Trope:The Federation

The (mostly) good counterpart to The Empire, generally a democracy and/or presided over by Reasonable Authority Figures, and a superstate composed of many different nations and races, inspired by the structure of the United States or theUnited Nations. The actual name may vary, but not by much. It is likely to have the words "Federation", "United", "Alliance" or equivalent verbiage somewhere in the official title.

In most sci-fi settings, the Federation is predominantly human(or composed of humans, Human Aliens and Rubber-Forehead Aliens), usually commands a fleet of Standard Human Spaceships, and is most likely to look the closest to Twenty Minutes into the Future when the other factions may beCrystal Spires and Togas, Organic Technology or both. Expect its Capital to be the Shining City and its citizens towear anything but Spikes of Villainy or Putting on the Reich.

Rarely played as evil outright, but will usually suffer from sometimes-crippling red tape, and the occasional corrupt politicians and/or generals. Another common evil Federation set-up is The Federation opposing the independence of a number of colonies, whether space colonies in orbit, Mars or other planets in the system, or on entirely different systems. Even in this case, the main opposing force may be shown to be Well Intentioned Extremists and/or an example of The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized, willing to hurt innocent people to try to gain their independence, or worse, being used as a front for a truly evil Big Bad. The heroes will usually be either among the good soldiers of the Federation or neutral partieswho get caught up in the war; this is especially true in anime. In this case, The Federation will be seen as the lesser of two evils. Another evil Federation setup is to make its governance an outright People's Republic of Tyranny.

If pitted against The Empire, is usually in a Cold War-like state, just recovering from a recent war, or a few international incidents from plunging into one. They often give covert aid (weapons, funds, supplies) to any resistance movements, but won't intervene directly unless they're already at war. In general, it frequently plays an America-like role in the political climate of the setting. If there's a movement to overthrow or undermine it, it's likely The Remnant.

Technically a "federation" is a loose conglomeration of states with common goals and purposes, coordinated by a central government that's independent of them all, and from which they have a certain amount of autonomy. One of the best examples of a federation is Russia: not only is its official name "Russian Federation", but most of the lands with a significant ethnic population, like Chechnya, are highly autonomous regions known as "republics". The Swiss Confederation is also an example. Likewise, the original design of the United States was a federation (hence "federal government"); many so-called "federations" in fiction are nothing of the sort. If the group acts much more like a single country than a bunch of mostly autonomous states, it's probably The Republic.

Note that a 'Confederation' is typically a conglomeration of states that are even more loosely bound than a Federation, the primary difference is that in a Confederation, the federal good is 'never' allowed to outweigh the good of the individual state. Switzerland is a modern example of a successful confederate democracy; the United Arab Emirates is an example of a confederation of absolute monarchies. In fiction, Confederations are typically portrayed as (at best) antagonistic neutrals and at worst, bad guys. This seems to be a holdover from the US civil war.

Compare and contrast The Alliance, usually a more temporary union of nations against a common enemy. Also compare theFictional United Nations, where the overall governing body is weaker, it may contain both good and evil members, and it is much less unified (no unified military, and not treated as a single state by outsiders).

Examples

 * Oseainox has it's own Federation shockingly named The Federation (technically it is the Osean Federation but is commonly simply called the Federation).The trope is partially subverted though, as The Empire and The Federation are not only not enemies, but The Empire infact is the defacto leader of the Federation and its founder.