The Pannessi Empire
Maharat Pannessirajya
[hr]
As The One Above All
The Pannessi Empire is an ancient geopolity, a loosely-connected confederation that holds as paramount the right of every constituent community to rule itself. Founded upon a long-dead valley civilization, the Pannessi Empire was historically known as a home for everyone from exiles to refugees to the militantly introverted. Its aristocratic houses were originally made of brave explorers, styled in the manner of the expeditions that defined the Pannessi connection with the outside world. Today, however, these ancient houses have become mercantile bodies, with the sprawling Empire's powerbase dwarfed by its massive, diverse immigrant population. Many titles are, and were even at their outset, simply mimicry of hereditary titles in its trading partners and foreign peers, following the conventions of the Pannessi expeditionary culture in adopting largely democratic systems of governance.
Today, the Pannessi Empire is a confederation of highly liberal democracies, with a largely socially-predicated upper strata known regionally for its debauchery and its strange hybridity, giving the Empire's elected officials all the legitimacy of democracy and all the trappings of nobility. Corporate brands and logos are held in the same esteem as other nations hold coats-of-arms, with everything from NGOs to unions to universities to mine-holdings being headed by elected Grand Dukes, paying fealty to the various elected petty Kings of the Pannessi Peaksat balls and royal festivals. Alongside them, the Pannessi military is equivalently feudalistic, with military units forming an equally loose central command structure but owing fealty to sponsor corporations. It is the responsibility of the Pannessi military, representing the many individual and corporate sponsors of the Empire, to elect as their supreme commander the Pannessi Emperor, whose civilian powers are restricted to observing and enforcing fair elections across the Empire, and to maintaining the joint portfolios of foreign affairs and defense.
Nation's Official Name: The Pannessi Empire / Maharat Pannessirajya
Demonym: Pannessi
Capital City(ies): Pannesindhu
Ethnic Groups: Highly diverse - Originally associated with the Sindhi [South Asians], but has taken in many immigrants and refugees over time
Official Language: Pannei
Government Type: Democratic Socialist Confederation
Head of State: Maharaja Vladimir II
Head of Government: Mahasattva Anne-Mikasa Anula
Population: 360 Million
GDP: 12 Trillion USD
Currency: Rupei
Government & Politics
Spoiler: click to toggle
Subdivisions & Cities of Maharat Pannessirajya
Maharat Pannessirajya is subdivided into nine regions, known as Realms. Realms are geographic collectives of cities, voluntarily placing themselves into Orders (a Realm's population) that are associated with a Presidency. Orders are largely politically homogenous, with whole towns and villages physically moving to the Realms that best fit their political cultures over time. Orders are responsible for electing their Realm's President, who is responsible for holding a Presidency - the political powerhouses of Maharat Pannessirajya, to which corporate bodies swear fealty in enjoining themselves to an Order.
The Realms, moving anticlockwise with the border & coast from the northernmost Realm, are respectively home to the Presidencies of Raahuu, Amritanadi, Prasanna, Aavali, Ketuu, Sindhu, Kshayana, and Kailash, with the remaining enclaved Realm being that of the Presidency of Aamnaaya. Realms are named after their Presidency, with the appendation 'raj', whilst the collective Orders use the appendation 'rajya'. The Presidency of Sindhu is also sometimes known by the name of Pannesindhu, the city which it in reality encloses and which serves as the nominal capital of Maharat Pannessirajya.
The Political Parties of Pannessirajya
Pannessirajya's political climate is defined by its complex preferential systems, its active, state-sponsored promotion of local politics, and Orders that are more politically cohesive across the aisle than with similar parties in other Orders. Pannessirajya's elected offices are largely distributed through complex coalition-building on the behalf of dynamic individual alliances, with names being listed on ballots rather than parties. Huge legal barriers for individual influence in elections mean that Pannessi law incentivizes corporate bodies to involve themselves in politics, with both conventional corporations and more unusual bodies, like local sports clubs, formally backing candidates for office. These often move electoral politics into esoteric, and even genuinely random decisions, effectively planting generally non-contentious community leaders into power and aligning them formally with a party after the fact.
