Comments are welcome, but suggestions are going to get ignored unless there's some compelling reasoning behind them. Don't just flail at me about how something doesn't make sense according to your ideology or whatever. Understand that not everyone has the same understanding of politics and history and so may come to different conclusions about how to characterize different governments. I have my own opinions, but I genuinely made an effort in good faith to see the best in ideas I disagree and the worst in ideas I agree with to come up with negative and positive examples.

My general design philosophy was twofold:

• Consider new governments as the highest-level government of the empire. This means that I assume that different governing conditions may exist on a local (as big as planetary) scale. So, a government might be (for example) oligarchic at the highest level while still having democratic or dictatorial (or whatever) planetary/continental/etc governments under it.
  
• Consider what these governments look like from the outside. This means, from the point of view of another empire dealing with it diplomatically, what structure does it see? Going along with the first point, it won't see local-level organization. And it will see some single individual representing the whole.

Libertarian Freehold
This government is the result of an extreme experiment in privatization where all functions of government were contracted out to various businesses. Only the legislature and courts remain as government entities, with the highest judge in the empire having assumed certain executive powers by default.

Ruler: Chief Justice

Anarcho-Capitalism
This government is theoretically no government at all, as all functions of a normal government have been distributed to various competing private entities, even law-enforcement and justice. Only a single position, a dispute-resolver of last resort, remains as anything resembling an officer of a sovereign state.

Ruler: Chief Inspector

Corporate Neofuedalism
This government didn't merely contract out its functions to businesses, it is the result of decentralizing government to regional or local scale and running states as businesses, under the forward-thinking guidance of a new aristocracy of wealth. On a global scale, the corporate overlords entrust foreign affairs and the military to a hired agent.

Ruler: Ambassadorial Agent

Proprietary Franchise
This government is actually a family business that has swollen to the point that it dominates whatever vestigial state nominally governs society. As a result, while there are other businesses, they have been forced into a vassal-like client status. Inheritance disputes are high-stakes and often bloody.

Ruler: Proprietor
Heir: Senior Vice President

Entrepreneurial Council
This government is primarily concerned with managing its ideal of a competitive and fair market economy. Social mobility is precariously fluid, but those who succeed in business exert great power.

Ruler: Enterprise Commissioner

Merchant Republic
This society sees commercial success and overall social merit as inextricably linked. As a result, a old form of government - a republic in which power inheres to the wealthiest and therefore worthiest business leaders - has maintained relevance into the interstellar era.

Ruler (Male): Serene Doge
Ruler (Female): Serene Dogaressa

Constitutional Plutocracy
This society sees commercial success and overall social merit as inextricably linked. For this reason, its members see nothing wrong with public offices and candidacies for representative elections being open to the highest bidder. Indeed, they find it eminently reasonable.

Ruler: Proprietor-President

Enterprise Society
This government takes the protection of private property very seriously as its highest responsibility. Its citizens support strict law enforcement measures and stripping political rights from criminals and 'the unproductive.'

Ruler: Franchise Minister

Enterprise Junta
This government is based on the principle that people can have great personal freedom even without political rights, and that it's probably better that way. A police or military clique ensures order in the name of freedom of initiative and protection of property.

Ruler: Presiding Commander

Enterprise Authority
This government is based on the principle that people can have great personal freedom even without political rights, and that it's probably better that way. A police or military commander ensures order in the name of freedom of initiative and protection of property.

Ruler: Executive Marshall

Empire of Liberty
This government has a powerful monarch who is nonetheless bound by tradition and constitutional limits. The monarch swears to protect the rights and freedoms of the people upon ascension to the throne. Political rights, however, typically aren't on the agenda.

Ruler (Male): Libertine Emperor
Ruler (Female): Libertine Empress
Heir (Male): Free Prince
Heir (Female): Free Princess

Empire of Rapine
Once and idealistic monarchical government sworn to protect the rights and freedoms of the people, its ruling dynasty and most prominent nobles came to adopt a restrictive view of both "the people" and "their rights and freedoms." Under a cut-throat theory of the equal right to "earn" freedom and personhood, and the importance of property-holding to this exclusive franchise, outright plunder and slavery are the order of the day.

