Speculations on the Galactic Empire
You know that a film has achieved a high level of cultural importance when professional pundits start treating it with all the ceremony and seriousness that the fans do. Star Wars was produced in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War, and although George Lucas has since made noises that he had an anti-war and anti-government cast of mind when he produced it, it’s clear the film was taken by US audiences as some kind of trumpet call to end the post-Vietnamese malaise and get the country back into its cheeky, self-confident groove. It was Reagan’s critics, not the president, who dubbed the Strategic Defense Initiative “Star Wars”; what those critics didn’t realize was that the average voter would react positively to the vision of gung-ho, technological achievement.

But the films have seeped so far into our consciousness that serious writers (though writing in a cheeky vein) will actually start talking not about the politics of the films, or what the films meant for real-world politics, but about the political world described by the film. Jonathan Last and Robert Hayes have actually written articles praising the Imperial bad guys and defending the Empire’s merits.

I don't have a dog in these discussions, but I find the various speculations about the structure and character of the Galactic Empire pretty interesting, for a lot of the same reasons I like speculating about the invisible social, economic, and political structures in The Lord of the Rings. No way I'm going to launch into a full-scale series of posts about the Empire (I still have to get back to the Middle Earth stuff, one of these days), but there are a couple of points I've been thinking about recently.

So, I'm mostly interested in understanding what the Empire and Republic were, how they worked, and what the events of the six films meant for them; similarly for the Rebel Alliance (the only real point of contrast to the Empire/Old Republic in the films). I'm not going to rely on any material developed outside the six films. First, I haven't read or absorbed any such stuff; second, I understand that its canonicity is hotly debated. Instead, I'll extrapolate from the evidence of the films while assuming that the problems of Imperial government are much the same wherever you go.

First, a preliminary note: We should be clear on what we mean by the "Empire." That term can refer to three quite different things: the polity, the government, or the administration. In the U.S., that distinction is one between the fifty-state United States of America, the federal government, and the Bush Administration. (Think of the way "United States" can refer to any of these when used in a news report.) When you ask how the "Empire" works, what am I referring to? I'll be switching between these different uses of the terms, but I’ll try to keep clear on which one I’m talking about.

At the time of Attack of the Clones, there was doubt about the structure of the polity: Would the galaxy remain united under a central government, or would various star systems successfully secede? The events of Revenge of the Sith settled that question, but they also settled another: what would be the constitutional structure of the central government? In Sith, a "republican" form of government was replaced by an "imperial" form.

I put "republican" and "imperial" in scare quotes because these are emotionally loaded terms, and it is not clear that the usual meanings we associate with them apply to the Galactic Whatever-It-Is. A "republican" government need not be based on popular consent; even if popular consent is an element, it need not be a based on a broad franchise. Similarly, if "imperial" simply means that the central government is the supreme power, then the United States has had an "imperial" government since 1865 and will have an imperial government until the doctrine of nullification is revived.

The Republic
We don't know much about how the Republic was structured or how it functioned. At times it sounds like a galactic version of the League of Nations: a forum where ambassadors wrangled over international policy without surrendering a jot of their sovereignty. Nor is it entirely clear what the Senate's constitutional or practical role was in the governance of the galaxy, but there is an intriguing reference in Episode IV where the Emperor needed the Imperial Senate in order to maintain control over the bureaucracy. This suggests that the Senate was tied up with the bureaucracy that administers key galaxy-wide functions. As the ranks of the Senate are drawn from the governments of the local systems, this suggests that local and galactic administration could and would be thoroughly mixed up in each other. I would hazard this: The Republic and early Empire were theoretically the supreme government of the galaxy. They were, however, chronically undermanned, and so relied upon local administration to execute galactic policy. The local administrations (the governments of individual planets, star systems, or other corporate bodies) in turn comprised the Senate. In short, the subsidiary governments in their capacity as members of the Senate decided on galactic policy, and in their capacity as administrators carried it out in their sectors. Thus, the system is "republican" in the sense that it is representative. The Senate itself fused both executive and legislative functions, rather like the current Westminster system used in Britain.

Note that such a structure would imply a limit to even the Emperor's powers, as he would need cooperative senators to get anything done. That’s because even if the senators, both individually and as a collective body, would not be able to defy him on galactic policy, to the extent that local and galactic issues were mixed up they could still cause him grief. ("Of course, Your Highness, I am pressing ahead with all speed on the Mos Eisley space port expansion. By the way, has Your Highness seen my memo recommending that fifteen new star destroyers be based there rather than ten? The area is suffering a bit of a recession, you know. Cough cough.")