Each Order has a loose two-party system based around coalitions of local parties, with those coalitions generally uniting to produce coherent Order-centered politics at the national level.
The Political Parties & the Nine Presidents of Pannessirajya
- President, of Raahuu
- President, of Amritnadi (Coast to Coast) [Megaprojects & Infrastructure]
Amritnadi is the dominant power in the Pannessi western sea, with all three of the Pannessi western coast's major cities falling within the domain of Amritnadiraj - its only opposition in that front being the underdeveloped realm of Raahuu. Amritnadi's political parties are fuelled by a nearly unchallenged role as arbiters of Pannessirajya's maritime law, a welcome bastion between them and the ignobility of sitting far beyond the nation's core infrastructure and public consciousness. Amritnadi is the only realm in Pannessirajya in which nature tourism - measured seperate from mountaineering & self-led hiking, instead referring to guided tours - forms the central economic draw of the realm, and it represents more than half the nation's aquacultural exports in tonnage (albeit, a representation substantially inflated by the high value and low volume of Sindhu's sustainable aquaculture branding).
Amritnadi's governing party is Coast to Coast, which is outwardly a single-issue party that supports the construction of a megaproject to tunnel from sea to sea, along the relatively low border with Raahuu. Generally accepted to be a task that will not be feasible for decades (as evidenced by more than a dozen referenda initiated by both the Coast to Coast coalition and, preceding its creation, the individual parties that now constitute it), they have nevertheless claimed prominence as an infrastructure-focused party. They support an explicit national hub-and-spoke strategy for infrastructure, which would supercede the existing status quo of focusing on realm-to-realm connections and permitting the realms to exercise independent infrastructure spending almost unilaterally. This would create immense profit for Amritnadi, given its role as Raahuu's only connection to the mainland and the potential for regulatory capture of the major trade routes between Sindhu and Prasanna, currently running through the treacherous central mountain ranges as part of Aamnaaya's infrastructure budget. As a result, Coast to Coast is often considered an international leader in megaproject & structure development, and claims some of the nation's most innovative minds - including most of the nation's elected outer space advocates. Amritnada's opposition party, Welcome Home, shares a common interest in extensive megaproject development, but paints it as a direct commercial investment - particularly for the tourist industry. Amongst Welcome Home's most ambitious plans include a manmade island off the western coast, which would be a floating arcology to act as a seasonal planned arcology shifting from nature-tourism to festivals to sports tourism in line with the whims of God.
Amritnadi's coalitions are some of the youngest in the nation, having been created about very specific propositions that many not be feasible for many more years. However, whilst many voters nationally openly oppose giving ground to their centralizing propositions and their often staggering deficit proposals, Amritnadi's considerable budget gap is partially subsidized by a healthy amount of bipartisan expenditure in its robust research and development. Known as a testing ground for the nation's public policy, many voters turn their eye to the often untouchable influence individual Amritnad politicians wield on policy, through their eclectic and well-funded policy experience, in exchange for ensuring that these politicians may only wield this influence under the watchful eye of more fiscally, socially, and intellectually responsible parties. - President, of Prasanna
- President, of Aavali
- President, of Ketuu
- President, of Sindhu (River Party) [Sustainable Agriculture]
The most populated realm in Pannessirajya, Sindhuraj is considered the cradle of Pannessi civilization. Home to the river valley that is the historical heartland of ancient Pannessirajya, it is the nation's breadbasket and its gateway to the outside world. Its political parties are commensurately powerful, and whilst Sindhuraj's densely populated cities hold elections that are, per capita, cheaper than Aamnaaya's, it nevertheless is home to the Empire's largest electorates and its most net expensive elections. Its political parties consider themselves beacons of the nation's domestic wellbeing, taking it upon themselves to reflect and respond to social changes in the nation's psyche - in particular, those that touch on its immense agricultural wealth. The order of modern Sindhi politics is on the complex topic of climate change.