Ruler (Male): Emperor of the Free
Ruler (Female): Empress of the Free
Heir (Male): Prince-Licentious
Heir (Female): Princess-Licentious

Rationalist-Managerial Firm
This government is actually a kind of business enterprise that operates according to a principle of rationally planned efficiency for profit maximization. Every aspect of the lives of citizen-workers has been designed according to best practices. Local and regional governments have had their roles reduced to enforcement of waste-reduction measures.

Ruler: Process Efficiency Director

Private Intelligence Agency
If knowledge is power, then selling control over the flow and content of knowledge was this corporation's road to capturing sovereign power. Its indispensable security and spying operations have subsumed any formal state.

Ruler: Chief Executive Director

Protection Racket
Criminals, as a rule, can't depend on the law, and the criminal underworld has its own rules enforced by brutality. This enterprise mastered enforcement of the informal criminal codes until it was powerful enough to define its own predations as the law.

Ruler: Chief Enforcement Officer

Innovation Initiative
This government, from the outside, seems to be like a university or laboratory that has absorbed the functions of a state. Internally, its politics are like a series of experiments in governmental and social organizational forms.

Ruler: Executive Dean

Academy State
This government seems to be so devoted to advancing and spreading knowledge that it's rather like a gigantic university with a faculty administration. Rank in government closely tracks degrees of training and education.

Ruler: Provost-General

Scholastic Commonwealth
This government seems to be so devoted to advancing and spreading knowledge that it's rather like a gigantic university with an elected faculty senate. Political rights expand according to degrees of training and education.

Ruler: Faculty Director

Proletarian Regime
This government is a single-party state that justifies its rule as necessary to see to the needs of the people and defend their revolution.

Ruler (Male): Party Chairman
Ruler (Female): Party Chairwoman

Automated World-Commune
This government operates according to the plans of complex computer program that allocates resources efficiently. High politics are very distant from the ordinary citizen's reach, but also not particularly important. All the most pressing decisions have been automated, and it falls to one highly qualified and extensively vetted administrator to handle any exceptional case that the program was not designed to handle.

Ruler: System Exception Manager

Insurrectionary Lineage
This government has theoretically been waging a global revolution against various oppressors of the people under the emergency guidance of a single leader for so long that the leadership has practically become hereditary.

Ruler: Dear Leader
Heir: Deputy Leader

Populist Monarchy
This government is ruled by a long dynasty of agrarian reformers and levelers who have drawn their greatest support from the poor and struggling urban and peasant masses. While there is some inequality of wealth, the monarchy's poverty relief programs protect the meager from the worst exploitation.

Ruler (Male): Prince of Plenty
Ruler (Female): Princess of Plenty
Heir (Male): Most Charitable Lord
Heir (Female): Most Charitable Lady

Social Bureaucracy
This government is a single-party state theoretically ruling on behalf of the common people through a bureaucracy operating state-owned industry for the public good.

Ruler: Director-General

Agrarian Social State
This government is a bureaucracy theoretically ruling on behalf of the common people, the majority of whom are farmers and other rural workers, by operating state-owned land trusts and agricultural combines for the public good.

Ruler: General Resource Manager

Socialist Plenary
This government operates under an ongoing series of panels, committees, and conferences held by representatives of various trade unions and worker-stakeholder organizations. While high politics is a bit distant from the ordinary citizen's reach, locally and regionally they are active and engaged in all the decisions that affect their lives.

Ruler: Chief Moderator

Syndicalist Conference
This government is theoretically no government at all, as all the functions of the state have been subsumed into a consortium of decentralized worker cooperatives and labor unions. Each such syndicate elects an officer to a steering committee that executes policy for the common good.

Ruler: Chief Steering Officer

Social Democracy
This government is a democracy that has made securing the needs of its citizens its mission, and its generous welfare state affords its citizens financial security and more free time.

Ruler: Coordinator-General

Agrarian Commonwealth
This government is a democracy that focuses on the needs of its citizens, the majority of whom are farmers and other rural workers. Its generous welfare state sets as its goal securing for them a traditional understanding of a balanced and good life.

Ruler: Minister of Wellbeing

Communal Democracy
This government has extended the principle of representative government to the whole political economy, with the central state being simply the largest-scale democratic decision making body. The personal truly is political, and its citizens collectively participate in nearly all the relevant decisions of all aspects of their lives.

