One World Order: Difference between revisions
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According to a good deal of [[Speculative Fiction]] set in [[The Future]][[Tradesnark™|™]], it is the natural order of things that all governments will merge together to create a central authority to govern the entire species. It's not necessarily the human species, however.
Sapient [[
The examples can cover a range of extremes: the government is benevolent, efficient, enlightened and out for your [[Benevolent Boss|well]]-[[Reasonable Authority Figure|being]]; [[Shadow Dictator|just]] [[The Illuminati|downright evil]]; or plain [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|realistic]], or anything in between.
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If the species in question is humanity, there may be more diversity involved, if only because the writers don't need to ''invent'' it all. The aliens may also look the same. See [[Ditto Aliens]]. See also [[Planetville]].
Note: If you happen to be in a Christian "End Times" story, and a single government controls the planet, watch out for [[The Antichrist|the dude]] with [[Beard of Evil|the goatee]]. Alternately, watch out for [[Man Behind the Man|the guy standing BEHIND the dude with the goatee]]. If the "villains" are seeking a
{{examples}}
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* In ''[[One Piece]]'', the entire world is ruled by the aptly named World Government. In the past, there were other countries (at least 20) but they banded together to defeat the old world power. Now a days there is a civil war led by the Revolutionary known as Dragon.
** There are ''still'' many minor governments, but the World Government is working hard to incorporate them (sometimes peacefully sometimes... not), or obliterate them and send their populations to slave works. [[The Empire|They are that kind of people]].
* Anatoray and Disith in ''[[Last Exile]]'' eventually merge to form
* Sara's and Lottie's home planet in ''[[Soukou no Strain]]'', as well as possibly the whole Union, resembles... Victorian England in space with gender equality. Go figure.
* In ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Gundam 00]]'', the three world-dominating blocs which make up most of the world form a World Government to oppose [[Necessarily Evil|Celestial Being]], and call themselves [[The Federation]]. At first they are evil, due to the manipulations of the [[Big Bad]] ([[Unfortunate Implications|and headed by a guy who looks a lot like Barack Obama]]), but at the end of the show become a benevolent version ([[Memetic Mutation|and headed by someone who looks a lot like Hillary Clinton]]).
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* In David Wingrove's ''[[Chung Kuo]]'', the entire world is ruled by the Seven and simply called the City, or Chung Kuo.
* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], most species on the galactic scene are very much from a [[Planet of Hats]].
** ''But...'' at the same time the trope is somewhat [[Averted Trope|averted]]. Several alien species hail from a number of planets - Duros, Twi'leks, Zabraks, and, yes, humans, all come from any number of worlds rather than just
** ''[[X Wing Series|Starfighters of Adumar]]'' is about, among other things, a planet that had been human-colonized and left isolated being discovered by the New Republic and the Empire. The planet, Adumar, was a nonunified mass of countries, many at war with each other, making trying to get the world to affiliate with one or the other complicated. Negotiations were with the leader of the largest country with the greatest number of allies. He was trying to unite the planet under him; other countries weren't having that, and there was a battle. The bottom line has a world government formed from representatives of each country, rather than that one guy.
* In the ''[[Left Behind]]'' series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, [[The Antichrist]] becomes leader of the UN and creates the Global Community, declaring a single world government, currency, and ''religion''. No one objects, and it's not clear if this is supposed to be because of his [[Mind Control]] abilities. Its successor, the universal state created by [[God]] after the Second Coming, also qualifies as a (supposedly) more benign example.
* Ira Levin's ''[[This Perfect Day]]'' has the entire world unified under the control of one gigantic supercomputer, although the backstory shows that political and cultural unification predates the building of UNICOMP by a generation or two, while each continent had its own computer before that (EUROCOMP, USACOMP, et cetera). This political unification is one of the few things about his society that doesn't annoy the hero so much that he decides to blow up the computer.
* This is one of the main points of the paradise-like Third Earth of DJ MacHale's ''[[Pendragon]]''.
* The first cycle of ''[[Perry Rhodan]]'', the third power feature as part of the plot the unification of Earth into a
* In Peter F Hamilton's ''[[The Nights Dawn Trilogy]]'', Earth deliberately creates colonies of this sort by a process of "ethnic streaming", to avoid giving people obvious differences to fight over. This is realised after the first, multi-ethnic extra-solar colonies descend into anarchy. Earth itself has a unified government, GovCentral.
