As will happen when any group of people get together, the colonists of Persephone have inevitably brought many of the trappings of their old lives on Earth back with them. The government and military presenses on Persephone are arranged by the United Nations and bankrolled by its membership: they, therefore, consist of various elements pulled from whereever on Earth they were available. Much of the rest, however, has cropped up on its own.

Government on Persephone consists of a governor appointed directly from Earth by the United Nations and a seven-man Colonial Council elected by the citizens of Persephone. The Governor chairs all sessions of the Council, votes on all bills placed before it and, can overrule any bill passed with a majority of less than 5-to-2. Many of Persephone's inhabitants are displeased by the most powerful politican on the colony being appointed from another star system, but many of those on Earth responsible for subsidising the colony are displeased that their single appointed representative can be outvoted by the rabble-rousing populists of the Colonial Council. Beneath the Governor and Council rest the many bureaucrats and officials who allow any society to move smoothly.

The military is also a United Nations force. Unlike the government, it is primarily recruited on Earth from among various volunteers from one or another national army. Many of the soldiers who find themselves as part of the Persephone detachment would have been sent there mostly to get them out of the way: the force is divided fairly heavily between effective soldiers determined to guard the last frontier and those who simply couldn't get the job done on Earth. Persephone is therefore guarded by a single rather rag-tag battalion commanded by a lieutenant-colonel. This battalion, never numbering over five hundred men, is responsible for the ground defense of the planet. Additionally, a fighter corps of about twenty spacecraft and pilots is maintained on the colony, operating off of the main landing pad.

The next major part of the colony are the various lumber companies. There are several firms devoted to cutting, selling, and exporting the Persephone timber which provides the colony with most of its economic activity. Due to their sheer economic weight, these lumber companies often rival the government in their influence and a major part of the election of anybody to the Colonial Council is getting the lumber companies onside, or at least not having them be actively hostile. For the most part, smaller lumber companies have found themselves swallowed up by their larger counterparts, as the expenses in starting a Persephone lumber operation are non-trivial and the economies of scale are significant. Earth-based corporations, like the Russian-based Gamayun Cosmonautics specialising in major military hardware, have found their way to Persephone and are becoming a growing part of the economy, having been one of the major contractors involved in the colony's construction in the first place as well as one of Earth's premier tech companies.

Finally, there are the various alien embassies. The four alien species represented on Persephone all maintain their formal embassies with the humans on Persephone, and these employ a number of aliens as ambassadors, diplomatic officials, analysts, and the countless other activities that allow an embassy to go about its assorted tasks. Obviously, these embassies are staffed entirely by the aliens in question, although it's not unheard of that they'd hire another alien or a human to go some place where their own kind cannot tread without drawing attention.