Political Platforms for Fictional Universes: Harry Potter, the MCU, and Star Wars

All stories about individual heroism are stories of institutional failure

(This all comes from a place of love for these worlds, and I hope this does not diminish anyone’s enjoyment. Nobody cancel anything.

Some of these points are the result of plot holes that make these stories more character-driven, and some of them are due to them being products of their time, even when that time is today. Proposals not applicable to non-fictional settings. Tongue slightly in cheek.

Some spoilers ensue, up to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Avengers Endgame/FAWS, and The Rise of Skywalker.)

Harry Potter

The Ministry of Magic’s policy of wizard secrecy is utterly indefensible from a humanitarian perspective and should be ended immediately.

Magic for all, not just these tiny elites with funny names

Wizards and witches have incredible technology that is vastly underutilized. They appear to invent a new exotic form of zero-carbon transportation every five minutes, with Floo powder, flying cars, portkeys, apparition, and more. Simply building a network of portkeys for Muggles to replace existing transportation infrastructure, or disapparating greenhouse gases into space would have enormous benefits to the Muggle economy and world climate, to say nothing of what wizarding advances in medicine could do for re-growing bones.

In the Wizarding World, wizards and witches are highly specialized in their craft, but according to Harry Potter 1 broadly unaware of basic principles of logic, suggesting Muggle scientists and engineers could add substantial value in directing magical efforts. As a simple example, running a camera 24/7 on the Marauder’s Map and reviewing the footage could resolve the plot of almost every Harry Potter book, revealing Quirrel’s actions to release the troll, the release of the basilisk, Peter Pettigrew’s survival, Barty Crouch’s disguise, and more. Poor Harry himself could benefit from Muggle Lasik. Magic has tremendous application for the Muggle world, and Muggle science and engineering has the potential to vastly improve the use of magic in the Wizarding World.

Privacy advocates might take issue with the Marauder’s Map, if they weren’t too busy being horrified by wizards wiping Muggle memories for the crime of observing magic

Magical talent in the Harry Potter world appears to be genetically heritable: magic-users mostly have children who are magic users (with the occasional squib as an exception), Muggles mostly have non-magic users as children (with the occasional magic-user like Hermione as an exception). In the wizarding world, magic has been around for thousand of years: over that duration, heritable traits with minor benefits such as lactose tolerance developed and reached prevalence of 82% in some populations. If magic secrecy had never existed and magic-users bred with the Muggle population, it’s possible that nearly everyone would have been a wizard or witch (or additional gender options not covered by J.K. Rowling) by now.

There would be growing pains in this approach. Elements of the wizard community are highly prejudiced against Muggles and the Muggle-born. These attitudes are wrong, but may result from false beliefs regarding the lower capabilities of Muggles, and the belief that having a child with someone of Muggle heritage risks their children not inheriting magic, creating social stigma around wizard/Muggle pairings. Demonstrating the value Muggles can add to wizarding society without direct use of magic could dispel the first point. For the second, there are possible approaches that would raise complex ethical questions. Should wizard couples be allowed to use IVF with DNA screening to enable every couple with a magical parent to pass on magic-enabling genes if they so choose, and should Muggle scientists research genetic editing with CRISPR to add the genes for magical ability, with the full consent of all parties? The reveal of magic would surface a vast hidden inequality and introduce challenging questions about how to manage the magical trait, but I maintain that confronting those challenges would be better than denying magic to 90% of the world for all time and perpetuating a magic-based caste system.

Magic for all, magic forever.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

The single most important function of Earth governments in the MCU is protecting the planet from recurring external threats, and with the exception of the government of Wakanda, they appear to be failing miserably in that role, leaving Earth’s protection to a rag-tag group of individuals no civilian authority provides competent leadership to.

I blame this guy, who manages to fail upwards each movie

Earth has 7 billion people, and approximately 36 of them defend the rest from alien invaders trying to kill half of all life, or the entirety of it. The threats are overwhelmingly clear, the Avengers enjoy broad public support, but civilian authorities attempt to nuke cities, work for supervillains, or take no action in the face of extraterrestrial threats. Post-blip policy appears to have been a disaster in handling documentation and bailouts for temporally relocated individuals, failing at providing even world-famous individuals like Falcon enough financial support to secure a loan when he’s not out saving the planet.

