Author's Foreword:

Firstly, it is an honour to have been chosen as the most suitable candidate to write about government in the post zombie apocalypse world. I hope that this guide will provide you with some insight into what sort of situation you will find yourself in with regard to government, and its relationship to how the post-Z human society organises itself and its wealth.

The information contained within it is highly speculative and hypothetical, but is based on our knowledge of group dynamics, current popular political thought, and historic models of government during times of crisis. Societies could surprise us and use entirely untried models of government, but the most likely forms will be derived out of practical necessity, and existing political culture and thought.

This guide will also deal primarily with Europe and its cultural offspring, meaning the entire Western world. The forms of government used elsewhere in the world would be the subject of an entirely different set of parameters, though they would share common roots in practical terms, particularly economics. As most of the members of this wiki are from the West, I will concentrate on the more likely scenarios in that hemisphere.

In line with the tradition set by the previous author of the Government in an Undead World article, I must admit that I am a social democrat/democratic socialist, and a member of the Irish Labour Party. However, I will explore the full set of likely governments to arise out of the ashes, so I hope you won’t hold that against me.

Lastly, I hope that we all have the common sense if the proverbial does hit the fan to remember that we are members of the same species, and one that will be heavily endangered if we do find ourselves in such a situation.
　
　
Natural or Ad-Hoc Government: The Group.
“Government” will be established in any group the moment the first important decision has to be made.
Assuming total government collapse in widespread areas of any given country, people remaining alive in small groups will revert to more natural means of leadership and control. The closest examples to this sort of government are tribal groups, or social groups in modern Western society, with a hierarchy developing within the group and inner-group relationships playing the part of politics.

Many groups could rely on pre-existing hierarchy to govern their group, such as military personnel governing themselves by rank. However, these forms will most likely have to change somewhat to cope with challenges such as resource management, which requires somewhat more consensus than a strict chain of command would allow. Groups consisting of mostly strangers are more likely to follow hierarchies based on the needs of that group, however.

Surprisingly, this form of government has been touched on the most by Hollywood and others, as most fictional accounts of the zombie apocalypse depict small groups of survivors. Film and television also concentrates a lot of time on the relationships between the survivors, particularly when tough choices have to be made.
How long this method of government lasts will vary wildly depending on the ability of survivors to settle somewhere safe. Many groups will be eliminated before they can progress to a more advanced stage of government, and if the population is unable to settle, this form could last until the end of the species.

Established Government: The Community
The establishment of formal government will occur in groups that manage to settle down, survive for long enough on the move to require it, or if a group chose to create one for its own reasons. The first formal governments on Earth were established when farming was invented and urban culture first emerged. Similarly, formal government will only become truly developed when survivor groups have secure enough food supplies and living spaces, as well as growing large enough to require government.

It is also this stage when ideas on the form of government start to come into play.

Communities will use their government to decide on resource management, immediate security concerns and issues on a scale that you could consider as similar to what we call local politics today. This form of established government was the basis for the emergence of states historically, and will no doubt prove to be the basis for the post Z-Day political and diplomatic situation in the long term.

Rubicon: The State
The crossing point between community government and states is simple: interaction with other communities.

Once a community has its own government, it will begin to develop its own mandates and sovereignty, particularly as time goes on and new generations grow up in the new environment.

Let's hypothesize that community A has been set up, with secured farmlands, a working government and a large enough population. In other words, this community has become self-governing, "sovereign". At some point, this community will come across another community which is either unwilling or too big to absorb, which itself is sovereign. This could happen very soon after the community's foundation, or it could happen a very long time after the old world is destroyed.

Once this occurs, the community has two choices: remain sovereign or merge. If the decision is taken to remain independent, then what we effectively have are two states. States are defined by the recognition of other states and defacto control. Diplomatic and trade relations will be initiated on request of the state or private interests, and so relationships built up between states. At the same time, states with conflicting interests will go to war, as in any historical time period.

Forms of Government:
Representative Democracy:
Frankly, this is the most likely form of government to be used in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, fringe groups aside. Representative democracy has deep roots in these areas, in the very culture of the people who live there. The vast majority of groups will form a primitive form of this fairly early on, unless the groups have a lawyer or two spare. This form can be and will be used alongside varying economic systems, from socialism to capitalism.

Oligarchy/Fascism/Aristocracy:
This form of government will most likely follow closely behind representative democracy as the second most used in the US, Canada and Western Europe. It is an inevitability that certain people will possess better capabilities than others for various reasons. While in a lot of groups, a lot of people won't accept being governed without representation once stability has been established, many will be accepting of the rule of those who lead the groups before that stability was achieved. These two factors will inevitably lead to a small group of people ruling over the rest with little or no reference in their decisions to the people. This inevitably leads to a centralised economy based on the needs and wishes of the ruling elite, and so is only compatible with that system.

Direct Democracy/Anarchy/"Town Hall Democracy":
People making decisions directly, without electing representatives, will be a popular form of government among smaller communities and "states" (I use the term here to refer to areas controlled by such communities), as it is simply less formal and based more on consensus. This can also be used alongside varying economic systems, like representative democracy.