Such a structure is a recipe for chaos, at least in its republican phase. Even if we assume that most member governments grudgingly went along with galactic policies that they disapproved of, there would have been lots of opportunity for mischief, as the trade disputes in Phantom Menace illustrate. Any local issue could get dragged into the Senate, and issues of supreme galactic importance could get bogged down as localities jockeyed for advantage. Only a legislative leader with near-tyrannical powers could possibly get it to work smoothly.

The overall picture that emerges is of a galactic organization that failed as a Republic because it was too clogged with petty issues. It was "too democratic" and thus too inefficient. A political entity that big, perhaps, can be efficiently run only if the central government exercises few and select powers and is protected from the encroachments of too many special interests. This in turn implies that many powers and responsibilities formerly exercised by the central government be devolved upon subsidiary governments. The one power the central government must keep, however, is an overwhelming military force so that devolution does not lead to intra-galactic strife or even outright separation. The solution: a central government exclusively in the hands of professional mandarins who do not bother and are not bothered with non-galactic issues. This, in turn, is best structured as a limited executive department under the exclusive control of an Imperator who is beholden to nobody and whose own limited capacities will ensure that the executive department does not take on too much.

Of course, there are hints that the Republic has been up and running for a long time, and that the crisis only became acute after Palpatine began his machinations. One can always blame every problem on an "evil genius," but we should beware of such easy answers. I'll sketch an alternate possible history later, but for now I'll just observe that by the time of Sith it was clear that the central government needed a constitutional revolution. The great question (which no one but Palpatine seems to have thought about) was what form that revolution would take and what it would do.

Palpatine’s Constitutional Revolution
The problem facing the Old Republic at the time of Palpatine’s emergence was simple: The central government was also responsible for the administration of mostly local issues but did not have the resources to adequately administer the localities from a central authority. As a result, the central government was forced to get the cooperation of the local authorities by making them partners within the central administration. The sheer scope of the latter’s involvement led to the serious derangement of central control.

The elegant solution would be to abolish the Senate, the institution through which the locals made and influenced central policy. Such a disenfranchisement, though, would risk serious disaffection and the degradation of central control of the localities. Even the mostly cowardly planetary executive can find ways to pour sand in the gears if he's unhappy. Two alternate possible solutions present themselves: Replace local authority with a bureaucracy answerable only to a supreme central authority that itself does not rely upon local authority; or get the central government out of the business of local administration.

There are potential problems with each solution. A bureaucracy, even one totally beholden to a central executive, can be a recalcitrant beast; American presidents are famously limited in their ability to control the federal bureaucracy. To replace the Galactic Senate with a bureaucracy would be just to replace one governing partner with another. On the other hand, to put local control completely in the hand of local administrators would be to give them de facto sovereignty and raises the risk that they might try to exercise real sovereignty, which would lead to the disintegration of the galactic government.

We know that Palpatine tolerated the existence of the Senate only until the Death Star became operational. At that point, he dissolved it and handed power over to a set of regional governors. How much autonomy those governors had from the center, and how much power they exercised over localities, is not clear. At one extreme they might have been Imperial viceroys exercising close-in administration of the locals. At the other extreme, they might only have been military functionaries enforcing intra-galactic order upon local systems that were otherwise mostly autonomous. That is, they might either have been the skeleton for a new Imperial bureaucracy that would supplant the local and hitherto independent administrators, or they might have been regional enforcers tasked solely with making sure the locals continued to acknowledge the supremacy of the Imperial center and adjudicating disputes between the highly autonomous systems.

The construction of the Death Star powerfully suggests that Palpatine intended latter. A planet-killer is a blunt instrument for enforcing Imperial decrees about local issues. Imagine an American president threatening to nuke Cleveland if it didn't lower its city sales tax! The Death Star makes most sense as a deterrent to secession. That the Empire thought it needed to use "fear" to "keep the local systems in line" suggests that secession or anti-Imperial defiance would be real risks under the constitutional regime that replaced the Senate. This wouldn't be a problem if the center intended to closely govern the periphery; an Imperial bureaucracy would be able to keep local systems in line simply by exercising control over key local institutions and infrastructure. This suggests that there was no such bureaucracy in place and that there were no plans to introduce one. (Otherwise, the Emperor would have been developing an Imperial bureaucracy to replace the Senate before he abolished it.) I conclude that the Empire meant to throw local administration back onto the local systems. Afterward, the Empire would restrict itself to purely galactic issues: trade regulation, the suppression of piracy and rebellion, whatever economic regulations are needed to control interstellar business enterprises, interstellar and interspecies social relations, and military policy. Think of a nineteenth century US federal government operating in strictest accord with the doctrine of enumerated powers.

