Factions

A faction is any organized political actor inside a single country. Political parties are factions that can stand in Elections. Labor movements, industrial lobbies, officer corps, party apparatuses, security services, religious bodies, minority movements and separatist insurgencies use the same model, although they do not stand for office themselves. The American organized labor movement, the Soviet security organs and a guerrilla army in a colony are all factions, and all of them can be measured, courted, suppressed or backed from abroad.

Factions belong to countries. They are not international blocs. Groupings of countries are International Organizations, and geographic groupings of provinces are Regions. A faction exists in its own country's political system, though foreign powers can reach into it.

The Factions screen, opened from its own top-bar button, lists every faction in your country with its dominance, influence, agitation and the party it endorses. Selecting a faction opens its detail pane: its standing, policy positions, active modifiers and traits, its armed strength, and the Faction Actions you can use on it. You reach a foreign country's factions from the Factions section of that country's panel.

Who the factions are

Every party in the scenario is a faction. The 1946 scenario also includes several dozen authored interest groups and movements on top of the parties. Some examples:

• United States: Northern Liberals, Organized Labor, Southern Democrats, the urban Democratic machines, the military and the industrialists.
• Soviet Union: the party apparatus, party hardliners, the security organs, the armed forces, industrial managers, the agricultural sector, reform communists, and the Ukrainian and Lithuanian resistance movements.
• People's Republic of China: party cadres, radical revolutionaries, the People's Liberation Army, industrial planners, rural collectives, the scientific intelligentsia, urban industrialists and regional interests.
• Insurgencies and independence movements in Greece, Indochina, the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and Algeria, along with others such as a Sámi movement in Sweden.

Every country that has political parties also has at least one armed faction: an army, a party militia or a republican guard. Where history gives a country none, it gets a generic armed forces faction that leans toward the parties of order.

The core measures

Because influence is tied to GDP, a small group that dominates the industrial heartland can outweigh a mass movement spread across poor farmland. Influence also drifts each month under modifiers (Monthly Influence), and so does agitation (Monthly Agitation).

When a province's dominant faction changes, you get a notice naming the province and the old and new dominant factions. The Dominant faction map mode paints every province in its dominant faction's color. Parties use their ideology's color, and other factions use a color for their kind of group, such as brown for armed forces and orange for organized labor.

Coalitions and endorsements

A faction that is not a party does not vote itself. In each province, its share of the electorate goes to the parties it prefers, split by how much it prefers each one. A faction that prefers no party abstains. Preferences come from shared policy positions, matching ideology or authored rules. This means one party can be carried by interests that disagree with each other.

The American New Deal coalition is the clearest example. Northern Liberals, Organized Labor, Southern Democrats and the urban machines can all back the same party, but a civil-rights law that pleases the Northern Liberals pushes the Southern Democrats toward agitation. Many laws carry faction reactions like this, changing named factions' influence or agitation when they are enacted. A single reform can strengthen one part of your base and break off another.

Factions and your government

Each faction has its own rule for how far it backs the current government, from no backing to full backing. That backing, times the faction's influence, is your daily political capital income. A government held up by powerful, loyal factions can afford reforms. One that rests on a weak or alienated coalition stalls.

Factions also change how reforms go. A reform backed by influential, calm factions finishes more easily. One opposed by influential, agitated factions takes longer, costs more and runs into more setbacks.

Traits

A trait is a lasting characteristic of a faction. The 1946 catalog includes:

• Corrupt: more influence. In government it adds Corruption and costs Legitimacy. As a supporter it adds political capital along with corruption. In opposition it slowly erodes legitimacy.
• Disciplined: speeds reforms while governing, adds Stability while supporting, and drains political capital in opposition.
• Sectarian: grows more agitated over time. In opposition, and above all when agitated, it adds Unrest and erodes stability.
• Compromised: much less influence, and it damages any government it joins.
• Armed Forces: speeds brigade training while governing, raises readiness while supporting, and is a sharp threat to stability once agitated.

Traits have different effects depending on whether the faction governs, supports the government or sits in opposition, and some have an extra effect once the faction is highly agitated. Keeping a faction close is a continuing bargain, not a one-time bonus. Coups add three more temporary traits: Victorious for five years after a successful coup, Purged for ten years after losing power, and Disgraced for three years for armed forces that sided with a failed coup.

Armed factions and the military

A country's armed factions share command of its forces. At the start of the game they split it by influence. Each brigade trained afterwards answers to the armed faction it was raised for. With two or more armed factions, the Recruitment tab lets you choose which one new units serve. If you don't choose, they go to the faction most loyal to the government. This matters because in a coup each armed faction's share of the forces decides how much its choice of side counts. The armed forces' backing for the government also limits repression: putting down unrest by force requires the military to support you.

When factions turn

A faction's influence times its agitation is its instability. It feeds national instability and adds unrest in every province. A mass movement becomes more dangerous as it grows. A small entrenched elite, such as an officer corps, a party machine or a business lobby, is dangerous without needing to grow at all.

No faction seizes power on the spot. Agitated factions open flashpoints: a secret coup plot, a public power struggle or a revolution (see Coups and Power Struggles and Flashpoints and Crises). Other factions decide whether to join based on their own preferences. Desperate times, with very high agitation, draw almost anyone into an anti-government coalition. A successful coup by a non-party faction puts the party it endorses into power with full governmental power, and the country loses legitimacy and stability.

Foreign backing

Foreign powers can sponsor a faction through Diplomats running Diplomatic Missions that fund, arm or spread propaganda for it. A sponsor counts as a backer while it keeps a stake: while it runs a mission there, and for some time after its last delivery. The backer with the largest stake is the leading sponsor, the only one that can back a coup through that faction. A backed faction carries the Foreign Backed modifier, which slowly grows its influence. See Foreign Backing and Faction Actions. A country's counterintelligence (Counterintelligence) makes outside interference more expensive.