With the rapid
expansion of the Edge through the centuries, the frontier policy of the
Confederation had had to adapt itself to comparatively slipshod methods
of setting up governments in the newly-opened areas. Back in the early
days they'd tried sending out trained men from each Cluster
headquarters, but that had been foredoomed to failure: travel between
the stars was slow, and too often the governors had arrived after local
officialdoms had already been established, and there had been clashes.
The colonists had almost always backed the local governments, and there
were a few full-scale revolts when the system had been backed too
militantly by Cluster headquarters.
So the Local Autonomy System had been sanctioned. The colonists would
always support their own men, who at least knew conditions in the areas
they were to govern. But since this necessarily limited the choice of
Edge governorships to the roustabouts and drifters who wandered the
outworlds, the resulting administrations were probably even more corrupt
than they had been under the old system of what had amounted to
centralized graft.
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