[@Oraculum] Local variance. The military tends to consist of private armies held by the Composers and various corporations with lots of governance being localized.  The waystations tend to however be owned by the Composers who want them being public and open to all matter of information.  The Composers do have some standardizations such as the election of a universal figurehead from time to time (sorta like a godless pope) and the imposement of a common credit system along with a common Domain language that you don't have to learn, but many do anyways even if you can just use translators.  Mot to mention the bioships, but those come in many, many, many forms and clades to the point where you could describe the Domain in terms of a ecology more than a actual state.

The Composers tend to only actively interfere if they fear things are getting too stable which they precieve as the domain losing its melody.  The way composers think of the domain is basically as a complex system that is in perpetual flux, if it hits a equillibrium it dies.