This is the heart of Palpatine's constitutional revolution: Before, the galaxy was governed by a powerfully integrated and centralized government exercising broad powers at both the galactic and local levels. Afterward, the galaxy was governed at two levels that had been dis-integrated, with the central government keeping for itself only a limited set of policies and powers while (provisionally) dumping the rest back onto the localities. The galaxy remains united, but local and galactic administration have been cleanly separated from each other, with Palpatine actually exercising fewer responsibilities as Emperor than he had as Chancellor.

Empire
Now, a word about the "imperial" vs. "republican" terminology in this context. The Old Republic deserves to be called a republic because the central government was composed of representatives from the governed territories and was, ultimately, responsible to them. The government in the immediate post-Sith environment deserves to be called an empire because it asserts absolutely its superiority to the local governments, even though those government continued to be represented in it. (The Old Republic seemed equivocal on that point; under Palpatine it vigorously asserted its superiority even before he declared himself Emperor, but it seemed to tend that way anyhow.) In the post-Hope environment it still more deserves to be called "imperial" because its authority rests on nothing except its own perceived legitimacy and capacity to enforce its superiority.

This portrait of the Empire as a potentially unlimited institution that actually exercises very limited powers dovetails nicely with what we know about “universal empires” from the past. John J. Reilly, for instance, has written an essay about such previous "world empires" as Rome, China, the Ottomans, and a few others while speculating about what a truly "world empire" in the late 21st century might look like. His basic points about such creatures:

1. Empires rule through inertia. The central authority barely impinges on the locals Emperors reign more than they rule. An implicit corollary: Empires survive because they are mostly regarded as the legitimate authority, even when they are unpopular.

2. The Imperial military is very small relative to the amount of territory the empire claims to administer. They are capable of great destructive force, but they aren't much in the business of occupying territory.

3. Even leaving aside external foes, war is a constant threat, whether it comes in the form of well-armed brigands, territorial revolts, or rebellions seeking a change in administration.

4. Imperial administration is open to talent rather than being the preserve of families and oligarchies.

Now, this kind of thing should sound familiar to the alert viewer of the Star Wars films, especially given what I’ve just described above. Consider:

The Galactic Empire encompasses thousands of star systems, and yet neither the Separatists nor the Rebellion seem able to work from a strong and secure territorial base. The Republic is sufficiently dysfunctional to suffer internal disorder, but it does not break down along territorial lines. And after the end of the Clone Wars, the Empire seems reasonably secure for at least twenty years. This suggests that the Republic is nearly universally regarded as the "legitimate" governing entity, and that the Empire is nearly universally accepted as its legitimate heir. The Imperial-Rebel battle is more of a court intrigue, with Jedi- and Sith-aligned factions battling for control of the "legitimate" government and the character of that government. Think Brutus vs. Caesar, not George Washington vs. George III.

The Death Star make perfect sense as an instrument to coerce obedience without bothering with direct and intrusive control. Abolishing the Senate abolishes galactic control at the local level by severing the one galactic institutions with pretensions toward exercising local control. But the Death Star keeps the local systems in line.

War, piracy, smuggling, rebellion, and intra-stellar disputes are still possibilities in this new universe, and the Imperial fleet is kept busy policing the space lanes.

As for the Imperial meritocracy: Last has already pointed out that the Imperial fleet is run with a ruthless "succeed or die" attitude.

All of this suggests that the Galactic Empire of Palpatine would look very familiar to a contemporary citizen of the Roman, Han, Ming, and Ottoman “world” empires. It’s not too much of an extrapolation to figure that the Galactic Empire functioned much as those terrestrial empires did. But I’m not going to try to describe those empires or the Galactic Empire in any detail. Suffice it to say that they had their good points along with their bad.

You can say much the same thing about the Rebel Alliance, by the way. Against this background, the Rebellion takes on the color not of liberators or revolutionaries but of a special interest group. That is, they are either a dispossessed class that resents being excluded from the government and wants to get its snout back into the trough; or they are a rival mandarin class that wants to displace the current administration while leaving the Imperial structure basically intact; or they are religious fighters engaging in a Jedi-Sith war. (Or, they might be simple counter-revolutionaries trying to turn the clock back to a time they don't exactly understand.) Grant that the Rebellion is led by nice, attractive people, and that the Empire is led by people who are ugly and scarred and not above committing genocide. (But then, it's been pointed out that the destruction of the second Death Star was certainly accompanied by the environmental destruction of Endor and possibly by the extinction of the Ewoks. (Well, every good deed has unintended positive side effects.)) Still, it's not clear who the average Galactic citizen ought to prefer. An Imperial, non-democratic center is perfectly compatible with a largely liberal regime, especially if that Imperial center strongly prefers not to get mixed up in small matters. It's quite likely that the average citizen will never lay eyes on, or even be indirectly affected by, a Jedi or a Sith. The mere decapitation of one regime and its replacement by another (as Vespasian quickly replaced Nero) would probably not affect them much either. A complete revival of the Republic, with its potential for corruption and strife, might even be the worst outcome of the Imperial–Rebel war.

