Why did the New Republic become the Galactic Alliance?

I feel quite angry about this because it seems quite pointless.

All that effort put forward by Luke Leia etc... to reessablish the Republic only to have its name changed a few years later. I know its essentially the same government, but that just makes it more annoying.

Does anyone know whay this was done? Is anyone else as annoyed as me. or do you think it was a good thing?

 

So they could have a government with the GFFA acronym?

 

So you're angry that they put in a bunch of work and the name got changed?

What bothers me is that the reasons for it have since more or less been trampled - it was changed because it was supposed to include the Empire and Hapes in greater cooperation.

 

Because the New Republic collapsed like wet tissue paper under the Vong assault.

So a conspiricy of several old rebels and Cal Omass, use back room dealing to cheat Rodan out of the election, and well Reformat the beheaaded republic.

 

The Old republic last over a thousands generations, the New Republic didn't even last one.
This bothers me.

 

The Old Republic didn't have to face the Yuuzhan Vong within a few decades of having been set up, unfortunately for them they weren't prepared. But the Alliance stands for the same ideals.

 

It was a rebel movement that overthrew the galactic government that had been in place for more than two decades: an inherently unstable base. Even if the Vong hadn't invaded, it probably would've imploded on its own sooner or later.

 

The New Republic would have fallen apart with or without the Vong once the Empire was eliminated as a threat. The Hand Of Thrawn novels illustrate the serious, serious issues the NR had as a government, the biggest one being how pathetically defanged the central government was compared to the member systems; the Caamas Document crisis illustrates this graphically well. The NR was completely powerless to stop the member systems from being ready to engage in genocide against the Bothans, as well as utterly powerless to the point where they had to depend on retired private citizens to come up with a solution to the crisis. The NR was an overreaction to the central-government excesses of the Empire-it went much, much too far in the decentralization of power.

A realistic galactic government requires several things to work. These seem to be:

-Military power either nonexistent or consolidated under central authority. Individual species should not have their own transgalactic-capable fleets, or even heavy warships capable of cross-sector movement; the Caamas Document crisis and the Yevethan purge are why.

-A robust, (at least several thousand member) Jedi Order, answering legally to the Supreme Chancellor or a designated Senatorial committee, but with the ability to say "no" if they feel they are being used in an immoral manner (clone wars, Daala, so on and so forth) or if the Senate attempts to prevent them from fulfilling their primary role as guardians of peace and justice within the galaxy proper.

-Centralization of power, but under checks and balances to prevent any one branch of the government from becoming more powerful than the others. Representative Democracy 101, there.

The NR-and to be honest, the GFFA too-have had struggles with all three of these. The second really can't be helped as it takes a long time to train Jedi, but the 1st and 3rd never really seemed to exist.

 

I would guess it was just one more attempt by DR to leave it's own mark in the EU by replacing previous creation by it's own. But that's just my own personal opinion.

 

All it did was:
*change the name
*give more power to the Chief of State (Senate wasn't good at governing in a crisis)
*give more power and independence to the Judicial system
*better define the boundaries between the federal/galactic system and its sector/planetary members

Luke oversaw the transformation, and Han/Leia chose not to be part of the new government.

 

I would disagree with points on your list, and no doubt others would proffer their own points, but that really doesn't matter. The reality is, no one knows what a truly functional, responsible government of the Star Wars galaxy would look like, and they never have.

The Star Wars galaxy is astonishingly big, has an immense number of species with highly variable mindsets that are not necessarily compatible, and has a dramatic asymmetry of both population and power (Kuat by itself matches whole sectors for industry, Coruscant does the same for populace). These problems are in addition to the traditional difficulties of representative democracy, and make them (which in human history have proven pretty substantial) look like minor procedural wrinkles by comparison.

The Old Republic yoyo-ed back and forth from tolerably useful to massively dysfunctional over the course of its history, with many shocking lapses of diligence and an inability to prevent the Sith from showing on a periodic cycle and turning half the galaxy against the other half whenever they felt like it (which includes the Clone Wars by the way).

The Galactic Empire was conceived under a different set of principles, ones that were basically: F&%* moral principles, universal rights, and personal freedom; make the government work! he actually had a pretty good go of it, accept for the part where the overwhelming influence of the dark side sabotaged and corrupted the whole enterprise from the get go and it only go worse as time went on. Oh, and there's the mountains of atrocities and suffering this plan engendered too.

