Political favors build buildings and such, http://galaxylegion.com/wiki/index.php/Political_Favor
but, if you were to ask a politician a favor, he "does" things for you
Why not make a mission thread where you perform tasks for political advisers in
order to gain more favors.
Make the Favors more usable (ie) buy off an alert.
Pump more Favors into your base Embassy for additional treaties based on a timer.
Most legions add pacts when they base alert, this gives them that option to have them on the alerted base timer, and keep the others on a static list