Annotations, Ch 146
Areel Shaw from the TOS episode “Court Martial.”
This and Ch 145 sort of tie up the ‘Equality’ arc I set up, but they’re also a study of the mechanism of change and reform in bureaucracies, the effect of the media on instigating that change, and the multifaceted interactions between bureaucracy and individuals. Starfleet is different from most government bureaucracies because it seems to house a lot of different departments under one roof. They are a military institution, but they also have the Academy, various intelligence agencies, and research facilities. There’s also the fact that they deal with diplomacy, so that indicates they’ve something like a foreign ministry or state department in there too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some bureaus dealing with judicial matters also.
Typically, these are divided into separate ministries/departments/bureaus/agencies/you get the idea. With Star Trek, they’re all lumped together. Granted, Memory Alpha says that separate executive agencies exist to deal with the science, affairs of state, etc, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility that Starfleet has their own people (just as today, militaries have their own laboratories for defense research, their own intel, their own analysts). There are definite advantages and disadvantages to having what appears to be a super-centralized organizational scheme. Theoretically, there’s efficiency, different subdivisions might be able to communicate better, since it’s military there’s a chain of command and therefore a chain of responsibility... maybe. But having something like that also makes the bureaucracy huge, to the point where things can get unmanageable.
I’m not sure exactly how large a role the Federation government plays in the everyday lives of their citizens. I know that Star Trek is about space and exploration, but thinking about the mundane nuts and bolts, there are a lot of really basic questions to ask. How big is the government, exactly? How many people does it employ? How is it organized-like the UN? Like the EU? How much power does it have, exactly? How does it collect revenue? What kind of economic model does the Federation follow? Obviously Starfleet is a command economy. But what of the planets? Interplanetary? Intraplanetary? Between the larger empires? What is the interaction between the government (e.g. the FedCouncil) and its institutions (Starfleet)?
...then you add the media into all this.