[[B5]Londo]

Far from cancelling out race characteristics i think being able to change governments could well emphasize them.
Sure a xan can now go demo and cancel out his low base research rate, without being stuck with it all round, but he has 133 res points (ignoring labs/pop) while a cat is motoring along on 175, the cat is playing to his strength the xan compensating for his, as a result the cat is making better use of his characteristics.
A cat going demo gets more out of it than anyone else because he has the highest base research points. Before govts could change to go demo and thus get the best out of your high res points was to place all your hopes on an amazing start with an inevitable decline later on, and thus was quite risky, now the risk is gone.