Politics

Every country, democracy or one-party state, runs on the same model: parties and factions competing for popular support, a government holding real power, and a wall of national laws you change through slow, costly reforms.

Politics in Atomic Dawn is how a country decides what it is. Every country, whatever its form of government, is played through the same model. Parties and other organized groups compete for the population's backing. A government holds the levers of the state. A body of national law sets everything from the tax system to whether the press is free. There are no sliders. The things you can change, you change by spending political capital on reforms, national focuses and faction actions, and each change shifts who backs you and who turns against you.

The same rules apply to a parliamentary democracy, a presidential republic, a monarchy, a military junta or a communist one-party state. What tells them apart is the laws they hold and the factions inside them, not separate rulebooks. The head of state is an office, not a person. A presidency, a crown, a ruling committee or a junta can pass from one holder to the next without the game naming or showing any real individual.

Support and power

Party politics rests on two separate measures:

  • Popular support is how much of the population backs each party right now. It is worked out province by province and then averaged across the country, weighted by population.
  • Governmental power is how much of the state each party actually controls: seats, ministries, the machinery of government.

The party with the largest share of governmental power is the ruling party. In a country that holds Elections, election day turns the current popular support into a new split of power, according to the country's electoral system. Where elections are banned, power does not shift with the public mood. It changes only through history events, Coups and Power Struggles, revolutions, power struggles or deliberate political moves.

This split is what lets a deeply unpopular regime keep ruling, and lets a popular movement grow without taking office. A gap between the two is also a warning. A government that holds power without backing is the kind that power struggles and coup plots go after.

Every party competes in every land province. Its strength there is its national appeal times its affinity for that kind of province: communists do well in industrial centers and mining towns, conservatives in farming country. Cities and the countryside also differ by wealth, education and population size. Unrest in a province changes the mix as well.

Groups that are not parties, such as labor unions, the officer corps, industrialists, churches and separatists, compete too. Their share of each province is then passed on to the parties they prefer. That is how a coalition of interests comes to vote as one bloc (see Factions). The ruling party's share is then scaled by local ruling party support (Ruling Party Support). Media laws raise it, and low Stability lowers it.

Popular support is recalculated once a month, so a new law or event shows up in the polls in the following month. The Party support map mode shows each province's result, and the province view's Factions tab charts it.

Forming a government

Holding the most power does not always mean governing alone. After an election, or whenever the power split changes, the leading party may need to form a government. A coalition needs more than half of governmental power. Every pair of partners must be ideologically compatible, and no party can appear twice. If no compatible majority exists, the largest party governs alone as a minority. A minority government pays 25% more political capital for every day of every reform. You choose your government in the Parties tab of the Politics view, and AI countries go through the same check.

The three political levers

You have three tools for changing your country, and all of them draw on political capital:

LeverWhat it changesHow long it takes
Policy reformsNational laws, one choice per policy setMonths, with incidents along the way
National focusesHistorical commitments, modifiers, relations, technologyOne to four months each, one at a time
Faction actionsA single faction's influence, agitation or legal statusImmediate, then a cooldown

Diplomacy and covert work add a fourth, outward-facing lever. Diplomats can fund, arm and propagandize for factions abroad through Diplomatic Missions, which builds the Foreign Backing that coups and uprisings depend on.

National laws

National law is split across five tabs: economy, politics, society, welfare and the military. Each policy set holds one option at a time. Your tax rate and your military, research and social spending are not dials. They add up from the laws you have chosen (see Money & the Budget and Taxation). Changing a law means starting a reform that takes months, during which the old law stays in force. See Policies for the full process.

Political capital

Political capital is the currency of all of this. Your daily income comes from the factions that back your government, weighted by how much influence each one has. A country starts the 1946 campaign with 5 political capital. The balance is capped at 200. The faction-derived income is capped at 3 a day before laws, organizations and other modifiers (Political Capital Gain) add to it. You can never do everything at once, so the core of play is deciding the order of your changes.

The health of the state

Four national values describe how well a government is holding together:

  • Government support: how much the public backs the government right now. It drifts toward 50% each month, pushed by social spending, taxes, unrest, war and debt interest.
  • Stability: how settled the political order is. Low stability eats into the ruling party's popularity.
  • Legitimacy: whether the order is accepted as rightful. A legitimate government survives shocks. An illegitimate one has to rule by force.
  • Corruption: how much of what the state collects never arrives. It is high in poor countries and colonies and falls as they develop.

These values feed into Unrest, which is tracked in every province. They also feed into the Flashpoints and Crises that can topple a government. A country whose stability runs ahead of its legitimacy, so that it is orderly but not accepted, builds up unrest every month unless it represses its people with secret police, mass surveillance or martial law.

When politics breaks

Politics fails through Factions. A faction's influence times its agitation feeds directly into national instability and provincial unrest. No faction can seize power on the spot, though. Every seizure of power first goes through a flashpoint: a secret coup plot, a public power struggle or a revolution (see Coups and Power Struggles and Flashpoints and Crises). The armed forces usually decide the outcome. Whoever wins sets up a new regime, such as a military junta, a revolutionary government or a provisional government, which shapes the following five years.

  • Factions: the organized groups that make up a country's politics.
  • National Focus: the long historical commitments each country pursues.
  • National Agendas: the goals each government is judged against.
  • Regions: autonomous regions that hold back part of the state's reach.
  • War Exhaustion: how long wars wear down support and stability.
  • Living History: how laws, focuses and events are all written the same way, so the game can show you exactly why an option is locked.

Mechanics of Politics

CorruptionImplementedCorruption is the share of what the state collects that never arrives. It is high in poor countries and colonies, falls as they develop, and laws and factions push it up or down.ElectionsImplementedWhere the law allows them, elections turn popular support into governmental power on a fixed schedule, through the country's electoral system, after a three-month campaign.LegitimacyImplementedLegitimacy is whether a country's order is accepted as rightful. It protects a government against coups, uprisings and power struggles, and a government that loses it has to rule by force.PoliciesImplementedNational law is a set of policy choices across economy, politics, society, welfare and the military. You hold one option per policy set and change it through a reform that takes months and can go wrong along the way.Political CapitalImplementedPolitical capital is what a government spends to change anything: reforms, focuses, faction actions, diplomacy. It comes from the factions that back you, and the daily income is capped.RegionsImplementedProvinces are grouped into named historical and administrative regions, such as states, oblasts, occupation sectors and overseas territories. A region can carry modifiers for all its provinces, can be autonomous and keep part of its taxes, and is a target for regional diplomat campaigns.StabilityImplementedStability measures how settled a country's political order is. Low stability erodes the ruling party's support in every province, and stability that outruns legitimacy breeds unrest unless the state represses.UnrestImplementedUnrest is measured in every province and driven above all by whether the economy meets expectations. It cuts output and revenue, feeds faction agitation and crises, and can be calmed by policy, garrisons or force.

Pages that link here

Demographics · Factions · National Focus