The Galactic Imperial Presidency
Led by Zaphod Beeblebrox. The President's constitutional role is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from whoever actually does, by throwing outrageous parties and stealing starships.
Faction Dossier: The Galactic Imperial Presidency
The official apparatus of the Galactic Government is headquartered nowhere in particular, because whenever it establishes an office, the President usually commandeers the nearest yacht and takes off on an unscheduled tour of the outer spiral arms.
"The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it."
— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 4
Constitutional History: Why "Imperial" Is an Anachronism
The full title of the office is President of the Imperial Galactic Government, though the term Imperial is kept strictly as an anachronism:
- The Former Galactic Empire & Its Collapse: As chronicled in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Page 634784, Section 5a), the original Galactic Empire was wild, rich, and largely tax-free—an era when men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures. The Empire collapsed when the bespoke luxury planet industry on Magrathea absorbed all circulating wealth and plunged a billion worlds into poverty, after which a long sullen silence settled across the Galaxy while scholars wrote treatises on planned political economy.
- The Dying Emperor in Stasis: The hereditary Emperor is nearly dead and has been for many centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma, he was locked in a stasis field that keeps him in a state of perpetual unchangingness.
- The Governmental Assembly: Because all of the Emperor's heirs are now long dead, political power—without any drastic upheaval—simply and effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now seen to be vested in a body that used to act simply as advisers to the Emperor: an elected governmental assembly headed by a President elected by that assembly. (In fact, ultimate power vests in no such place.)
The Role of the President & The Six Who Know
- Drawing Attention Away from Power: The President wields no real power whatsoever and traditionally wears an orange sash round his neck. His sole constitutional function is to stir up controversy and finely judged outrage so that the galactic public—watching his antics via hovering robot tri-D cameras—never asks who is actually governing them.
- Zaphod Beeblebrox's Track Record: On those criteria, Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had—having already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud before stealing the Heart of Gold on Damogran on his two hundredth birthday.
- The Secret of Ultimate Power: Very, very few people realize that the President and the government have virtually no power at all, and of these few people only six people in the entire Galaxy know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn't be more wrong.
Signature Doctrines
- Improbability Drive Development & Sanction: Following the lucky discovery of the golden Infinite Improbability Generator by a lab-sweeping student (who fed the finite improbability figure of an "impossible" infinite improbability machine and a fresh cup of really hot tea into a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain finite improbability generator before being lynched by respectable physicists), the Galactic Government's research team on Damogran developed the device into a governable form of starship propulsion aboard the Heart of Gold, crossing vast interstellar distances in a nothingth of a second without mucking about in hyperspace.
- Immunity to Embarrassment: Members receive $+42%$ jump speed bonuses and heightened anomaly discovery rates through sheer reckless luck.
The Magrathean Sperm Whale
A full-grown sperm whale called into spontaneous existence several miles above Magrathea by an unshielded Improbability burst, spending its brief, poignant life formulating an entire philosophy of existence before impacting the surface.
Megadodo Publications (The Guide Staff)
The greatest galactic publishing empire in known history. Sells more copies than the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper and has the words DON'T PANIC written in large friendly letters on the cover.