No thanks.
Powerplay already exists. I appreciate that in some fantasy realm there are folks that believe that this is a PvP heavy, combat heavy affair that is designed to be participated in a certain way, but that's simply not true and "forcing" people to pretend it is isn't the answer. If it were to be re-imagined as something to actually make it the reason for PvP that was originally advertised, it'd need fundamental changes in how it works.
You don't need to force players to do anything. In fact, attempting such is just dumb and unproductive. Strong incentives, on the other hand, can create a situation that you're really looking for.
Let's use the real world reality of what we've got right now as an example. We've got a boring background simulation that most of us give exactly zero craps about, and once every four weeks we can acquire a new gizmo. We can do this, incidentally, by loading up a T9 and making one run to wherever is currently accepting the garbage we just threw in our cargo hold. We don't care if it actually fortifies or undermines anything. Don't get me wrong, the powerplay interface has colors on it and a spreadsheet and everything, but so does my 401k balance webpage and frankly it's more exciting than the BGS because it relates to an actual reward and ultimately even uses more exciting colors and more exclamation points. Yeah, I'm saying that Powerplay is boring, and the problem isn't that we're hiding in solo to do it, the problem is that we aren't actually doing it at all.
Imagine if taking on a faction let us make a million credits per kill of opposing factions. Imagine if our employer covered our rebuys, or substantially discounted them, for powerplay warfare so that the risk was on them, not us. Imagine if a single PvP kill, which is infinitely harder than one run with a T9, paid the same in merits, and had the same effect in terms of fortification or undermining, etc.
See, if we offer actual PvP incentives, now a player can still choose to not participate in PvP and do their mundane T9 run, or they can strike out there and PvP in a venue that has less risk of loss for themselves and more gain than PvP in other areas of the game. In addition to that, even small PvP skirmishes would have a much larger effect on the BGS than huge amounts of perfectly safe cargo running, which would mean systems are won/lost much more often and much more readily to the PvP aspect of the gameplay.
Ultimately, I think this would allow PvP to continue to be consensual, nobody would be forced to to anything they didn't want to do, gear would still be available to everyone, and the gameplay effects behind the whole thing would incentivise the type of activity that the system was originally intended to incentivise.