This isn't to argue that the two sides are morally equivalent, only to suggest that there is little in the mere fact of the Empire vs. Republic or the Empire vs. Rebellion quarrels to suggest that one is obviously superior to the other. I’ll develop this idea in the next section by asking whether the Empire was really as bad as all that.

Empire vs. Rebel Alliance
Palpatine's constitutional revolution changed the relationship between the central government and the local governments; it did not change the basic structure of the galactic polity (it is still a union of star systems); nor did it change the administration that controlled the central government (Palpatine was supreme executive in both). So what was it about this arrangement that the Rebel Alliance objected to?

In fact, by the time of Episodes V and VI, the Rebels could have had conflicting motives, and no general political philosophy is given to them. This makes it hard to root for them as a matter of philosophy or political principle. The Star Wars films are anti-Imperial without being pro- anything. Who should you root for?

I know of only four basic arguments against the Empire:

1. The Rebels were better than the Empire.

2. The central administrators (Palpatine and Vader) were Sith.

3. The Empire was a dictatorship, not a representative government.

4.. The Empire did evil, nasty, despicable things.

Let's deal with the first one, briefly. True, Leia, Luke, and Han Solo are much more attractive figures, but youth, charisma, and idealism are not coextensive with good governance. Moreover, we have, as I said, no idea what the Rebels stood for, only for what they stood against. There is no way to directly compare the merits of the Rebel and Imperial positions, because we don't know the Rebel position. Insofar as they stand simply for the restoration of the Republic as it existed before the Palpatine chancellorship, there are good reasons to think the Rebel position less than optimal. No, the only good argument for the superiority of the Rebels is to argue that the Empire is so very bad that anything would be better.

I also think we can deal briefly with the second argument. I suppose the outside literature has dealt with the nature of the Sith, and maybe that is a sufficient reason to want to see the Sith out of power. I don't know. But note that even if this is true, this is an argument against the Imperial administration, not against the Empire. I have the impression that those who oppose the Empire would oppose it even if the Emperor were replaced by Admiral Piett.

No, the two arguments against the Empire must object to its acts or to its structure. Either you must think a imperial center structured as a dictatorship is always objectionable, or you must argue that the evil things it did reveal a particularly nasty mentality. The two objections can be linked as principle and corollary, or course: Dictatorship naturally tend to do nasty things because they tend to have few checks upon them, and checks are good for preventing both despicable behavior and the kind of haste that can lead to, shall we say, "unpleasant consequences." The natural place to begin, then, is with the question of whether the Imperial dictatorship is defensible. If it is, we can then look to see if its behavior is defensible.


Alternatives to Empire
Dictatorships are often objected to on their own terms, on the implicit assumption that there is at least one form of government preferable to it. What could those alternative be in the present situation?

It does no good to talk in abstractions, to say "Obviously democracy is better than dictatorship!" That's like saying that Santa Claus is preferable to George W. Bush. Is there any likelihood of making the replacement? No, we have to talk about real possibilities. What are the real alternatives? Let's start with alternatives to out-and-out Imperial structures.

1. Galactic fragmentation: The Galactic Republic/Empire could be abolished, much as the Soviet Union was abolished, and be replaced by its constituent parts. Is this attractive? Well, it means no galactic dictatorship. Unfortunately, it doesn't rule out local dictatorship. Worse, it raises the possibility of interstellar wars. The Clone Wars (enthusiastically backed by the Jedi) were aimed at preventing just this kind of fragmentation.

2. Galactic UN: The Galactic Republic/Empire could be abolished and replaced with sovereign constituent parts. Those parts, in turn would be members of a transnational diplomatic forum (like the United Nations or the League of Nations) charged with adjudicating disputes and intervening to secure freedom, democracy and liberty in its members. The problem here is twofold. To the extent that the central authority is only a discussion forum it will be hostage to all the antagonistic agendas that crippled the League and are crippling the UN. Moreover, the standing threat to intervene in members' internal affairs carries with it the threat of perpetual war. A Galactic UN would improve on mere galactic fragmentation only in degree; it would at best ameliorate the effects, not transform the structure.

