More Than Honor

The Conservative Association, headed by Michael Janvier, Baron of High Ridge, is the smallest of the traditional political parties and might charitably be termed reactionary. It advocates an isolationist foreign policy, argues that foreign adventures are dangerous, and decries the "steady, liberalizing rot threatening Manticore with anarchy." As might be surmised, the Association is something of a crackpot group which attracts the nobles who find the Crown Loyalists entirely too permissive in defense of privilege. Indeed, they advocate return to an "original Manticoran balance of power" which never actually existed outside the imaginations of their own theorists. Although they felt the Centrists' a

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The Progressive Party, headed jointly by the Earl of Gray Hill and Lady Elaine Descroix, is the third largest party and, in general, endorses many of the objectives of the Liberal Party. The Progressives share the Centrist determination to avoid deficit spending (which the Liberals see as an acceptable, temporary evil), would like to see "a better and more beneficial balance between social spending and military appropriations," and share the Liberals' distaste for foreign policy. Unlike the Liberals, they have never regarded concerns over Haven (which they see as an example of deficit-spending liberalism run berserk and corrupted by power-seeking politicos) as alarmist. On the other hand, they also felt (and, apparently, still feel) that any belief that Manticore can survive a fight to the finish with the Havenite military machine is lunacy. (Since the begi

Because their primary concern is with domestic issues, their traditional foreign policy has always tended to be extremely simplistic, believing that "honest negotiators" can reach a live-and-let-live arrangement. Their pre-war Centrist and Loyalist critics argued, not without justification, that this really amounted to advocating that Manticore sell out the rest of the galaxy to save its own skin, a policy which must ultimately result in disaster when there is no more galaxy to sell to Haven. Yet while this may well be a not-inaccurate reading of the effect of their policy, it is unjust to argue (as their critics do) that it was their intended object. The real problem with the Progressives' foreign policy is that they simply don't think about it very much, relying on platitudes and vague beliefs rather than a reasoned analysis, which left them with no structured thought upon which to base themselves once the Havenite Wars actually began.

The "New Men" Party, led by Sir Sheridan Wallace, is a relatively new group which believes that power is far too concentrated in the hands of existing cliques of the aristocracy and wealthy merchants/industrialists. They argue that the traditional Manticoran practice of co-opting capable and ambitious individuals into those two groups is a mistake. The Centrists and Loyalists believe that co-option assures a continuous flow of new ideas into the aristocracy and financial elites in a controlled, gradualist fashion, whereas the Liberals and Progressives argue that the very concept of aristocracy is anachronistic and anti-democratic. The New Men view the practice of co-option as a deliberate, undisguised mechanism to keep control firmly in the hands of traditional power groups, which is rather Liberal-sounding—until one realizes that their problem is less that there are traditional elites than that they don't control them. In a very real sense, the New Men are the lesser nobility's counterweight to the Conservative Association, mounting pere

In addition to the parties listed above, there are several small,ad hoc factions which come and go, generally focused around a single charismatic leader. The real power struggle is between the Centrist/Crown Loyalist alliance and the Liberal/Progressive Alliance, with the former holding a slight edge in the Lords and a larger one in the Commons. The Liberals and Progressives tend to be allied on a stronger, deeper, and more permanent basis than the Centrists and Loyalists, helped by the fact that both of them regard foreign policy as a distraction from the real concerns of the day. The Centrists and Loyalists often find themselves divided over particular points of domestic policy, but maintain a fairly united front on foreign policy and military preparedness. Both enjoy the support of the Crown, which is a decided plus, though the Loyalists remain far from convinced of the wisdom of the Centrists' pre-war willingness to accept (some would say court) a confrontation with Haven. Traditionally, the Conservative Association has helped tilt the balance in favor of the two Crown parties because of its insistence on maintaining a powerful fleet, but the potential has always existed for the Association to strike a deal with the Liberals and Progressives on foreign policy, although the fundamental antipathy of their domestic policy positions makes it unlikely an alliance between them could last. The real joker in the deck is the "New Men." For all their relatively small numbers, they are concentrated in the Lords, where the Centrist/Crown Loyalist majority is thi