must be present for the whole trial to vote), one member of the jury must be from a MZC region other than the one where the trial takes place.