Ruler: Popular Tribune

Syndicalist Congress
This government is theoretically no government at all, as all the functions of the state have been subsumed into a consortium of decentralized worker cooperatives and labor unions. Elected delegates of all these syndicates meet regularly to make collective decisions.

Ruler: Secretary-General

Market Socialism
This government is a consortium of worker co-ops and other democratically run firms, where the employees are all part owners in the enterprise. It exists to ensure that non-oppressive relations between different businesses prevail.

Ruler: Contract Mediator

Cooperative Enterprise
This government is a gigantic commercial venture run on a system of internal democracy where the employees are all part co-owner. It exists to increase the collective prosperity of its worker-shareholders.

Ruler: Coordinating Officer

Saintly Assembly
This government is a decentralized religious state that operates by consensus and with a spirit of kinship. The center of community political life is the local assembly, which is simultaneously like a town hall and a regular worship service.

Ruler (Male): Elder Brother
Ruler (Male): Elder Sister

Cosmic Choir
This government is devoted to the tranquil contemplation of the mysteries of the universe, exploration of altered states of mind, contact with otherworldly beings, and amateur pharmacology.

Ruler: Chief Guru

Evangelical Franchise
This government is actually an entrepreneurial religious organization that has swollen to the point that it dominates secular politics both due to its popularity and its vast wealth.

Ruler: Chief Ministerial Officer

Occult Cartel
This government is what happens when something like a cross between a pyramid scheme and a cult gains political power. Its adherents/customers/citizens are either indentured seekers, penitent laborers, or enthusiastic donors.

Ruler: Grand Executive Sage

Crusader Kingdom
This government is a zealous warrior monarchy dedicated to defending and spreading its faith by force.

Ruler (Male): Most Holy King
Ruler (Male): Most Holy Queen
Heir (Male): Prince-Questant
Heir (Female): Princess-Questant

Crusader Order
This government is run by a zealous host of holy warriors dedicated to defending and spreading its faith by force.

Ruler: Grandmaster

Noble Empire
This government is a quaint, romantic monarchy in which a strong central ruler governs a complex hierarchy of planetary vassal-lords. Could be the subject of a good opera, in space. A 'space opera' if you will.

Ruler (Male): Great King
Ruler (Male): Great Queen
Heir (Male): High Prince
Heir (Female): High Princess

Noble Republic
This government is a quaint, romantic aristocracy in which a high council of noble families selects one of the heads of the dynastic houses to be first-among-equals and mediator of affairs of state. Could be the subject of a good opera, in space. A 'space opera' if you will.

Ruler (Male): High Prince
Ruler (Female): High Princess

Absolute Monarchy
This government is a powerful, centralized monarchy. Its ruling dynasty seeks to exert absolute control over its territory and integrate all its dependents into one order.

Ruler (Male): King-Paramount
Ruler (Male): Queen-Paramount
Heir (Male): Prince of the Blood
Heir (Female): Princess of the Blood

Galactic Dominion
This government is a staggeringly ambitious dictatorship with designs on total galactic domination. Its fleets are vast, its factories roaring at all hours, its officer cadre hardened and loyal. Any who are not yet under its control tremble at its power, or so the leader believes.

Ruler: Cosmic Autarch

Galactic Imperium
This government is a staggeringly ambitious monarchy with designs on total galactic rule. Its court is resplendent, its holdings abundant, its nobility fierce and faithful. Any who have yet to bend the knee before the throne nonetheless stand in awe of its glory, or so the monarch believes.

Ruler (Male): Cosmic Emperor
Ruler (Male): Cosmic Empress
Heir (Male): Star Prince
Heir (Female): Star Princess

Galactic Cartel
This government is a staggeringly ambitious business with designs on total galactic monopoly. Its selection is unbelievably diverse, its stock value soaring, its employees productive and courteous. Any who are not yet loyal customers feel an emptiness they don't yet know how to fill, or so the stockholders believe.

Ruler: Cosmic Executive Officer

Pretender Hive
This government is some kind of bizarre and perverse experiment in extreme collectivization. It seems the master of this empire is trying to organize society as to be as close to a hive mind as possible without actually being hive minded.