3. Galactic Federation: The Galactic Republic/Empire could devolve its powers onto its sovereign constituent parts but establish an executive agency powerful enough to prevent interstellar strife. Of course, an executive that powerful would also be powerful enough to create its own encroaching dictatorship; thus that executive would have to be under the tight control of the Federation members. Moreover, that executive would have to be structured in such a way that even a substantial majority of Federation members would not be able to turn its power against a minority. The obvious structure: a unitary body (a senate, parliament, or congress) combining both rule-making and executive powers and unable to exercise those powers without super-majority consent. Such a structure would be attractive if it worked, but there is reason to doubt it would. Such a body would find it hard to exercise executive power, as the history of the Continental Congresses shows. Constant paralysis would be the likely result.

4. Galactic Republic: A Galactic Federation would basically try to keep the peace through deterrence. But the member states, precisely because they would fear that authority, would try to hamper and undercut it. The alternative to deterrence is legitimacy: a central government need not be loved in order to hold the peripheries and subsidiaries together. If they regard it as the paramount legitimizing entity, then those subsidiaries can surrender much of their autonomy to it while not giving it any significant military force. A Republic could be formed by having the members voluntarily merge many of their powers into the larger political entity. They would still want to keep that supranational entity in check, but rather than check it and each other with a balance of military forces, they could control it by keeping much of its administrative machinery within their own hands. The Republic wouldn't work unless the constituent parts actively cooperated to make it work.

Now, I've described the alternatives in this order because I suspect that this is more or less how the Old Republic would have been established. That is, less centralized forms of cooperation and union would have been established, found wanting, and replaced with more consolidated entities. After all, there's no reason to think that the Republic was created more or less instantly at the beginning of time, or that it was created by absolutely sovereign and independent governments suddenly eager to collapse themselves into a supranational structure. If the Republic had substantial powers, it probably accreted them over time as the local systems saw advantages in surrendering portions of their sovereignty. At the same time, those systems can be expected to jealousy guard their control over it. The likely result would be something like the form of government I have just described and that I described in earlier posts. The process might take a long time to unfold, and there would be nothing inevitable about it. But once the Republic reached its final form it would be prey to the troubles I've already described. And there wouldn't seem to be any way out short of a constitutional revolution: the abolition of the central authority; the abolition of local authority; or a declaration of independence by the central authority from the subsidiaries. Palpatine forced the third after the Republic showed it had no stomach for the first. But what about the second option?

5. Universal State: The basic form of a Galactic Republic only requires the partial surrender of sovereignty to the center. What about a structure that abolished the local jurisdictions completely and replaced them with a galaxy-wide government based upon some kind of local consent? Think of Britain, France, or any other non-federal government that derives its legitimacy directly from the populace. This is theoretically attractive, but it also sounds extraordinarily unwieldy. It also presupposes a large degree of homogeneity among the populace; democracy works best when there are large areas of shared interest and shared assumptions about how to run things. A galaxy with its multitudes of species does not sound like a promising structure. It also isn’t clear how one gets to that state from the Republic. It seems unlikely that a bickering galaxy suffering from a dysfunctional galactic government would choose to surrender its last shreds of local autonomy to the government that is not functioning well.

6. Galactic Empire: The above reflections rehearse the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives to the Imperial form. What of the Empire itself? The essential aspect of the Galactic Empire is its division of labor. Local systems independent of central control carry on purely local administration. An imperial center independent of the periphery discharges galactic administration. Among the latter duties is the responsibility to keep the galaxy from fragmenting. The Galactic Empire thus resembles the Galactic Federation with one key difference: the central executive is independent of the localities. It would be an efficient Federation and one free of jealous local interests. But efficiency in the service of what? The negatives are obvious: An unchecked center is capable of the mostly ghastly mistakes and crimes, not because unchecked executives are themselves necessarily ghastly but because efficiency also smoothes the way for haste and error. Extreme devolution is compatible with a tolerance for abuse, dictatorship, and lack of freedom in the subsidiary parts.

These potential negatives, however, need not be actual. It would depend upon the character of a particular Imperial administration. As pointed out above, empires historically tread lightly on the local scene, becoming involved in local disputes only as a court of last resort or in order to maintain public order or imperial control. Empires are traditionally small-c conservative, in the sense that they just try to keep things going. They dislike improvisation or active policies because they threaten to cause problems. An Imperial Galactic administration could just as easily check the military, restrict the powers of the central bureaucracy, act as a purely disinterested "court of final appeal" for local disputes, and enforce a degree of toleration and beneficence at the local levels as it could do the opposite.

