In 1987, Games Workshop needed a backstory to sell miniature wargames. By 2024, that commercial necessity had produced one of the most institutionally coherent fictional polities in science fiction. This paper asks why the Imperium of Man often feels more ‘realistic’ than many science-fiction polities despite deliberate grimdark exaggeration.
We argue that institutional coherence emerges because the setting repeatedly converges on the same solutions observed in historical extractive empires once governing actors face extreme scale, informational latency, and credible external threats. Upon examining institutional economics, the Imperium’s apparent dysfunction emerges as a stable equilibrium: coercive extraction, bureaucratic sclerosis, and technological conservatism are not merely narrative noise, but load-bearing responses to constraint.
Author bio
Brian Lucey is Professor of International Finance and Commodities at Trinity Business School, Dublin. He has served as editor-in-chief of several journals at ABS2 and 3 level, and has published over 300 papers, with over 35,000 citations. In his spare time, he is a creative writing enthusiast.