Ruler: Overmind Master
Heir: Backup Overmind

Folkish Commonwealth
This government is a nationalist-populist republic that maintains loyalty by exploiting common prejudices.

Ruler: Folkspresident

Folkish League
This government is a nationalist-populist alliance of states that maintains a united front by exploiting common prejudices.

Ruler: Folksmarshal

Folkish Regime
This government is a nationalist-populist dictatorship that maintains control by exploiting common prejudices.

Ruler: Folksleader

Folkish Realm
This government is a nationalist-populist monarchy that maintains its prestige and legitimacy by exploiting common prejudices.

Ruler (Male): King of the Folk
Ruler (Female): Queen of the Folk
Heir (Male): Trueborn Son
Heir (Female): Trueborn Daughter

Doom Horde
This government is a rabidly xenophobic tribal confederation. Under the leadership of the wildest and deadliest chieftains, these berserkers will mercilessly butcher all weaker beings in the galaxy.

Ruler (Male): Death Khagan
Ruler (Female): Death Khatun

Church of Slaughter
This government is a rabidly xenophobic church. Under the leadership of its prophets of death and gurus of bloodshed, these fanatics will slay all the wicked aliens of the galaxy and send them screaming to hell.

Ruler (Male): Blood Abbot
Ruler (Female): Blood Abbess

Citizen Legion
This government is a rabidly xenophobic state in which political rights are granted to veterans: only those who have risked their lives to eradicate the xeno threat are trusted with the franchise. Its volunteer legions will cleanse the galaxy of all threats to the polity.

Ruler: Grand Margrave

Private Military Contractor
This government is actually a mercenary company that has been contracted by local and regional governments to provide police, national defense, and foreign relations services for the empire. Rank in government typically requires enlistment as a soldier for hire, but the internal structure of the company may be fairly democratic.

Ruler: Captain-Director

Whig Republic
This government is a paradox. Its citizens are deeply suspicious of threats to their freedom from wealthy fatcats with political connections, who are surely scheming to enslave the people at all hours. Thus there is a near-constant agitation for reform to reduce the state's power, which often ends up benefiting the biggest businesses anyway. Yet while this imparts a paranoid style to its political culture, who's to say its citizens aren't right to be paranoid?

Ruler: Executive Minister

Whig Commonwealth
This government is a paradox. Its citizens are deeply suspicious of threats to their freedom from scoundrels with connections in the halls of power, who are surely scheming to enslave the people at all hours. Thus there is a near-constant agitation to empower politicians who promise to clean up the capital, and who in turn end up being targets of suspicion. Yet while this imparts a paranoid style to its political culture, who's to say its citizens aren't right to be paranoid?

Ruler: Executive Chancellor

Kingdom of the Sun
This government is centered around the person of the monarch, who claims to embody the state. All subjects and dependencies of the throne are likened to planets orbiting the sun.

Ruler (Male): Solar King
Ruler (Female): Solar Queen
Heir (Male): Prince of the Dawn
Heir (Female): Princess of the Dawn

Constitutional Monarchy
This government is a monarchy that has made a pact, in the name of justice and progress, with the people over which it reigns to govern according to a legal framework establishing the nature and limits of the ruler's power.

Ruler (Male): King of the People
Ruler (Male): Queen of the People
Heir (Male): People's Prince
Heir (Female): People's Princess

Republic of Virtue
This government is dedicated to cultivating the civic virtue of its citizens, for without virtue, liberty and equality cannot endure.

Ruler: People's Trustee

Federal Republic
This government shares power between a central legislature and many regional governments in order to accommodate a wide variety of views and interests.

Ruler: Majority Leader

Revolutionary Republic
This government is a democratic state that sees the strident defense of its liberties against enemies domestic and foreign as its highest duty. This vigilant stance may lead to a policy of preemptive regime change in other empires.

Ruler: Security Commissioner

Republican Directory
This government is, in theory, by and for the people. However, the demands of defending (and 'defending') its interests at home and abroad have led to the formation of a government by an ideologically coherent clique. These governors still harbor some of the ideals on which the state was founded, though.

Ruler: Presiding Councilor

Republican Protectorate
This government is, in theory, a republic with a revolutionary and liberatory mission. In practice, over-extension of its military forces and the need to manage an empire of vassal states has led to the rule of populist military leaders.