* In Dan Simmon's ''[[Hyperion]]'' books, the Hegemony of Man is a Multiple-World Order, with almost 250 planets under one government, all connected by millions of [[Portal Network|Farcaster portals]].
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*** All of that is depicted in the [[Prequel]] series ''[[Caprica]]''; the Colonies are all independent states, with different forms of government (although since each colony is an entire planet, it still semi-fits this trope). For instance, given talk of a "Prime Minister" and "Commerce Minister," it appears that Caprica itself (later capital of the Twelve Colonies) is a parliamentary republic. Also, it turns out that there ''wasn't'' just the one religion: a few people were monotheists.
**** Other sources such as ''The Caprican'' online newsletter explain a bit more of the differences between the Colonies. Leonis was an empire (albeit one in decline) and Virgon is a parliamentary monarchy and both had colonised Tauron for some time. Tauron was a democracy before the civil war but is hinted to be a military government. Aquaria/Aquarion, owing to its tiny population, could afford to have a participatory democracy. What is consistent is that almost every Colony, even the ones that share friendly relations, suffer from prejudice and dislike towards one another. It's explained that [[We ARE Struggling Together!|if it wasn't for the threat of the Cylons, the Colonies would not have united]].
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' is the number one utilizer. [[The Federation]] is in fact a government for ''several'' species, and it's rare for there to be any diversity in alien culture except in service to the plot. (Benzites do not report a situation to their commanding officer until they have fully analyzed it, for example, preventing a Benzite crewmember from heading off a situation before it can escalate to a dramatic level.) In one episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', Picard and Beverly even discuss whether or not having
** ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'' was a little less blatant about this, partly because they stayed in one place so could get a bit more involved with the politics of alien races (particularly the Bajorans, who were shown to have different "provinces" on their planet, as well as at least one terrorist splinter group) and partly because it was [[Darker and Edgier]] anyway.
** [[Unfortunate Implications]] abound: [[The Federation]] seems to be unable to truly coexist with any culture without absorbing it, and its rivals - empires of similar size - are shown to be not only culturally but racially homogenous.
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* In the setting of ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'', the world (indeed, the solar system) is ruled by a single government, the WEC. Simply put, the WEC is every corporation in the world, merged into a hypercorporation, ruling the stead of a government.
** The truth is naturally more complex than that, but this is a very useful lie.
* In ''[[Spore]]'' uniting the whole planet into a
** Once you control 8-9 of the 10 cities, the others will hail you and explain that they "see the writing on the wall" and just join your empire on the spot.
* The EDEN empire in the ''[[Galaxy Angel (video game)|Galaxy Angel]]'' games encompasses a lot of diverse planets, but yup, each one has one culture to its name. Parodied (as with all things) in the ''[[Galaxy Angel (anime)|Galaxy Angel]]'' anime, where there are such things as industrial planets, resort planets, etc. owned by one ''person''.
* Earth finally uniting as a
* This is the goal of ''[[Deus Ex]]'' Evil CEO [[Big Bad]]. By buying influence with money or blackmailing with a critical vaccine, he can have his choice of appointees in any government agency in the world, and have the legislation drafted to give them authority to declare and maintain martial law. He gradually stages legal coups to make the transfer of authority to a U.N. enforcement agency permanent, consolidating control of all governments.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' plays with this a
* ''[[Project Sylpheed]]'' gives us the Terran Central Government (TCG), which apparently rules the entire Earth and its colonies. It has the Terran Central Armed Forces (TCAF) as its military.
* Averted in ''[[Galactic Civilizations]] 2'': factions start the games as a
* Played straight in the ''[[Dead Space (series)|Dead Space]]'' series with EarthGov. It's mentioned in background sources that this was the result of several wars, political upheavals and the depletion of natural resources planetside. It's also mentioned, however, that special preference was made to the United States.
* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', the Administrator is the CEO of two [[NGO Superpower|NGOSuperpowers]], RED and BLU, and a [[War for Fun and Profit|weapon supply company]], TFIndustries; all together, they give her complete control of the entire world.
