It's mostly just a measure of influence. As for infrastructure, ehhhhhhh.
The ultimate core of what your question implies is more or less "can we delegate infrastructure to these people" and the answer is no, no you cannot for the simple reason that it would be a ton of additional work for me: as QM there is only so much I can simulate without burning myself out. The ticker system, faction cards, and the currently not yet unveiled hero unit system is about the limits of what I'm willing to do with NPC's: giving them player levels of productivity and expanded ability to develop infrastructure independently would require much more time writing, rolling, and planning every turn, for a result I ultimately wouldn't find very fun. Beyond that, one of the chief reasons part 1 died was because the amount of things players were able to accomplish got too big for me to reasonably write out in a timeframe shorter than months: its why you have the national convention to help reduce the amount of dice you can spend and keep it manageable. It's an affordance for me specifically, the QM, so I don't get sick of writing this quest. Letting an NPC faction pick up the slack to the degree you're probably hoping for would introduce more or less the same problem.
Basically, keep your expectations realistic. Don't expect to see NPC's do more than one or two things a turn outside the ticker, and don't expect them to significantly lighten your workload or free up resources.