Ruler: First Consul

Revolutionary Empire
This government is monarchical in form but republican in spirit, or so its loyalists claim. Its emperor has sworn to be the embodiment of the people's will and the protector of their liberties, and indeed to embrace all sentient life in a new empire of liberty.

Ruler (Male): Emperor of the People
Ruler (Male): Empress of the People
Heir (Male): People's Crown Prince
Heir (Female): People's Crown Princess

Cooperative Super-Sapience
This government operates as a kind of multiple personality collective consciousness. The population has no individual desires whatsoever beyond fulfilling the needs of the overall directing intelligence, with sometimes contrary assistance from subsidiary planet-bound sub-minds.

Ruler: Overmind

Conspiracy of Equals
The first revolution merely preached equality, but the second practiced it... thanks to the guidance of a secret society that orchestrated the downfall of the false republic and instituted a real democracy. This secret revolutionary network still plays a role behind the scenes. Their ironic purpose: to ensure no trace of hierarchy and domination, they act as a secret people's police to bring down any who gain too much over others.

Ruler: First Citizen

Utopian Despotism
Either as hereditary monarchs or dictators elected for life, the rulers of this society have secured their rule by eradicating poverty amongst their subjects, who dwell in collective communes according to a precise social plan. Though essential class divisions remain, the benevolent despots take special care of the people in the spirit of philanthropy, universal love, and moral improvement.

Ruler: Grand Philanthropist
Heir: Philanthropic Apprentice

Utopian Socialism
The people live in precisely planned collective communes, safe in the knowledge that a rational and humane economic system provides for all their needs. Though essential class divisions remain, the benevolent economic planners take special care of their workers in the spirit of philanthropy, universal love, and moral improvement.

Ruler: Philanthropy Director

Imperial Socialism
This socialist dictatorship maintains stability by the widespread distribution of goods and services... underwritten by imperial avarice. With an expansionistic policy that shows little regard for concepts of self-determination and equality, those who fall beneath the hegemony of this state are aptly called "captive nations."

Ruler (Male): Interplanetary Chairman
Ruler (Female): Interplanetary Chairwoman

Pure Social Republic
The emancipated proletarians of this master-race worker's state are interested in breaking only one kind of chain - the chains binding the souls of degenerate aliens to their living bodies!

Ruler: People's Champion

Exemplary Socialism
This society has committed itself to constructing socialism in one state, and has renounced the ideal of interplanetary revolution beyond indirect support. Though ready to defend itself against any aggressor, this society directs all its efforts towards the task of socialist construction within its own borders so as to be an inspiration to revolutionaries elsewhere.

Ruler: National Party Chair

Worker's Republic
This is a republican system of government where the working class and their elected leaders are predominant. Though similar in structure to most republics, the most influential political blocs are the labor unions and cooperative industry lobbies.

Ruler: Plebian Tribune

Rustic Republic
Though some urban centers do exist, the vast majority of the population live and work in the countryside. As a result, when a republican system was adopted, the peasant population so completely outvoted every other class that only those politicians who espouse an agrarian agenda had any chance of success. Permanently preoccupied with matters of rural policy, the governemnt of this society has neither time nor political capital to spare on reckless empire building.

Ruler: Country Chancellor

Rural Commune Collective
This society is a federation of largely self-reliant farming communes, run by elected village councils who delegate their authority to a central government that handles foreign policy and coordinates responses to disasters. It is a fundamentally peaceful society with little interest in conquest.

Ruler: Communal Representative

Peasant Dictatorship
When a revolutionary party organized the peasantry against their oppressors - landlords, foreign imperialists, and urban capitalists - they enacted a program of radical agrarian collectivism. The result is a ruthless dictatorship where city dwellers and intellectuals are routinely forced to leave the cities and join the peasants in the countryside to learn humility and equality. The party draws its base of support from the peasantry and its governing priorities reflect agrarian needs.

Ruler: Collective Director

Agrarian Monarchy
The peasants of this world rose up against the landlords and city merchants who exploited them, yet they stilled wished to retain the tradition of the royal family, believing that their sovereign was a benevolent parent misled by evil advisors. Now a single monarch rules over the masses of peasants, the beloved if rather overwhelmed head of a vast family of rural subjects.

