This is an adaptation of one of my favorite parts of the Babylon 5 D20 game!

Influence. Influence is a group of skills. Each one is listed for a specific entity, which is made up of a Type and a Race . Types are things like Military, Government, Economic, Intelligence, and so on. Race denotes what race or species or region has it.

For example...

Imperial Army (Human Military), Imperial Senate (Human Political), The Eyes and Hands (Human Intelligence), Merchant Houses of the Core Council (Human Economic.)

So, you roll Influence at a difficulty equal to the favors/pull you're trying to grab. Diff 1 for a minor favor (internal documents, information on a specific person, non-secrets and so on.) Diff 2 for a moderate favor or application of aid (a group of marines for light duty, use of a diplomatic pouch to move something through a checkpoint, 500 [money]). Diff 3 for actual secrets, major loans, use of force (a group of marines for guard duty.) Diff 4 for the application of major force (bringing in a ship to help you, a tank, what have you), and diff 5 or sweeping changes or massive use of force (deploying a fleet.)

Upgrade the difficulty by 1-5 if the action would put the entity at risk. For example, deploying a fleet against an enemy you can crush easily is one thing. But attacking the Mimbari is likely going to be diff 5 red.

Threats means that you have gained attention from the polity in question - either ire or dangerous approval (if a military thinks you're a good, handy dandy person to throw into a dangerous situation, it can be...awk.)

Advantage can be spent to apply... pressure. 2 advantage will let you impact something on the same axis. For example, you want to move through the checkpoint of the Turian Hierarchy. You have some influence with the Systems Alliance government, so you roll your diff 2 check and get 1s and 3 advantage. You spend 2 advantage and since your Human Government shares type with Turian Government, you can get the same result.

You can continue to spend advantage to "bounce" influence along the chain. 4 Advantage can go from Human Military to Turian Military, then from Turian MIlitary to Turian Economic, for example.

That IS a load of skills, if I understand the concept correctly. I'm not quite convinced it's in accord with the spirit of the game, as is.

To be fair, it'd only be a few skills for the important polities in your setting.

And it'd only be used if you're playing people who are big movers and shakers in the politics of the setting - a way to model that kind of interactions.

In the same way you wouldn't have a driving skill in a game with no cars, don't use these in a game about wandering adventurers, students at wizard college, post apocalyptic survivors or any other setting where it wouldn't make sense.

I can see where you are going with this, and for a game with an emphasis on factions, it can be quite interesting to have an xp sink that let's you get better with those factions.

But personally, I don't see a need for new skills, when you could just use Leadership, Charm and Negotiation, and to a lesser extent the other social or even knowledge skills for the things you propose. Then, you could just add boost dice for having a good standing with the faction in question or from previous exploits. Or you could add talents that let you choose a faction and then add boost or reduce or downgrade the difficulty when interacting with that faction. Just my two cents.

Edit: Now that I think about it, there's a talent called "Respected" in the Genesys Talents Expanded compilation that does exactly that.