Alliance (Firefly)

The Alliance, formally known as the Union of Allied Planets,[a] is a powerful fictional corporate supergovernment and law-enforcement organization in the Firefly franchise that controls the majority of territory within the known universe.

The Independent Faction or "Browncoats" wanted the outer worlds to remain autonomous and attempted to resist Alliance control.

In Serenity, the movie set in the Firefly universe, it is revealed that the Alliance is run by a Parliament, as well as a prime minister.

This invites the possibility that the Alliance is a constitutional monarchy and Westminster parliamentary system with the inclusion of technocratically elected members, where outside of the central planets, oligarchies through lordships represent local colonial governance.

It appears that this Alliance was a melding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States of America (USA).

The Alliance retains a mixture of both Western and Eastern cultures from the "Earth-That-Was", the original home of all humans, spearheaded by the Americans and the Chinese.

Whedon himself admits that sometimes, the Alliance is like the predominant view that the United States saw itself in World War II: doing "very good things", helping people and spreading democracy.

The Chinese spoken is based on Mandarin (intermixed with Cantonese), but the pronunciation is heavily corrupted from the real-world language by the actors.

Chinese appears to be the superior language in Alliance society as it is used for written public communications and for polite address between strangers.

[4] The Alliance operates a fleet of massive spaceships, resembling huge floating cities, that act as both military and police in the space between the various planets of the Firefly Universe.

Before he departs, the Operative tells Mal of how much trouble he had caused the Alliance (in the shooting script, he states that they had gotten multiple complaints from several worlds), and warns him that, although their regime is weakened, they will be after him in revenge.