The Sokovia Accords and attempting to maintain the state’s monopoly on violence after the heroes’ own excesses was a reasonable step, botched by disastrous execution and leadership. The Avengers should work in partnership with competent civil authorities, be fully funded and aided by civilian efforts in government and industry, while the government expands a robust social safety net to deal with superhero collateral damage, funded by the society-wide benefits that can be realized from mass-producing rapidly advancing superhero technology.

Don’t leave him to hold up the weight of the world on his own!

Earth’s governments and industries have vast resources that could assist in securing the planet from external threats, and competent transparent leadership is needed to aid in that effort.

I hear this guy has a lot of both superhero and leadership experience, he seems on the level

Star Wars

The governments of Star Wars should abolish the enslavement of artificial intelligent entities, “droids”. It existed in the Old Republic, was perpetuated by the Empire, and shamefully remained in the New Republic. Owning intelligent creatures capable of emotion and reason is wrong, regardless of whether their physical substrate is organic matter or silicon.

Some humans debate whether robots should have rights. Some robots may one day end up debating if humans should have rights. Hope the universalists win that one.

The protocol droid C3PO has clear emotional responses and reasoning at the level of a human being, but has his entire memories and personality wiped for the convenience of human characters on two occasions, condemning him to a virtual death (once, against his clear objections). Even Luke Skywalker, pre-Last Jedi paragon of virtue, sends C3PO into Jabba’s palace with no knowledge of his plan, offering him up as an apparent gift to the droid’s horror, who believes he is being treated as an object. Moral blind spots in people who are otherwise ahead of their times are not uncommon, but it is far past time for the governments of Star Wars to end this practice, and grant artificial life forms the same rights as organics.

Additionally, the complete failure of galactic institutions to control weapons of planetary destruction and control the population of space wizards suggests a new approach is needed for galactic security.

Apparently you can just build a giant fleet of planet destroying ships without anyone noticing

The Star Wars universe appears to be driven by two fundamental facts. (1) It seems to be trivially easy to acquire weapons of mass destruction and destroy planets, through superlasers or by using ships as high speed battering rams to generate massive destructive forces that could reach a planetary scale (it is admittedly unclear why this tactic is only observed once in The Last Jedi; if you have the ability to move large objects at near-light speeds and there is no technological defense, any ship can be a single-shot Death Star at a high enough velocity). (2) It appears to be possible to hide from the rest of the galaxy in the vastness of uncharted space, where you can only be found if someone possesses the coordinates of your location, serving as a virtual key to reach your world.

The key to galactic security will be combining these two insights. Living in a massive population hub with public coordinates in a world where every few decades a space wizard tries to kill everyone is incredibly dangerous, no galactic insurance agency would sell you coverage on that lifestyle. The path for secure civilian life in the Star Wars universe will be to repopulate from dangerously congested civilian hubs that make easy targets to uncharted planets and moons, where the coordinates of your community’s home is a well-guarded secret. This will not completely eliminate the risk, as the use of public hubs will still be needed to coordinate commerce and institutions, but decentralizing and taking advantage of the galaxy’s properties of secrecy would put substantial barriers in the path of the next space wizard trying to reboot the Death Star concept.

Bonus Round: Lord of the Rings

Canonically, relative to other Middle-Earth groups, Hobbits are comparably resilient to temptations of power, both supernatural and material.

Look at that trustworthy chap on the left, have you ever seen anyone more reliable

Middle-Earth society appears to be human-dominated, with Hobbits keeping to themselves, and humans occupying most positions of power. Hobbits could be given the opportunity to participate in a paid cross-cultural exchange program by volunteering for civil service in human society, taking on positions prone to corruption and abuse. Hobbits participating in this program could serve a two year stint as a tax collector, magistrate, or sanitation engineer responsible for the disposal of cursed artifacts, strengthening inter-group relationships and playing to their comparative advantage in the Middle-Earth economy.

That’s all! Open to rival party platforms, endorsements, etc

(Next in the series: Political Platforms for The Matrix and The Good Place, and Final Fantasy VII)