the Confederation of the Sea of Flowers is the general overarching government institution that loosely covers a sizeable chunk of the known world. it slowly formed from various alliance structures and efforts by major polities (especially Loëz) to create a medium for inter-polity coöperation as a way to fend off potential future conflicts.
the main organ of the confederation is the Confederal Assembly, a legislative body comprised of a somewhat high number¹ of assemblydudes² from the various constituent polities. each polity is given a number of seats roughly proportional to its population (giving each polity a seat and then allocating the rest using largest remainder method), and are generally left to decide how to fill their seats on their own, leading to a lot of variation in how people get in office and how long they stay there. alongside the regular members are 51 separately allocated seats for major guilds, given proportionally to the "largest" of them (also by largest remainder), tho the standard for how that's measured is seemingly intentionally vague.³ being an assemblydude only grant a minimal gift salary and is intended to be treated as volunteer work (tho to what extent it actually is varies).
business in the assembly is handled through concensus decisionmaking, including little colored indicator cards for each member, tho it has a fairly low threshold for actions to be passed,⁴ and memebers usually form vague support and opposition coalitions around certain actions. all members have the same powers, but per standard practice, guild assemblydudes are supposed to vote in blocs by the business they represent, and aren't supposed to join coalitions. functions such as calling for concensus, stenography, etc. are managed by independent staff hired by the assembly for the duration of its meetings. legislative violence flares up every now and then, and has occasionally caused procedure to stall out or actions to be dropped.
assemblydudes typically sign on to a number of manifests, shared policy lists that form a pseudo-party system. manifests can range from broad sets of aims that essentially constitute what we'd call a party, such as the Agrarian Manifest, to statements of voting intent on singular issues, like the Prohibition Manifest. manifests have minmal (if any) organized structure behind them and are largely defined by the people signing on to them, which leads to a tendency to splinter when some members aren't on board with the rest. some assemblydudes choose to completely eschew the manifest system and make a point of denoting their status as Non-Manifest; they're generally somewhat technocratic, more well-off than the average person, and are more guild-oriented (a decent number of guild assemblydudes are N-M).
every 2 years, the current confederal assembly nominates, discuisses, and elects a slate of 17 people to serve as the Operator Council, the xecutive panel of the confederation. while the operators are selected by the assembly, there's no requirement for them to be assemblydudes themselves, and it's standard practice for a majority of the Operator Council to be members of the public. at the end of each 2-year term, a feedback period is held where the public is able to lodge complaints against the outgoing operators and potentially have legal action taken against them for mis-administration.
alongside these two bodies is the General Council, another legislative body formed from the entire adult population of the confederation. a meeting of the General Council is announced annually at the end of the year, and further meetings can be called for as needed during the annual meeting, though petition, or by the Operator Council. during these meetings, members of the public are able to propose and submit actions similarly to the Confederal Assembly, though these are usually decided through secret ballot rather than by open concensus. attendance to the General Council isn't mandatory, and its meeting place rotates through different settlements annually.
beyond the meeting of the General Council, people are also able to submit potential actions through a petition system, if they can get a sufficient number of signatures from a sufficient number of polities. this can either take the form of a direct petition, which would submit the action to each constituent polity in a special election (tho this requires more signatures), or an indirect petition, which would require the Confederal Assembly to discuss the action at its next meeting. the petition system can also be used to remove assemblydudes from the Confederal Assembly (with the requirement that a sufficient number of signatories are from the polity represented by them) or the Operator Council (which can be initiated by anyone and doesn't have a geographic requirement). if these pass, a replacement election has to be held within the same year.
parallel to these core entities of the confederation it Congress, a sporadic collegiate body composed of the various leaders of the constituent polities. it has no real established power in relation to the confederal government beyond occasionally sending advisory statements to the Confederal Assembly. the confederation tends to be faily hanbds-off with the internal affairs of its members, so it mostly just meets because some of its leaders want to have everyone sit there and listen to them complain about confederal overreach or something.⁵
applications for membership within the confederation are generally allowed for any polity with either historical presence or some minimum population requirement, but most entities are rarely turned down outright. frontier settlements that apply are ususally given some form of informal administration within Camp rather than admitted on their own. the issue of whether or not the people of Camp are properly represented is a perennial issue, and naturally the Camp Manifest is a moderately popular manifest among assemblydudes.
¹ - currently this is around 255, which considering everything is a little higher than expected.
² - official term
³ - currently, Tengexw Beamrail Guild holds 20 seats, Thelexset Beamrail Guild holds 19, the Reformed Adventurers' Union holds 7, the Institute of Meteoërgy holds 3, and Pearl River Materials and Loëz Publishing each have 1. the proportions seem off to most people but it's usually just ignored.
⁴ - around 70-75% for regular business, or 66% for vital issues if a deadlock happens, tho it never drops as low as 50%+1.
⁵ - you could argue that Congress's main function at the moment is to just give crotchety conservative political leaders a soapbox for issues that aren't really a thing and you really wouldn't be wrong about that.