Government and politics

Head of state

The Lord-Stadtholder is head of state, head of government and commander-in-chief. Emiel van der Huijsen, who founded Mahuset, has held the office since 2016. He is chosen by popular vote on the same ticket as the Lord-Grand Pensionary, so the two highest offices are won and lost together.

The Lord-Grand Pensionary's powers are largely ceremonial: the office matters chiefly as the succession, when the Lord-Stadtholder cannot act. Chase Mahoning holds it, and Hasan Çakar is Deputy Lord-Grand Pensionary. The two titles replaced president and prime minister on 11 March 2023, taken from the offices of the historical Dutch Republic.

The armed forces

The armed forces have six branches: army, navy, air force, space force, cyber force and the Marechaussee. They are small and largely ceremonial, and exist to support Mahusetan interests and defend the Confederation's territorial integrity. They answer to the Ministry of Defence and Veterans' Affairs, held since August 2025 by Çakar.

The Lazian Chamber

Federal legislative power is vested in the Lazian Chamber, named after the capital, the Free City of Lazia. It is unicameral and semi-monistic, and nothing outranks it in law: legislative supremacy is its alone, and with it ultimate power over every other political body.

The Chamber has two parts. The Lazian Council is directly elected, its members representing the governments of the eight constituent entities set out in the overview. The Executive Office is appointed by the Lord-Stadtholder and serves as his cabinet, answerable for policy and administration. Presiding over both is the Greffier-Consular, Çakar.

Its five seats were last filled at the election of January 2020. Elections, referendums and constitutional initiatives are the business of the Chad Stephen Freayth Electoral Commission, headed since July 2025 by Zabëlle Skye-Greys.

Parties and coalition

Three parties hold seats, and since 2024 all three sit together in the alliance Recht door zee '24. The centre-right Conservative Liberal Party, led by the Lord-Stadtholder, has governed since the Confederation was founded. The centrist Independent Chamber Group dates from 2019, the centre-left Social Democratic Party from 2016.

The three have governed in grand coalition since October 2019. Shady Hosam Morsi, long associated with the Independent Chamber Group, left the government in July 2026 on withdrawing from public life; the group remains independent under Çakar as interim leader. The Confederation's own description of the arrangement is a "consensual oligarchy": democratic forms, run at the scale of a very small population.

Council of Ministers

Day-to-day administration is the work of the Council of Ministers. Twelve departments stand, among them Justice, Education, Economic Affairs, Foreign and Batyr Bloc Affairs and General Affairs. The number dates from October 2019, when the National Convention cut the Council from twenty-two ministries to twelve, merging some and abolishing the rest.

The list is not stable; ministries are split, merged and moved. In August 2025 the government passed portfolios it had run directly to individual ministers — defence, digital affairs and economic affairs among them — and put standing offices and public services under the nearest ministry.

The Chad honorific

Chad is the highest distinction in Mahusetan public life, a non-hereditary honorific for exceptional merit, established in 2021 and conferred by Act of the Lazian Chamber or by decree of the Lord-Stadtholder. It had been awarded ten times by 2025, and those who hold it, who fill most of the senior offices, are styled Right Honourable Gentleman Chad.

The Chadly Chancery, set up in September 2025 under General Affairs, registers honours and supervises their conferment. In August 2026 it adopted the first procedure for taking a Chad away, a title that until then could not be lost. It acted "with the deepest reluctance", reserving the procedure for "the gravest and most sorrowful of circumstances". It has been used once.

Oversight and audit

The Censorate is a branch of government in its own right, and its business is the other branches. It investigates, supervises and audits, part public-spending watchdog and part political ombudsman.

It may act with bodies outside the government: the National Foundation for Combatting Corruption, split off in December 2018 from the ministries it watches; the Council of Knowledgeable People dedicated to the Contravention of Redditesque Behaviour; and the Coalition of Concerned Citizens against the Propagation of GUM Influence.

Its reach extends beyond the state. Under an act of 2019, platforms above a certain size keep their immunity from liability for what their users post only if they can demonstrate political neutrality; the Censorate opened an inquiry into Twitter under it in 2020. A separate commission, the Civil Service, validates the qualifications of civil servants.

Direct democracy

Direct democracy runs through the system in limited, half-direct form, its instruments working alongside representative ones. Both the 2016 and 2019 constitutions provide for them. They are termed popular rights, and either may overturn a decision of parliament.

The federal initiative allows citizens to propose. The federal referendum allows them to object: a group that gathers the signatures of two-fifths of the Mahusetan population against a law within a hundred days forces a national vote, decided by simple majority, on whether the law stands.

The Chamber and the Lord-Stadtholder may call referendums too; theirs are the stronger instrument, able to introduce law as well as challenge it. The most recent referendum, in June 2019, was consultative rather than binding: voters backed rights to self-defence and to internet access and rejected a right to die, the result advisory only.

Constitution and law

The supreme law is the Interim Constitution, issued by the National Convention of 2019 to serve until a permanent text exists. Amendment generally requires a two-thirds majority in the Chamber. Some principles are beyond amendment altogether: human dignity, the separation of powers, the federal structure and the rule of law.

The Convention was created by the constitutional referendum of 23 February 2019, an extraconstitutional body charged with drafting a constitution, a civil code, a penal code and a longer-term framework of government. It did something else. With the Chamber sitting rarely, it became the working government, and the codes went unwritten.

That project is now closed. In June 2026 the Convention narrowed its active remit to the constitution alone; in July it abandoned the codes outright, calling the exercise "outside the scope of the Mahusetan project". In their place stands a differentiated order: Mahusetan customary law, Mahusetan statute and the sovereign laws of the claimed territories, running side by side.

Interpretation rests with the Council of State and the ministries, working from precedent, custom and statute. The Council has been accumulating that work: the ministerial department of law was merged into it in 2023, and parts of the National Convention's own commissions when the Convention abolished them in 2025.

The judiciary may strike down Acts that breach the constitution: the Supreme Court is final arbiter on ordinary law, the Constitutional Court on constitutional questions. Both are vacant. Official texts appear under publications.