Politics of Zacapican

Zacapican is a federal republic with a single executive and a unicameral legislature. It is the only country in Oxidentale with a functional multi-party system and a democratically elected head of state. The chief executive of the Zacapine state is the Tepachoani, currently Zianya Xcaret, who serves as head of state and government, appoints the subordinate heads of the Secretariats, and maintains the national administration. The Necentlatiloyan serves as the federal legislature, consisting of a single large assembly within which smaller committees are formed as the need arises. Zacapican is notable in its lack of judicial independence, with a court system ultimately subordinated to the democratically elected leadership of the national administration.

The political freedoms of the Zacapine citizenry are enshrined in the 1938 Constitution which put an end to the 24 years of dictatorship that had preceded it. The rights of assembly, political speech and of free association are guaranteed by this document which is upheld by the national judiciary and the police. The constitution also establishes the National Electoral Institute, the election commission for national and local elections. The autonomy of the Institute was alluded to in the original 1938 document and upheld by an amendment implemented in 1990. Another politically relevant independent entity is the State Oversight Commission, a body nominally part of the Interior Secretariat but which operates with significant autonomy due to its role as the main anti-corruption organ of the Zacapine state.

Factionalism

Politics in Zacapican has generally been defined by the interplay of three distinct and competing political movements, all of which have their roots in the Xolotecate dictatorship and the early years of the federation. These political currents, typically termed 'factions', may be represented by a single party or a coalition of parties at a given point in history, while political parties have also been known to shift from one faction to another.

The first of these factions are the Cozauist-Conservatives. They are quintessentially an Agrarianist faction primarily representing the interests of the rural population and the more traditional agricultural Calpolli, characterized by a focus on agriculture over industrial development and the maintenance of trade tariffs to protect the commercial interests of the farmers. Cozauist-Conservative parties are mostly defined, however, by their opposition to centralized power on the premise that it generally favors the urban population which have greater proximity to the main administrative centers of the country. They also generally oppose state secularism and promote a more overtly Cozauist society. All or most of their political doctrine is based on opposition to the rapid centralization, modernization, industrialization and urbanization which was brought about during the two decades of the Xolotecate. They are therefore labeled as the representatives of the old order which existed before the Zacapine Revolution, or alternatively as the continuation of the Red Banner peasants movement that instigated the Revolution itself. Parties roughly aligning with the Cozauist-Conservative movement rely primarily on the electoral support of rural people, making them prevalent in the less industrialized mountainous hinterlands of the country, particularly the underdeveloped Meco basin spanning the northern interior of Zacapican.

The main historical opponents of the Cozauist-Conservatives are Zacapican's Progressive movement headed by the urban intelligentsia best represented by the Yeyecoani class. This political current was born out of the class of university-trained urban elites who served as the backbone of the powerful Xolotecate-era state institutions. The movement was founded by such figures as Achto Moyocoya and Matiak Seti who were committed to the idea of creating a technological utopia in Zacapican by harnessing the country's untapped economic, industrial, and academic potential. The Progressive movement in Zacapican primarily gains support from the educated urban population and consequently favors the cities and industrial areas concentrated in Zacapican's coastal regions, particularly in the Littoral region of Zacapican with the long-standing Progressive stronghold of Angatahuaca. Due to their origins as high-powered functionaries of the Xolotecate regime, the Zacapine Progressives have a distinct technocratic bent, seeking the strengthen through both democratic and undemocratic means the political influence of educated specialists who are seen as more qualified than ordinary people to serve in the legislative and administrative wings of the state.

The third faction of Zacapican's tri-polar political system are the Populists, which emerged as a political force much later than the parties of Progressive-Conservative axis. The Populists forming out of the political awakening of the class of industrial workers created by the rapid industrialization of the Xolotecate. The wrenching transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy created a primarily urban class of Calpolli workers that had not existed previously, one which would take decades to form a distinct class identity and become politically self-aware. The Populists, however, would come to play a major role in the direction of Zacapican, exercising electoral power through sheer weight of numbers as the industrial Calpolli came to form a majority of the Zacapine population. Within the Populists, there exist both Conservative and Progressive currents which may align with either of the other two factions on social issues, but which are differentiated from both as a third distinct faction by the shared economic interests of the urban industrial Calpolli. Geographically, the Populists overlap significantly with the Progressives as both have a highly urbanized electoral base. However, Populist parties are typically more prevalent than Progressives in the west coast due to the highly industrialized regions of the Zacaco while being powerful but less dominant in the outlying industrial wards of the east coast Angatahuaca agglomeration.