This is copypasted from a Reddit thread I made a long time ago and I thought it might be of use over here. Let me know if I was right or wrong.

"We've all been in those weird situations where the Militarist party had absolute dominance of the political scene after the war was over. Sure, when we were actively preparing for a war then they also loved that but then we had to wait until the next election to get all the militarist goodies. But when we wanted to focus on anything else, it was very hard for most parties to get back in the saddle, even though the war was over and (normally) we had such a military and economic advantage that we were in an unassailable position.

I made a list of things that would help make the political scene more interesting and less wonky. Of course the math is up to debate as well as the weights but this is more about the principles themselves.


1, Allow for Early Elections, and/or set Elections to every 10 turns. This would allow for a more fluid change, and follow the shifts in party support better.


2, Allow each party to gain power based on their associated resource's output on a per system basis. Industrialists gain from the system's Industry output, Pacifists from Dust, Ecologists from Food, Religion from Happiness (from those that come from laws or buildings), and Scientists from Science.


3, Allow the Influence generated by the system to also add into the previous system, based on each inhabiting species' political preference. For example: population is 15, so we divide the Influence/turn by 15. Then, we see that we have 10 Lumeris and 5 Sophons living there, so we distribute 2/3rds of the Inflience based on Lumeris political preferences, and 1/3rd based on the Sophons'.


4, Expanding upon the previous addition, this would have a system-level and also an empire-level effect. On the system level, it influences party support, while on the empire level, it determines who can be voted for, based on government system. If there are only 2 parties in the government, then those parties will get in there who have the most Influence generated by populations across the empire. This will of course mean that species who align perfectly with the party's ideals will contribute more influence, but on the other hand it will mean that if a species is only 1 step away from that party's ideal on the wheel (you know, the one that depicts the species' political preferences), they will still be valuable. This will result in certain parties becoming unable to run for election on planets at all, allowing the population to pick a party that will actually take part in the government, which in turn will mean that no votes go to waste, they just worth more or less depending on the racial distribution of your empire.


5, Remove the current "party experience" system, in favour of "party power". Two factors determine it: firstly, how much public support they have at the given turn, meaning that a party that won the election by a landslide could slowly bleed out and become powerless. Secondly, how long have they managed to stay in government: the more consecutive elections they managed to say in government the bigger the bonus; however, each time they get kicked out, they lose 20% of this bonus. This would mean that one or maybe two parties that have traditionally been governing the empire are not so easy to remove, and that newcomers need to have a considerable voter support advantage to turn the tables on the entrenched veterans.


6, Expanding upon the previous change, the effect of each law would depend on the support the party has, and each law would also have a minimum support requirement to be able to be put into effect at all. This would allow for simpler laws to remain relevant against the more complex ones, which in turn would mean picking laws becomes more interesting than just going with that one or two ridiculously good laws and completely ignoring the rest.


7, Needless to say, this would also mean that the laws themselves would need an overhaul. I'm sure the devs have all the stats regarding the use of each law, so they can most likely tell which ones see how much use. I'm also certain that we all use the same handful every game, depending on the race in question.

This would mean politics would be relevant in the game, instead of just a nuisance or freebie you manage every 20 turns. Additionally, this would let other parties to take the scene, not just the Militarists all the time, by allowing other parties to have a passive influence to balance out the occasional but more powerful impact of events supporting the Militarist party (like building your fleets, getting into a war, etc)."