Ruler (Male): Father-King
Ruler (Female): Mother-Queen
Heir (Male): Brother-Prince
Heir (Female): Sister-Princess

Reactionary Socialism
Once, the old elites of this society were threatened by the rise of capitalism. In response, an alliance of the aristocrats and petty-bourgeoise were able to manipulate the emerging working class into siding with them against the new captains of industry. The result is that a restrictive system of state ownership, regulations, tariffs, and taxation to prevent the new self-made bourgeoise from ever threatening to size state power away from old money and old blood.

Ruler (Male): Lord President
Ruler (Female): Lady President

Feudal Socialism
The aristocracy of this society were able to strangle capitalism in its cradle by convincing the workers and peasants that only the noble orders of society could protect them from exploitation. Now the monarch and the court control state-run industries in the same manner as the landed estates of old, passing down mines and manufactories by right of birth. The workers are bound as serfs to their production lines in exchange for the traditional noble obligation of charity, which is much more generous thanks to industrial production methods.

Ruler (Male): Social King
Ruler (Female): Social Queen
Heir (Male): Prince of the Proles
Heir (Female): Princess of the Proles

Crime Family
Though supposedly nothing more than a family business, its actual operation borders on simple piracy. The supreme Crime Family controls a number of lesser families as vassals, and whatever vestigial state institutions still exist all answer to the Family's control. The Family itself is controlled by a customarily hereditary Boss, who rules even blood relations with an iron fist concealed in a velvet glove.

Ruler (Male): Bossman
Ruler (Female): Bosswoman
Heir: Head Underboss

Rogue Freehold
What started out simply as a radical attempt at near total privatization of the economy has turned into something more sinister, as the citizens of the freehold have become increasingly fond of slavery, piracy, and war. Since the highest courts have ruled all of those things legal against non-citizens, and since only those who can afford personhood rights insurance can become citizens... there is nothing to stop them indulging from such barbaric pursuits as long as the hated "statists" are the target.

Ruler: Head Judge

Corporate Banditry
Once a idealistic experiment that sought to establish a market-based stateless society of total liberty, this society has long ago abandoned anything other than power politics cloaked in formal observance the non-aggression principle. Slavery, banditry, murder, and theft - such things are now commonplace, one simply has to be wealthy enough and well armed enough get away with them. Warlords, armed gangs, and rampant corporations now openly rule over the ruins of what was once supposedly a liberatory project. The most powerful rulers assert their dominance by launching piratical raids against the hated "statists", hauling back slaves and treasure to hawk for outrageous prices.

Ruler: Chief of Corporate Security

Citizen Crusade
A militant republic of zealous faith. While all legal residents are members of the church's congregation, only those who volunteer to defend and expand the church have rights of citizenship.

Ruler: Most Pious Marshall

Crusading Company
An odd amalgamation of mercenary company and megachurch, this corporation believes in God, gold, and glory, not necessarily in that order. To them, nothing pleases the Divine more than enlightening others to their gospel of prosperity... and if some potential customer-congregants prove stubborn, then their missionaries may simply use some paradigm-breaking aggressive marketing tactics.

Ruler: Chaplain-Marshall

Merchant Principality
An empire ruled by a council of the wealthiest merchants and conglomerates who jointly manage all matters of state for profit. In some, these powerful business magnates representing the wealthiest firms select from their number a final arbitrator of internal issues according to the candidates' past records of discernment and wise business decisions. In others, they are led by a final arbiter of internal issues drawn from their number according to the stock value of the involved firms such that when a new head of state takes office, the wealthiest firm puts forward the successor who acts as something like an apprentice and representative.

Ruler (Male): Merchant Prince
Ruler (Female): Merchant Princess
Heir: Vice-Princeps

Stakeholder Polity
Though corporations hold great sway in society, their management is actually held to a standard of accountability to the public by a central 'Fair Deals Council' made up of experienced public advocates, community leaders, and philanthropists. This holds back the worst greedy instincts.

Ruler: Chief Ombudsman

Shareholder Commonwealth
Though corporations hold great sway in society, their management and policy have been largely democratized through widespread stock ownership and organization of ordinary shareholders. A strong culture of accountability to 'Citizen-Shareholders' holds back the worst greedy instincts.

Ruler: Chief Arbitrator