I imagine interstellar coalition governments probably function a lot more like the EU than a single country. Individual planets/solar systems would probably function under a somewhat independent governorship that is still subject to the overall laws of the federation/republic.
It’s sort of like asking “how big can a city get?” before states and nation-states existed, when in reality at some point a higher tier governance inevitably takes over. An interstellar or galactic scale government is necessarily going to be massively stratified with many levels of hierarchy in between. I think this is why many sci-fi governments at this scale are also described as bloated, unintelligible bureaucracies.
I imagine interstellar coalition governments probably function a lot more like the EU than a single country. Individual planets/solar systems would probably function under a somewhat independent governorship that is still subject to the overall laws of the federation/republic.
It’s sort of like asking “how big can a city get?” before states and nation-states existed, when in reality at some point a higher tier governance inevitably takes over. An interstellar or galactic scale government is necessarily going to be massively stratified with many levels of hierarchy in between. I think this is why many sci-fi governments at this scale are also described as bloated, unintelligible bureaucracies.