Political situation of the Elendel Basin

[Mason Wheeler]

What does the political organization of the Elendel basin look like?  I'm not able to really form a coherent picture of it in my mind.

 

Elendel is a city, but the only "guy in charge" we keep hearing about is not called the Mayor (leader of a city) but the Governor.  But a Governor is an intermediary title, the leader of a province or territory, or a state in the USA.

The other cities of the Basin openly resent Elendel's "oppression," and the one guy at the party in BoM calls a hypothetical conflict a "civil war," which makes it sound as if they are politically subject to Elendel, as if it were the seat of government for a single nation spanning the entire Basin.  And when things get too troublesome, the Governor's desk seems to be where the buck stops.  But the ruler of a nation isn't a Governor.  In a democracy, such as we are explicitly told in SoS that they have, the chief Executive officeholder of a nation is a President or Prime Minister.

Apparently Elendel has a Senate with two chambers, essentially a House of Lords and a House of Commons.  Steris and Wax's conversation on the train in BoM kind of implies, but doesn't explicitly state, that the Senate is only for Elendel and doesn't represent the outer cities, which isn't a feature you'd expect to see in a national legislature!

All this makes me wonder, what does the political organization of the Elendel Basin look like?  How are the various cities bound to one another, and how does their government work?

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

Governor comes from the word govern, and can mean a variety of different things depending on the usage. At its simplest it merely someone in charge which works here.

The Basin appears to be a collection of city-States, much like ancient Greece. However, I believe each city sends representatives to a Senate in Elendel. A Confederacy, perhaps? The Basin isn't exactly a unified country, but it isn't quite separate ones either. It probably has some resemblance to the American system, where each state is a mini country, but also part of a larger one. Maybe early Constitution United States, or even the Articles US.

Elendel is the trade hub and it controls the other cities through a mercantile like system. The oppression is monetary, not physical. Taxes have caused more than one civil war. Which, though most Americans don't see it this way, is what our revolution WAS. It just happened to be successful, which is why it is a revolution. 

[DeadFencer]

As far as I know there isn't a central government based out of Elendel. The Elenddel Senate only has direct power over the city itself. The city didn't care about the others that people founded, and so didn't demand power over them. Now the only power Elendel has over the rest of the basin is through the shipping routes. 

[StormyQueen she/her]

The way that I have interpreted it is similar to @Kingsdaughter613 in that they are a collection of city states. However, the way that I see it, the connections between the cities seem to be more like a league; in that, like in Ancient Greece, it's similar to a close alliance, where they can trade and protect each other ect. In this sort of system, or at least in Ancient Greece, each member has its own government who manages the league with the other members of the pact, where in Elendel seems to be largely similar to British democracy. I think that the system that the Basin has is similar to the leagues in Greece, and, as was said earlier that since Elendel is larger than the others, it has political power coming largely from trade and innovation (similar to Athens in the Delian League).