I would argue that the New Republic of the old EU was only successful at remaining in power as a strong, centralized government through extensive offscreen act-of-plotium, whereas the "more basket case" New Republic of the new Disney Canon is more realistically limited. If nothing else, the New Republic was supposed to be restoring the Old Republic, which was substantially less centralized than the Empire; but the political aspects of the Republic were always largely offscreen so we never actually see this divestment of power.
Edit: If you go with a "cynically realistic" take on the EU, you can say that the New Republic tacitly never actually divesting the centralized powers of the Empire was a huge part of why Garm Bel Iblis canonically remained estranged from it, over and above his canonical distrust of Mon Mothma. It always annoyed me that this was never really properly addressed in the EU.
The fundamental assumption here is simply not correct. While a lot of EU book & stuff simply glossed over all the politics, we did get some explicit facts -- and those prove the opposite of what you state here. See, for instance, the fact that the New Republic's charter grants each member world the inalienable right to
unilateral secession. Basically: you can vote to leave the NR if it no longer pleases you, and they're not allowed to prevent you from doing so. This automatically means that centralism is completely impossible (because the countless worlds opposed to it would secede at once).
Similarly, the whole thing with Bel Iblis was that he assumed Mon Mothma would be a centralising figure as soon as she got into power. She actually wasn't, and that's explicitly stated. The reason they didn't reconcile was wounded pride. Once they were brought back together, they got over it and became allies. Bel Iblis even admitted that he'd been wrong about Mon Monthma's intentions.
As a matter of fact, the New Republic being decentralist is a big through-line in the post-Endor EU. Some problems (the difficulty in funding certain fleet programmes) stem directly from it. The NR has typical "loose confederation" problems; not typical "centralising despotism" problems.
Until, of course, a centralising despot seizes power. And it goes wrong at once. I consider Denning a rather poor writer, but the
idea of a secession movement in response to a leader who begins serious centralisation efforts was realistic. The execution of that idea wasn't good. But the point is: the NR wasn't centralist, but rather very much decentralist, and
that's why it worked. As soon as a centralising leader took over (Caedus), things ceased to work.
The NR was strong and effective despite functionally being a very loose confederation, because its initial leaders knew which tasks to centralise, and were capable enough to get most everyone to agree. In practice, that means: the central government needs a good fleet to make sure peace is maintained. Meanwhile, almost all 'domestic' affairs were just handled locally. The New Republic really is just the Old Republic, but with a strong military (whose existence is justified by recent memory of war) and a bit more of a focus on guaranteed rights. They do have a charter outlining the rights of all sentients, and slavery and stuff like that is illegal.
But....
But the bigger unaddressed issue, in both the EU and the new canon, is that the Outer Rim systems *still aren't represented* in any meaningful way among the leadership cadre of the Alliance/New Republic. The New Republic is really just begging for a repeat of the Separatist Crisis since they restored the Republic without ever *actually addressing the legitimate complaints of the outer worlds*.
...the problem is that the NR's commitment to universal rights is a bit symbolic, because of the aforementioned right to secession. Yes, member worlds have to abide by fundamental principles. If they break these, they can be sanctioned. But, well... if they want to avoid that, they can just
secede. So the only thing keeping worlds in line is the threat that if they leave (or are kicked out) because they are (for instance) dicking slavocrats, they won't have free access to the Republic's common market anymore.
Granted, the republic is huge, so can afford to impose major tariffs on outsiders. Result: there's a big economic incentive to join and stay joined. Which means: no violations of sentient rights allowed.
Counter-point: because the Republic is so decentralised, there's no effective policing, so -- yes -- the Outer Rim is still quite "lawless". (As frontier regions always are.)
But the bottom line is that the New Republic really is "an improved version" of the Old Republic. They're not perfect, but they're doing their best.
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A generation of war and fighting may not exactly be the best suited to the light side...
Very well suited to interesting narratives, though.
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No; I'm betting they'll just have a new resistance fighting a Second Order, then another resistance fighting a Third Order, and so on and so forth until the end of time. Stop trying to apply logic to the sequels; because the people who made them clearly never did.
Darth Mickey reigns supreme!
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I kid you not, I read on SV once they said fascist villains should be intentionally presented as weak and pathetic, because young men might be attracted to cool bad guys with a fascist aesthetic.
Its insane.
Whenever political messaging is prioritised over telling a good story, the result is pure crap. You can put politics into a good story, at times, but before all else:
the story must be good. If that hurts the political messaging... the screw the politics, and tell the story.
If you want to soap-box instead... write a pamphlet, not a story.
