Galactic Empire (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
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A "former Galactic Empire" is mentioned in several adaptations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. By the time set in the Hitchhiker's series, the government of the Milky Way galaxy is referred to as the "Imperial Galactic Government", though it is further explained that "the term is kept, though it is now an anachronism." In the television adaptation of the series, the name Imperatala Galacticon is used in one graphic as an alternate name for the previous Galactic Empire.
[edit] Backstory
Through the books, particularly Life, the Universe and Everything it is inferred that this Galactic Empire began about 22 BYA, however, no exact date is given. In the first book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the first radio series, the empire is described as being known in its distance past for its richness, wildness and lack of taxes. People were described as daring to "boldly split infinitives that no man had split before". And businesses such as Magrathea were described as thriving—so much so that the economy was overwhelmed and the galaxy was plunged into eons of financial dark ages.
In Life, the Universe and Everything, it is established that one of the most crucial eras in the history of the Galactic Empire is the two thousand-year-long Krikkit Wars, in which the Galaxy and the rest of the universe fought against the xenophobic people of Krikkit. In that novel it is further established that though every planet in the Galaxy retains some racial memory of the wars, only the people of Earth had the tactlessness to turn it into a sport.
In the second novel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and the second radio series, it is established that by the present day setting of the various series, the real imperial rule has been long since abolished. It is explained that when the last Galactic Emperor was just about to die, he was put under a stasis field of static electricity, keeping his body perputually alive in a coma. Over time, all the emperor's heirs died and the Galactic Empire shifted from monarchy to democracy, with the galactic assembly of the imperial advisors switching from privy council to administration, with the head of the council becoming President of the Galaxy.
Thus it is further explained that since the shift to democracy brought an end to the previous absolutism, this meant there was a chance the head of state wasn't just not in full power but not in power at all. And so the President of the Galaxy become an extreme figurehead; a celebrity, but someone who could reasonably be in power. Thus the president and the entire executive branch's purpose is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. But only a handful of people know this fact, and only six of them know who actually wields power.
The current President of the Galaxy when the series begins is Zaphod Beeblebrox. Zaphod, along with Yooden Vranx, Roosta and Zarniwoop, found out how little power the president wields, and set out on a complex journey to find the real ruler of both the Imperial Galactic Government and in fact the entire universe. Their mission, which ends in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, culminates in the discovery that power is actually wielded more or less entirely by a man in a shack. His extreme lack of desire to be a ruler of anything, so reasoned the old imperial government, allowed him to not be distracted by desire or eagerness and made him perfect to be ruler. Zarniwoop is crestfallen.