The current ruling party of Sindhuraj is the environmentalist River Party. Supporting both legal and normative regulation of Pannessirajya, they are generally believed to have a Keynesian, long-term economic policy, based on drawing from the national tax purse to subsidize the mass reformation of Sindhuraj to support vegetarian diets, and subsidies to encourage their consumption, as well as to implement environmentally friendly farming practices across the nation. This would be accompanied by aggressive competitive practices, instituting a protectionist economic regime under the guise of protecting the nation from unethically sourced produce and deincentivizing their consumption. Their opposition, the Farmers' Party, is the nation's oldest political party, considered to be largely neoliberal and supporting the positioning of Pannessirajya as a global normative leader in international structures. To this extent, they oppose the unilateral policy maneuvering that would be the basis of the River Party platform, instead calling for mass-investment abroad by centralizing Pannessirajya's considerable remittances exports and vastly increasing strings-attached foreign aid.
The two parties share a staunch focus on developing and utilizing soft, cultural power, and on supporting the nation's agricultural sector. Because of the province's unique economic role, being largely seperate from the mining sector that is the base of much of Pannessirajya, Sindhi parties are often at the forefront of criticisms of the national government's actions as infringing on the rights of the realms, although the two parties often choose to pick out different actions to level such criticism at - for the River Party, actions that give the national government more power to distribute tax income through fiscal policy, and for the Farmers' Party, making concessions on the international stage in foreign policy. - President, of Kshayana
- President, of Kailash
- President, of Aamnaaya (Aamnaa Future Party) [The Future of Warfare]
The landlocked central realm of Pannessirajya, Aamnaayaraj is situated in a large, craggy basin, supported by imports from the rest of the nation and largely considered to be the symbolic homeland of the country's disjointed military. Aamnaaya's local politics are often the subject of international military publications, with a colloquial motto popular across the country being "Aamnaaya declares, we follow". Its elections see some of the highest per capita spending in any Pannessi election, and its political parties have historically revolved around matters of portent to the military and to veterans' affairs. Today, Pannessirajya is highly concerned with its place in the newest battlefields - cybersecurity, and terrorism.
Aamnaayaraj's ruling coalition is the Aamnaa Future Party, which takes a broadly technolibertarian platform. It supports high-tech investment, including the finishing blow to Aamnaaya's historically limping natural resources industry in favour of silicon manufacture and technological services, and investment in cybersecurity, with a foreign policy agenda revolving about aggressive free trade as an instrument of power projection. The opposition is the Honours Party, which is considered to be left-populist. Their predominant platform concern is social welfare, particularly regarding reducing Aamnaaya's cyclical unemployment rates (which sees vast variation in line with the overall national defense spending), building up a health & retirement tourism market for foreigners and for out-of-realm veterans, and a foreign policy agenda that emphasizes joint defense pacts & peacekeeping.
The two parties have shared ground as the staunchest anti-immigration major parties in Pannessirajya, with Aamnaa Future supporting immigration policies situated in skilled-labour & investment, and the Honours Party preferencing a fast-track program focusing on military and civil service outside Pannessi territory before achieving residency. They are also both reliably in support of increased defense spending, although the Honours Party is known to be lukewarm towards the unarmed technologies that form a key part of Aamnaa Future's long-term deficit-reduction propositions.
Economy
Demographics
Pannessirajya's 360 million citizens are considered religiously, culturally, and linguistically diverse, maintained by an ideological commitment to providing asylum and multicultural integration. The oldest known written document in Pannessirajya, the River Clay Tablet, attests to an awareness of waves of migration from conflicts elsewhere in the region preserved in oral tradition as common knowledge. Many rural, coastal villages in Sindhuraj preserve a folkloric representation of foreign Gods & pantheons as, themselves, refugees from divine conflict, with government policy actively promoting the continuity of otherwise dead religions. Religious buildings are often dedicated to broad religious practices, being defined predominantly by their role as providers of asylum - alongside the worship practices adopted from abroad, Pannessi religion incorporates a highly defined ritual of communal sleep that is fit in between diverse adopted foreign rituals, with worship buildings in poor areas providing overnight shelter for the homeless and the housed also being compelled to fill out the unoccupied spaces of their own buildings. 70 million, or one in every five of Pannessirajya's citizens, live in Sindhuraj, home to some of the most densely populated cities in the world.
Culture