The first human settlements on Mars were the results of public-private partnerships, whose governance was ensured by consortiums of one or more Earth nations. Their rules were necessarily complex and often poorly adapted to local conditions. The requirements of daily survival on Mars highlighted the need for rapid and collectively accepted decisions, and irresistibly called for the independence of Martians. The natural arrangement of the Martian settlements into cities gave rise to a planet wide civilization of sovereign City States, made of one central city or a coalition of cities. Foundation is the largest and most famous of these coalitions, and to most people on Earth, it is basically Mars.
At the planetary scale, a consultative body, called The Congress of Mars was quickly established. It emerged to set up and run the Mars Planetary Rescue Force, nicknamed, with a certain irony, the Red Helmets. This organization first administered the contributions of each city (field hospitals, suborbital hoppers, staff) then became the privileged place for discussion on other global themes. The main topic of discussion at this level concerns the terraforming of the planet, which is still in its infancy. A challenge system has been established and is based on bonuses won by the first City-State to achieve an objective linked to the ecopoiesis process. This healthy competition, which some call the "Olympic Games of Mars" is followed throughout the solar system and the subject to a whole betting system. Its winnings are used to finance the prizes and the compensation for prejudices to settlements penalized by the terraforming process. The Congress of Mars also functions as an arbitration court. If coexistence and cooperation are the watchwords of diplomacy on Mars, there is definitively a certain competition for access to resources, and relations between City-States are not free from disputes, and even conflicts.
Even if the means to produce weapons are available, there is little incentive to build them and use them. Using a weapon on Mars leads to the risk of rupturing the habitat walls, an act seen as an abject crime against Humanity and the Ecosystem that sustains it, and deserving of the most severe punishment. In a similar way that the use of atomic weapons on Earth is restrained by the ‘Balance of Terror’. Even if no text explicitly prohibits the use of weapons on Mars, each State knows that endangering a habitat, even in "collateral damage", would lead to all the other States allying against the perpetrator. No State has betrayed this tacit agreement, which is commonly called “Balance of Prudence”.
Each Martian City-State is organized in a different way, with different entities representing the legislative, executive and judicial powers. Foundation operates as a direct democracy. Most public decisions are submitted to referendum by universal suffrage. Votes are electronic and authenticated by blockchain. Citizens' solicitations are permanent, most of the votes relate to relatively local decisions and the participation rate is generally low. The discretionary power of political staff is thus very limited, and it is sometimes necessary to resort to the drawing of lots to appoint officers. The Terran lobbies have regularly declared themselves bewildered by the lack of interest of politicians toward their precious advice. The political organization is based on the principle of subsidiarity, aiming to delegate the level of decision as low as possible. The basic level is that of the district, a tightly defined set of habitats serving of the order of 10,000 people, but which is in practice very variable. This district is administered by a mayor and municipal councilors. Each higher echelon has its officers elected by universal suffrage. Unlike on Earth, it’s observed that favorite public positions are the lowest and local ones. Subsidiarity is particularly important for the judiciary and executive powers. For example, in Arkadia and Suria, if a crime is committed in a district, the judgement and the sentence are carried out at this level. If the crime concerns two districts, officers of the next echelon are mandated to solve the problem.
The most famous constitutional principle of Foundation is called “the Right to Life Support”. Despite its economically liberal culture, the Foundation society implements many costly social protection measures, which are readily accepted because they are subject to the rapid sanction of public control and direct democracy. Education, measures promoting birth rates, medical follow-up for all are considered inalienable public services. As is the Right to Life Support, which includes air, a minimum amount of water, energy and minimal housing. Indeed it is practically impossible to live outside the system on Mars. This highly decentralized but highly interconnected governance has enabled intense technological development, stimulated by the permanent emulation between districts and City-States. It has led to the selection of organizational methods derived from agile methods, but applied to the development of districts and cities and rule-making. The increase in productivity that resulted from this organizational revolution was comparable in magnitude to the revolutions of Fordism and project management techniques of the Second World War, but this time without the drawbacks of cultural standardization and exclusion from the decision process. These developments were paralleled by high population growth, stimulated by the birth rate but mainly by immigration.
This is the Foundation society, very representative of all Martian societies: coalitions of hundreds of small districts, fiercely watching over their independence and uniqueness, but never hesitating to exchange information, and to vote for everything.
Next page -> Transportation