New Order/Legends

"Under the Empire's New Order, our most cherished beliefs will be safeguarded. We will defend our ideals by force of arms. We will give no ground to our enemies and will stand together against attacks from within or without.  Let the enemies of the Empire take heed: Those who challenge Imperial resolve will be crushed."

- Palpatine in his Imperial Inaugural Address

The New Order was the name given to Emperor Palpatine's political program, which was the underlying ideology of the Galactic Empire. Declared when Palpatine established the Empire in 19 BBY, it was institutionalized in a number of Imperial organizations, most dramatically the Stormtrooper Corps, and was supported by COMPNOR and its powerful sub-agency, the ISB.

Chauvinism
The New Order's ideology was pervasively chauvinist, possibly due to its military origins. The armed forces were almost entirely male, as were most of the Emperor's advisors.

Culture
The culture of the New Order was ascetic and minimalist. These aesthetics were encouraged throughout the Galaxy by the Coalition for Progress, an arm of COMPNOR. During its short existence, the Empire was not particularly brutal in the suppression of artistic culture, as it was primarily interested in military and political dominance. However, pressures from the New Order left their mark on the art of the Imperial period.

Historical Perspective
The New Order arose from the history of the Galactic Republic, which was decentralized and often found ineffectual in resolving disputes between its more powerful members. The Empire was championed as a strong unifying solution to this problem. It criticized the pereived decadence and weakness of the Republic, and advocated an authoritarian and militaristic social and political culture.

Xenophobia
The New Order was intrinsically tied to a Human-supremacist vision of society. Aliens were rarely accepted into formal Imperial organizations. They were also often the target of exclusionary policies. In some cases, sentient aliens had been virtually exterminated by the Empire (infamously, the Empire occasionally used an ecological act permitting the eradication of dangerous species to justify military operations against sentient species).

Other uses of the term
During the Separatist Crisis, several members of the Separatist Council used the term "New Order" to describe the vision of a decentralized, corporate-friendly Galaxy as represented by the Confederacy. Whether the use of "New Order" by both the Confederacy and the Empire was due to them both being led by Palpatine, or just coincidence, is unknown.