In science fiction, there are a large number of governmental forms. However, these generally fall into a couple of basic types:
Republican Democracy, which allows its citizens to vote on the head of state and members of the governing bodies. These are the most common and largely thought of as the ideal solution, probably because most science fiction writers are American and this is the sort of system they are used to. A major downside of this style of government that is rarely confronted by the author of the story is the ability of the government to actually function over interstellar distances. For of course, without a decent ftl communications device, it is really impossible to run a truly accountable interstellar government - it would take more than eight years to exchange messages between Sol and Alpha Centauri for example. With her ansible device, and slower than light travel, Ursula Le Guin has written many of her science fiction books in the Ekumen galaxy, where the various strains of humanity have come together in an organisation that depends on communications rather than face-to-face meetings. Christopher Stasheff's "Wizard Despite Himself" is looking for a faster method than radio to communicate between planets.
Empires are another favourite form of government. In the main they are often seen as a bad thing, as something to be overthrown. However, as a form of interstellar government, they have the advantage of reducing the necessity of consulting the local populations on a regular basis. Possibly the most famous interstellar Empire is that encountered as the background for Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. This had existed for many thousands of years tying together the Galaxy in relative peace but by the time of the Foundation books it is decaying.
The rise and fall of Empire is a common theme in various stories by Poul Anderson as well, though his empires are on a much smaller scale than Asimov's.
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