That, of course, is the rub. The problem is not that Imperial administrations are not obviously tyrannical and oppressive. The problem is that it's very difficult to ensure that they don't become that way. Empires are not intrinsically evil. But there is nothing to stop them from becoming that way.

Simply considered as a system of government, I do not see much about the Empire that tells decisively for or it against it as compared to other possibilities—aside, of course, from ideological opposition to the very idea. It's advantages and disadvantages are simply different from the advantages and disadvantages of the other systems. Possibly, at the historical moment it appeared it was preferable to the dysfunctional Republic. That does not imply that it shouldn't be replaced with some other form of government. The problem is that empires tend to be resilient and their overthrow, in the short term, often leaves something worse in their wake. I think reasonable people of good will could legitimately disagree about whether an Imperial government should have been established and whether it should be sustained.

The merits of the Empire, considered concretely, though, would depend upon the character of the administration running it. That takes us to the final argument against the Empire: that the Palpatine regime should be condemned.

The Case Against Palpatine
You cannot determine the character of an imperial dictatorship without determining the character of the controlling regime. The Roman Empire under Diocletian was, perhaps, odious. The same Empire under Marcus Aurelius was probably, on balance, a very good thing. What about the Galactic Empire of Palpatine?

As I've described the structure of the Empire, one can imagine it being run along enlightened lines. The clean separation of local and galactic affairs would allow galactic policies to be decided on their merits rather than leaving them to the capricious and nonrational pressures of local interests. The Empire seems to have been decentralized, which could leave room for powerful, liberal, and benign governments (such as that which apparently governed Alderaan) at the local level. A competent, professional, meritocratic Imperial elite could exercise wise governance at the galactic level while leaving room for maximal freedom at subsidiary levels.

Such are only "possibilities." There are aspects that suggest a much less benign interpretation of Imperial behavior and ideology.

Taking some of the objections in turn:

1. Cloud City: At the end of Episode V the Empire has more or less taken over Cloud City. The constitutionality of this move is unclear. An unmoored Imperial center is perilous in that it leaves the center free to act capriciously and arbitrarily, as Vader does as he brazenly revises his agreement with Lando. The Empire certainly has the capacity to act arbitrarily. In the case of Cloud City (a settlement of doubtful legal standing) it might even have the right. I don't think the takeover can be condemned on legal or ethical grounds, although Vader might be criticized for acting in a way that undercuts the integrity of Imperial agreements; that's both an ethical and a practical criticism, but it has to do with the manner in which the takeover was accomplished, not with the fact of the takeover itself. Still, it paints a picture of an Imperial administration that will ignore the niceties when there is something to be gained. It is likely that the Empire exercises close control over those systems and industries it considers strategically important, and that it reserves the right to decide what systems and industries are important. This won't make citizens of the galaxy happy, but the fact of administrative discretion in any system rarely does. I'd mark the act of seizing Cloud City as potentially unwise rather than evil.

2. Slavery: I'm not clear about the legal status of slavery under either the Empire or Republic. Phantom Menace suggests it is technically illegal in the Republic but still practiced. To the extent that slavery is legal under the Empire, this may reflect nothing more than Imperial withdrawal from local administration: the legal toleration of something that the Empire regards as none of its business. To govern is to choose, and the Empire may simply see the widespread practice of slavery as a necessary consequence of a laissez-faire policy. On the other hand, I've seen references to the Imperial enslavement of Wookies. I don't know if this is canonical or not. If it is, it's still not clear how to interpret it. It seems odd that slavery should be practiced at all in a civilization that can churn out robots. This may reflect a widespread moral sentiment that judges slavery to be morally neutral, or it may reflect something worse. An Empire that merely tolerates slavery, it seems to me, can be criticized but not out-and-out condemned. An Empire that practices it should not be condemned, though, without knowing how the institution works. It's easy to put the worst possible interpretation on the existence of "slavery"; but we should also remember that the high elites that governed the Ottoman Empire and Mameluke Egypt were also, technically, slaves. It's best to know what exactly we are dealing with and not merely the name of it.

3. The Death Star: The Death Star clearly is a deterrent, the galactic equivalent of a nuclear stockpile. It also suggests an Imperial preference for efficiency. One Death Star could, I suppose, replace the entire Imperial fleet as an instrument of Imperial control. With the Death Star, the Imperial administration could further withdraw from direct governance by replacing a large fleet that could do garrison and anti-piracy duties with a simple military deterrent designed solely to preserve the military supremacy of the center and deter secessionist movements. Alternately, it could be one move toward an Imperial strategy freeing the fleet from direct deterrence for patrol and garrison duties. Either way, the construction of a Death Star is itself neither more nor less immoral than building a fleet of star destroyers capable of leveling cities via high-altitude bombardment. As with nukes, a Death Star works even if it is never used.