* The ultimate objective of most ''[[Total War]]'' games is to make one of these with your faction of choice. A ''lot'' harder than it sounds.
* One method of winning Campaign Mode in ''[[Rise of Nations]]'' is to have your faction take over the world, creating a
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[Futurama]]'' Earth is under one government based in Washington D.C., implying that the U.S. has taking over everything. Its flag, "Old Freebie" is just the Stars and Stripes with a globe in place of the stars. Earth, in turn, is part of the Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP), analogous to the United Nations (or to [[The Federation]], which is how the ''[[Star Trek]]''-obsessed Fry understands it).
** Moreover, all
* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'': Starfire's family are the rulers of all of Tamaran.
* In ''[[Danny Phantom]]'', this is what used to be for the Ghost Zone when the evil dictator Pariah Dark ruled it with an iron fist. Naturally, the citizens weren't happy and rebelled. He tried to get his kingdom back AND take over Earth, but he had [[Big Damn Heroes]] on the opposite end.
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== Literature ==
* In The [[Strugatsky Brothers]] novels,
* [[Ursula K. Le Guin]]'s ''The Left Hand Of Darkness'', in which Gethen has several different countries. The protagonist eventually visits the country of Orgota, to find that its government and customs are vastly different from Karhide, and even mentions that he's not as familiar with the native language.
* Similarly, in LeGuin's ''[[The Dispossessed]]'', Urras is divided into several countries, including ([[Nominal Importance|at minimum]]) the liberal democratic capitalist A-Io and the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|"socialist" totalitarian state]] Thu, which are fighting a proxy war in unstable [[Banana Republic|Benbilli]]. If this sounds like the [[Cold War]]...well...[[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|it should]]. Urras, it should be noted, is a double planet, with its (relatively) barren partner Anarres having been settled by "Odonian" anarcho-syndicalists who, as such, have no state. Although LeGuin is herself a noted anarcho-syndicalist, Anarres averts [[Mary Suetopia]] by having a legion of problems, including the development of [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|entrenched bureaucracy]] among the "syndics."
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== Live-Action TV ==
* [[Lampshade
* Both the Minbari and the Centauri in ''[[Babylon 5]]'' had wide enough variations in languages that different representatives had different accents when speaking in English (Lennier vs. Delenn, Vir vs. Londo). (But they still had monolithic cultures, against which Earth's diversity was [[Lampshade Hanging|deliberately contrasted]] in a first-season episode.)
** Judging from the flashes to the future at the end of the fourth season, it seems to be implied that the humanity is on its way towards a monolithic culture, as
* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', the Goa'uld are ruled by a group called the System Lords; true to their name, their government is generally very feudal, with Goa'uld serving different leaders, trying to empower themselves, and at war most of the time (using expendable human slaves).
** Also, the Tok'ra [[My Species Doth Protest Too Much|reject the Goa'uld practice of taking over unwilling hosts]], and live as symbionts with partners who voluntarily host them.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* The backstory universe of ''[[BattleTech]]'' has the One World Order forming and collapsing no less than 4 times! First Earth became a one-world order who sent out space colonies. Eventually the colonies rebelled into several bickering nations. Finally a force of personality united the bickering 5 major nations into a united One-Galaxy Empire. This collapsed after a Usurper killed the leader and his family and the five nations each claimed the throne. The Army of the now gone One-World Government fled and set up a new one world government of its own (the Clans). After 300 year of fighting, these clans returned. After an initial thwarting, the One-world-Order leader of the Clans was dissolved. In eventual response to the invasion, the 5 governments recreated the original one-world government again as a united force to stop the invaders. after the invaders stopped, the government, its mission accomplished, was dissolved. At which point an army of religious fanatics attempted to take on the whole galaxy to recreate another one-world government in their own image. The point seems to be that
** ...or just tear themselves apart anyway, [[Humans Are Warriors|'cause that's how we roll]]. After all, [[Real Life]] governments of all sizes have a habit of doing this once there's nobody left to fight, too. ''[[BattleTech]]'' always was one of the more intensely political fantasy/sci-fi universes.
* [[Traveller]]: Played with. The Third Imperium is the dominant power. However the Imperium has thousands of subsidiary governments, sometimes several on the same world, as well as governments outside the Imperium. [[Planet Terra]] itself is usually under one government.
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