From all of the commentary here in the States over a majority of the voters in the UK having decided that they wanted their country to leave the European Union, I get the distinct impression that Americans don’t understand that the United Kingdom is a different country from the United States and that Americans don’t get a say in what the United Kingdom does. It reminds me of nothing so much as the Iraqis who wanted to vote in the U. S. elections on the grounds that the outcome would affect them, too, so they should have a say.
The United States is a country. The United Kingdom is a different country. Just because you as an American own assets denominated in pounds sterling or euros that puts you at risk of decisions made by the people of the United Kingdom doesn’t mean that you should have a say in the United Kingdom’s affairs. If you don’t want to take the risk that the citizens of another country will take actions deleterious to your economic interests, don’t invest in those countries.
We cannot understand the context of the Britons’ decisions. We might think we do but we don’t just as Europeans don’t understand the context of our decisions. There is no worldwide system of civil law or politics and not even a universally agreed-upon system of values.
I agree with you up to a point. The original notion of “political science,” which at one point was referred to as “political economy,” is that governance can and should be studied as a system. Political science says that system design is important, as well as incentives, institutions and legitimacy.
Most of America’s founders were students of political science to one degree or another. When the French Revolution took place, I think they mostly believed that the French had gotten their systems wrong, but none that were in France at the time like Thomas Paine believed the American system was appropriate to it. There is not one single system appropriate for all conditions, but we can certainly see ones that are failing.
I make the point in the historical context because a lot of “political science” on the internet is not objective analysis, but subjective rhetoric and commentary. The other reason is that I keep reading defenses of the EU based upon the U.S. being a union of states, but there appears to be almost no recognition that the Constitution was designed to provide popular legitimacy, focused on delineating limitations on power, and offer flexibility to states on most matters. These are not features of the EU system.
The problem that I was trying to address in digest form was the basic problem of world government. Among the Founding Fathers there was considerable agreement about basics. On a global basis there’s nothing resembling such agreement.
For example, the notion of “popular legitimacy” is a meaningless noise in a good chunk of the world where legitimacy is not gained by acceptance by the people but by conformity with the will of the rulers or by conforming to the strictures laid out in the Qur’an.
We even have differences with countries with which we share considerable history and structures. We’re an outlier, for example, in freedom of speech. We have no Official Secrets Act. Or freedom of the press. Most Americans (particularly journalists) would be appalled at the difference between our libel laws and British.
IMO we should just let the Brits be the Brits, the French be the French, while insisting on the same courtesy for ourselves.
Legitimacy can be obtained at gun point. This may not aspire to higher notions of morality or freedom, and there are a number of implications that follow from it, such as the leaders must never forget, and legitimacy follows the gun. Legitimacy can form from good results, but what happens when there are bad results? Voting provides a good source for legitimization as an alternative to the gun, but risky.
I generally agree that the U.S. should not be deeply involved in the EU dispute. I cringed when Obama threatened that the UK would go to the back of the bus if Brexit passes. It may have hurt Remain, or made no difference, but I don’t think the U.S. has as much interest in the EU as the foreign policy establishment feels. I would argue that if the divorce needs a neutral arbiter, the US should offer to help, as we would like to avoid a trade war in Europe, but I doubt it is necessary. Emphasis on neutral.
One of the points of similarity btw/ the U.S. and E.U. experience is that both started as treaty agreements which morphed into governments.
The UK joined the EU predecessor in 1975 as an economic common market treaty, ratified by a popular referendum. There were a series of subsequent treaties approved by the UK that expanded the original treaty, which were not put to a referendum because they would not have passed or would have harmed the party in charge. These incremental steps led to the UK being subject to a broad regulatory bureaucracy that polls so poorly today in the UK and almost every country that is not Germany or a former Soviet satellite state.
The U.S. began as an interstate treaty compact, which permitted any state to block any decision. A committee assigned to examine amending the Articles of Confederation, ended up proposing a federal government and bypassing the Articles’ amendment process (which it would not have passed, nor approved by the States directly). Instead, the Committee proposed that the Constitution be voted on by popularly elected conventions in each state, and in many states the normal property requirement for voting was eliminated or reduced. Coupled with the popular representation in the lower house, the new Constitution proposed a more popularly accountable form of government than its predecessor and than many state governments. The conspiracy belief that a revolution had occurred was not without basis, but the participatory method advanced made the majority co-conspirators. This is how you coup it.
In contrast, the EU has a system in which state governments are consistently challenged and ratified by popular elections domestically, and for whom the obvious incentive is to blame the EU for bad results or limitations, while opposition parties have every incentive to call for popular referendum as a “neutral” reform that provides the only means to challenge those bad results. I see these as systemic problems only repressed by fear of alternatives, and the hope that the future will be brighter some day soon.
here is no worldwide system of civil law or politics and not even a universally agreed-upon system of values.
So what? There’s no universally agreed-upon system of values for love and marriage, either, but people are a lot freer crossing sex, race, ethnicity and nationality lines in their pursuit than they are in finding a job or voting for leaders or representatives.
Who died and left to Dave Schuler the right to decide for people whether to claim their full rights as world citizens?