AtB Politics

This past election season it struck me that President Thana has technically been in power for over twenty years (AtB first published in 1986). Does Cardania have Presidential term limits? Does she have a VP? Who is the Secretary of State? How closely does Cardania's government mirror the modern United States?

We know that while Cardania based it's government on the Constitution of the United States, they most likely scraped, or re-wrote, the amendments to the Bill of Right to suit the fact that theirs was a solitary state (not a "United States") - I patched this by dividing Cardania into eight counties, each governed by elected Governor and Councilors (similar to the U.S. Governor and Senate), and each county having a two Senators in the Cardanian Senate. I dropped the House of Representatives to streamline the Legislative branch in the game, going for a more Roman Senate structure (as best I understand it). Cardania has five appointed Supreme Court Justices.

While we know the governing styles of the main AtB states (Empire of Humanity, Cardania, and Gatorland), and have a vague idea of their political interactions (The Empire and Cardania's Cold War), the book (understandably) doesn't go into the diplomatic side of things, even though such a topic would have been really helpful in understanding how these two keep from going for the others throat. We are told that it is merely a matter of numbers - a few thousand pure humans versus millions of mutant animals on all sides - that keeps the Empire from instigating to all out war with Cardania, and the threat of the Empires high-tech weapons that keeps the mutant animals from invading, but are there other mechanisms in place to keep them from "pushing the button"? Could the two have some sort of diplomatic presence in the "Contested Land"? Could Gatorland be pulling some strings from the shadows? Does the Empire and/or Cardania hold a "wild card" (nuke or bio-weapon) that scares the bejesus out of the other?

Food for thought...