Galactic Politics: An Overview

Across the three Star Wars movie trilogies, we see three governments and three rebellions. The prequel episodes [I-III] focus on the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems. The original trilogy episodes [IV-VI] focus on the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. The sequel trilogy episodes [VII-IX] focus on the First Order and the Resistance.

The interesting thing regarding the three galactic conflicts we see. The rebels are the protagonists in two of the three wars.

George Lucas has been on record saying that Star Wars is a story about a little guy. He related the original trilogy to the Viet Cong against the United States "Empire" in a 2018 interview with James Cameron titled "Story of science fiction"

Lucas said "The irony in that, is in both of those [Star Wars and the Vietnam War] the little guy won. The highly technical empires- the English empire, and the American empire, lost. That's the whole point."

Star Wars at its core is a political story, even without the senate meetings that fill the prequel trilogy.