One of the main Compact member states, the UCC began life as the Organization of Interstellar Growth and Development, colloquially known as the Corporate Worlds (2300–2314). The OIGD itself was an amalgamation of the colonies founded by the Big Four private space corporations since 2208, which retained their independence from the TIU.
In the course of the Corporate Worlds War (2312–2314), a number of revolutionary groups rose up against the OIGD government, angered by years of increasingly totalitarian surveillance, rapacious economic policies, and the war itself, particularly the use of the Ciphers against the other human powers. The governing boards of the OIGD were overthrown, and a number of Citizens’ Councils set up in their place, which immediately made peace with the Alliance.
The Citizens’ Constitution of 2315 established a unique form of government in the new UCC, a two-house representative democracy with no specific leader or head of state. The upper chamber is the Citizens’ High Council, a body of thirteen members elected directly by the populace across the UCC. The chairperson of the high chamber is chosen on a random, rotating basis every 4.6 months, to ensure that each member chairs once during a five-year term.
The lower house is the Assembly, a larger body with hundreds of members, also elected every five years. Since there is no means of equally sharing the responsibility of leading the Assembly, the task is left to an AI speaker. Programmed to be completely impartial, the non-voting AI’s only task is prevent the Assembly from descending into bickering and chaos—which, occasionally, happens regardless. Should the Assembly deadlock, the issue is sent up to the High Council for a decision.
The local governments of worlds and municipalities within the UCC follow a similar pattern, with Citizens’ Councils serving as an upper chamber; however, there is a wide variance in the structure of the lower Assemblies. In some cases, the entire populace (in theory) serves as this body.
In contrast to the FWR, cybernetic augmentation is largely forbidden in the UCC, while genetic modification is widespread and almost completely unregulated. This results in the widest variance in the basic human form among United Citizens, many of which resemble depictions of humanoid aliens from twentieth and early twenty-first century Earth fiction. That being said, the basic modifications which nearly all citizens receive from birth create a recognizable “typical” United Citizen, much as standard cybernetics do in the Republic. This basic suite of genetic enhancements means that despite having the widest variance in appearance and other surface characteristics, the UCC populace has the lowest variance in general ability.
The UCC government provides its citizens with an extremely generous universal basic income and relies heavily on automation to fill most non-creative jobs. This is in part a dividend of the UCC’s constitutionally enshrined pacifism, engendering resentment in certain other corners of the Compact, particularly the FWR; it is charged that the UCC can only provide such a decadent life for its citizens because it relies on the military protection of the other Compact member states against threats such as the Ciphers and the Kyrans.