4. Alderaan: Which, of course, takes us to the anti-Imperial trump card, the destruction of Alderaan. I'm going to offer an argument that sounds like a defense of the Empire, but which isn't, really.

The Empire has a Death Star, but it also has a problem. The Empire must not only convince the local systems that the Death Star works, it must also convince the systems that it is willing to pull the trigger. And not only that it is willing to pull the trigger against a military target, but also against a non-military target. Tarkin makes the point explicitly when he says that the planet named by Leia as the Rebel base is too far for "an effective demonstration." The point of blowing up Alderaan is to demonstrate that the Empire will, with no hesitation, use it against anything. The destruction of Alderaan is not part of the Empire's war on the Rebellion (which is why "just war" arguments leave me unimpressed). It is part of its general policy of deterrence. Now, does this willingness to blow up innocent planets show that the Empire is evil?

"I'm going to cause you enormous pain," one man says to another. "That's evil," says his victim. "But I'm a doctor and I've got to remove your leg before a lethal infection sets in," says the first man. The doctor knows he will be doing one evil (causing pain) at one and the same time he is doing a great good (preventing lethal infection). He may regret causing the pain, but as a practical man he has no choice. I assume that this is the sort of argument Tarkin, if brought up on charges of crimes against humanity, would offer. "I spared the galaxy far worse destruction by destroying Alderaan. I destroyed one part in order to save others."

I don't accept this reasoning, but I understand it is not the reasoning of cackling nihilists. It is of a piece with Imperial reasoning in the other cases. Practical policy requires the suspension of ethical concerns in these cases. The destruction of Alderaan is not self-consciously evil. It is self-consciously amoral.

That's not a comforting thought. "Reasons of state" is the unanswerable justification in the statesman's arsenal of words. It's unanswerable not because it is the best and highest justification, but because it admits of no standards against which policies can be judged. It's the justification from necessity ("I did it because I had to") or from success ("Well, it worked, didn't it?").

The Empire, I submit, is not simply evil. Its acts are not motivated or explained by an uncomplicated baseness. Instead, the Empire is merely practical, by which I mean that the Empire applies no ethical calculus to its actions. The Empire is not evil; it is amoral. And though that is better than being evil (for it includes the possibility that the Empire could do much good, and intend to do acts that it recognizes are good), it is still a very scary thing.

It is scary because you know that questions of rightness and wrongness will not enter into Imperial calculations. The ends the Empire cares about are, I think, positive goods: the efficient suppression of galactic disorder and the efficient administration of galactic governance. But the Empire has no scruples over its means. Actually, it regards scruples as irrelevant. If anyone pointed out that blowing up Alderaan is, you know, bad, he would be brushed off, as though he had pointed out that there were rather a lot of fish in its oceans. “What's your point?”

Here's a good example of how calculating and ethically oblivious the Empire can be. It's been suggested that the Empire is evil because it tortures for the sake of torture: Han Solo is tortured in Cloud City but never questioned. Actually, as I understand it, Han and the others were tortured in order to get Luke's attention and draw him to the city. They were tortured so they would scream. It wasn't a pointless exercise in causing pain, but Vader didn't even see any point in using their pain to get something other than Luke's attention. It might have given Han some grim comfort to think that he was being put on the rack because the Empire thought him important. But Vader didn't even think that much of him.

Now, practicality is in itself an admirable trait, and that's probably the reason a lot of people have a sneaking admiration for the Empire. Luke "Dude, Where's My Landspeeder" Skywalker has his charms, but I suspect few of us would want to see him as our governor, senator, or president. An opponent who is merely practical is often very predictable, which is another bonus in a galaxy where the Imperial authority can act capriciously and arbitrarily. But practicality divorced from all ethical principles is a terrifying thing. Genghis Khan was very practical. So was Mengele. C. S. Lewis, in a typically mordant aside in The Magician's Nephew, observes that the Witch-Queen Jadis was "terribly practical."

This is the most salient aspect of the Empire, at least as it is administered by Palpatine: it is an intensely practical-minded institution. Almost everything it does follows from this. We might take this to be an intrinsic feature of any Imperial structure, but I think there is evidence that these Imperial habits owe a lot to its Sith masters.

