An empire of the British type must have close coupling between centre and periphery, for it is dependent upon trade. An exercise in laissez-faire capitalism gone mad, it grew and prospered as a source of cheap raw materials and cheap consumers for the industrial powerhouse of the world's first industrial nation. An empire of this type of dependent on shared resource control. Such an empire requires tight coupling between provinces, if not between provinces and capital. If two provinces ran into trouble, an adjoining unruly provinces resources would be assigned to a loyal province. It had regional governors, true, and a bureaucracy, and a hereditary ruling class, but it enforced governance through control of resources - a 'water empire' (hydraulic state, water-monopoly empire, or hydraulic despotism). The Chinese empire didn't operate like the Roman empire, either. What is the interstellar equivalent of the Golden Horde? An empire of this sort is dependent on the inability of the governed to defend themselves. But they didn't attempt to colonize the natives, or as far as I know impose their culture they just demanded food, tribute, and no defensive countermeasures. In many cases they imposed satraps to run the local show. The horde basically destroyed any city with walls and forcibly coopted grazing land, and demanded tribute.
The Mongol empire didn't operate on the same principles as the Roman empire, either. An empire of this sort is dependent merely on the ability of the imperial class to beat up anyone who refuses to pay tribute on demand. This, for an Aztec-style tribute empire, the answer is: 'a long time', meaning years or decades. (No local governors, taxation paid only on demand in the form of gifts and jewelry, outlying cities free to refuse demands - whenever they felt like butchering the Aztec imperial emissaries and fighting the consequent war.)
The Aztecs ran what is generally known as an empire, but it didn't operate on the same principles as the Roman empire.
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