It's odd, because penalties due to empire sprawl, if your admin capacity isn't sufficient, aren't particularly punishing.
If your empire wants to expand into a new part of space, or build a mega-structure, or pass an edict, wouldn't it make more sense to see how many civil servants, project managers and administrators you have to put to work managing these things? If you don't have these people available, then you can't go ahead with your plans until you strengthen your admin capacity.
Also, I think factions within your empire should have a positive or negative affect on happiness and productivity within groupings of pops, rather than giving a abstract influence bonus.
That said, I don't want to criticise the Devs too much, because I understand how difficult it is to create workable systems in a virtual environment. It's even more difficult when you have to get an AI opponent to work properly as well!