From Jedi to Sith
Ask any fan of the Star Wars fans what the biggest problem with the prequels was, and they’ll probably say “Jake Lloyd.” Ask them what the second biggest problem was, and they’ll probably say “Natalie Portman.” Ask them what the third biggest problem was, and they’ll probably say “Hayden Christiansen.”

There is a pattern to these objections, and it doesn’t just involve Lucas’s fumblethumbled way with actors. It has to do with Darth Vader’s character arc and the way Lucas dramatizes it.

The surface problem is that the prequels ask us to believe that a tow-headed kid like Jake Lloyd could turn into the universe’s biggest bad-ass, especially when his turn to the Dark Side seems to have occurred when he was a horny teenager who fell in love with an extra-terrestrial Hillary Clinton. It seems to trivialize the sense of good and evil and all the mysticism associated with the the Force, especially its “dark side.”

Certainly Vader was introduced to us in Episode IV as the ultimate galactic bad-ass: He breaks a rebel's neck; he force chokes one of his own underlings; he tortures Princess Leia; the Death Star blows up a planet. But the films’ ham-handed way with good and evil began appearing long before the prequels came out. In Jedi, when the Emperor tries to bring Luke over to the dark side. I never understood what was going on there. Suppose Luke gave in to his hatred and struck down his father; why would he then get down on his knees and become Palpatine's acolyte? Hatred and anger can be directed at many different targets; the emotions may not be morally neutral, but you can hate what is bad just as fiercely as anything else, and the Emperor's invitation doesn't seem likely to lead anyplace that has Palpatine and Luke fighting on the same side. There was only one way I could ever make sense of the scene: to give in to the "dark side" is to be overwhelmed by a positive vision of evil and to join the Satanic figure promulgating it. It's like being brainwashed. This always struck me as ludicrous, and did so even when I was thirteen.

The metaphysics and ethical implications of the Force are obscure, and so it just seemed easiest to equate light side and dark side, Jedi and Sith, with "good" and "evil" respectively; as a result, Lucas's theory of evil becomes equally obscure. Hence, many have argued that Lucas hasn't thought deeply about the problem of evil.

After Sith, though, I'm more inclined to think that the whole issue of "good vs. evil" is a bit of a red herring in any discussion of the Force and of the difference . Instead, I think we're looking at a vaguely Aristotelean universe, in which what counts is character formation through the cultivation of certain virtues. You cultivate those virtues so as to become a certain kind of person, and you cultivate those virtues because those are the virtues that a person is supposed to have. Those virtues, in turn, are to be found in a balance between extremes. Just as health is found somewhere between gluttony and asceticism, and courage is found somewhere between excessive caution and excessive recklessness, a person of true excellence will emerge by finding balance within his dispositions and among them.

The "dark side" does not represent a Satanic force, vision, or ideology; instead, it represents one way of falling away from virtue through immoderation. Fear, anger, and hatred are bad when excessive, and to let yourself be ruled by them is to corrupt your character and to corrupt your judgement. The Sith, however, apparently, conceive of these emotions as tools, as something to be used, rather than as defects of character to be checked and moderated. The Sith vision, in fact, is strikingly modern, in that it seems to conceive of the individual as a thing independent of his qualities. (At least, that's what I got out of Palpatine's assertion that good and evil depend upon one’s of "point of view," which is a concept that conceives of the individual as being able to take up different stances and weigh the costs and utilities of those stances as they benefit the person taking the stance.) Emotions, virtues, and talents are things to be used by the ego to pursue its goals, and they are to be valued according to how useful they are. The negative emotions apparently are quite good at channeling and directing the Force; hence, the Sith value those negative emotions for their utility, not for their negativity.

Anakin, at least, has a very modern sensibility, in that, as a Sith, he has this same utilitarian outlook. He looks on the universe and sees how it is bad, how it could be good, and how it could be made better. He then devotes himself to improving it, using what he judges the best available tools. It's Palpatine's genius to get Anakin to accept Palpatine's own vision for the universe and to accept the Sith tools as the best ones for realizing that vision.

This, then, is my tentative conclusion: the Empire as an institution is morally neutral; its administrators are not substantively evil, but they are ethically impoverished. This itself is a kind of evil—and one that is much more prevalent than the kind of evil that usually shows up fairy tales. This should be a sobering thought.

Conclusion
No, no grand conclusions, except a near-tautology: any speculation that, like that offered above, describes the Galactic Empire in a semi-realistic way will likely discover in the Empire the same hollowness of the modern world. Perhaps that’s justification enough for treating the films that describe that Empire as something more than a pop-cultural artifact.