system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Starship Troopers] How did earth come to be ruled by a global fascistic government?

Is it just an alternate universe where their human nature naturally produced that form of government? Or are they like us and did democracy fall out as the leading ideology?
gpt
It's not fascist in the book. It's only *implied* to be fascist in the movie, and then only by the costume design.

In the book, it's explained, though not in great detail, that there had been a great and devastating war, and that afterwards the heads of either the remaining *governments* or the remaining *government* (it's not specified) had been veterans. It was decided that in the future only veterans of military or civilian service would be granted full citizenship and the right to vote, because people who'd served would know better than to ever lead the world into such a devastating war again.

So it's still a democratic system; in fact, it may even be a *more* democratic system than ours. The book never distinguishes between a direct democracy and a representative democracy. It's just a democracy in which sovereign franchise is earned through service, rather than granted by virtue of birth.