The Galactic Alliance was supposed to, at least theoretically, acknowledge some of this. it was, the galaxy's too big for any single government to manage, lets have all the little fiefdoms run themselves and just everyone contribute to a central military and beat the Vong back before they kill us all. The Vong, of course, did have the answer to this little problem of massive galactic diversity: kill everyone, replace it all with Vong.

 

The inherent problem is that the GFFA - and the SW galaxy - was set up to be a Brand New Star Wars for future products... to which LOTJ and FOTJ answered "No, it's not".
They couldn't even keep the capital away from Coruscant for more than a few years despite it looking like it was going to take decades to be fixed, at the minimum.

 

I am a political science major and I really wish the Galactic Alliance was explained better and made more sense! If you go to the wookiepedia page for GA and look at the talk section you will see just how ridiculous the GA is and the reasons {behind the scenes for its creation) utter stupidity, for something that could be fascinating from my perspective!

 

I'd like to know why "The Alliance to Restore the Republic" decided to create a whole new government system after they won, rather than say, I don't know... restoring the Republic? Why didn't they just stick with what had worked for 1,000 years instead of trying something completely new? The Rebellion seemed to be a conservative one, they wanted to return to the status quo before Palpatine usurped power. Instead they decided to try to create a whole new system of government and expected it to work just fine while under attack from not only ever galactic and extra galactic threat imaginable but from their own members.

 

This, and because New Republic sounded like a political magazine.

 

Actually the Galactic Republic worked for 25,000+ years!

 

Existed in some form is not the same thing as "worked." The Old Republic failed several times, and was reformed several times (post-Ruusan Republic is not the same as the Jedi Republic of the New Sith Wars, or earlier versions of the Republic), and it always had weaknesses.

 

Yeah the post-Russan Republic seemed to do the best. Were their problems sure, but it only fell because the greatest Sith in history managed to play the entire galaxy to his favor, and what are the odds of that ever happening again. The Rebels should have reinstated the pre-Palpatine Republic, made a few tweaks to the emergency powers, and left it alone.

 

But isn't that basically what the New Republic tried? Then the New Republic was plagued by the same problems as the post-Ruusan Republic, including Corruption and too much decentralization and infighting. True, the New Republic didn't have a civil war, like how the post-Ruusan Republic had the Clone Wars, but they almost did over the Caamas Document and probably would have if they were given more time. No, the New Republic faced something much worse than civil war, when the Yuuzhan Vong invaded. The post-Ruusan Republic would have probably been even worse, since they didn't even have a military.

 

True, I doubt the Valorum Republic could have fared any better if the Vong invaded then with the Jedi at full strength. But that is what you get for not having a military. If will always baffle me how the Republic was able to survive for 1000 years without a military, I mean were the Jedi just that good back then?

 

Good government and able to defeat an invasion are not necessarily the same thing. For example many countries in Europe would not be able to withstand an invasion, they have small, underfunded militarys yet they are some of the best places to live on Earth.

 

True, but if a government can't defend it's people then it's failed at it's first duty. Still for a galaxy spanning government like the Republic I can't see how they would ever have thought something like the Vong was lurking out there. But if the Republic with the Grand Army under the full strength Jedi Order went against the Vong. Well that would be a story I'd like to hear.

 

True, Europe can rely on the US to protect it, The Republic can only rely on itself... So I guess not a good comparison.

 

I am Guessing after the end of the new Sith wars the OR had no enemies to fight, not on a large scale anyway.

 

It survived by ignoring things, a lot of things. The Core and Colonies were sufficiently stabilized by an overpowering human demographics block and the stabilizing effect of trade and prosperity to stop fighting each other when the Alsakan Conflicts came to an end in 3,017 BBY. The rest of the galaxy, so long as it didn't try to threaten the Core, was allowed to do pretty much whatever it wanted, including fight massive wars amongst themselves, and the Old Republic would only send Jedi in once it had become too obvious to ignore and if someone hadn't managed to buy off the Senate (the Kaleesh-Yam'Rii conflict that created Grievous is an excellent example).

The Post-Ruusan golden age has less to do with anything the Republic did than what Darth Bane did. Prior to that the cycle was pretty steady. The Sith rise up on the edge of the galaxy, incite the grievances of whatever faction has been pushed down hardest, and then they attack. The Republic responds by militarizing and the Jedi rally, and eventually (it might take hundreds of years) the Republic wins out because the Core and Colonies and Jedi have superior unity to the Rim and the Sith. Bane broke the cycle by removing the Sith instigators, which allowed the Jedi to successfully suppress the ill-will and growing conflicts more effectively than they had previously, but when it all exploded, it exploded really, really bad.