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Democrat Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson said during an Armed Services Committee hearing in late March, 2010 that Guam would be in danger were more US troops sent there. “My fear that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize,” he said in all seriousness. “We don’t anticipate that,” responded Adm. Robert Willard.

Did Hank Johnson's constituents want their representative in the U.S. House of Representatives to be at least nominally educated?  Lest one replies with "of course," it could also be that people may want their represenatives to be like them, or at least to reflect what they value. It could be that Rep. Johnson's district was inhabited by people who didn't value education. My hometown is such a place. Going to graduate school is tantamount to evading the real world. The implication is that investing in one's education is to waste one's time on something of little value. Of course, you can't fight ignorance or change people's values where they are convinced that they are correct.  It is perhaps not a surprise that representatives could be found in government having that mentality where it is common among constituents.

It is also true that larger the electorate, the less it can make an informed decision regarding the candidates campaigning to represent it. This is why the delegates to the US Constitutional Convention said there is more democracy at the level of state legislatures (e.g., more retail, less wholesale, politics). The EU Parliament has almost 800 reps (newly expanded, though I understand not yet filled), yet is not twice the US population, so the electorates per rep are smaller. However, a governmental body so large is apt to be cumbersome. The state governments in the EU, like those in the US, have smaller districts for their legislative lower houses (and perhaps their senates as well). In smaller districts, the candidates and the elected representative are more apt to be known by a given voter (or by someone the voter knows). Two (or even three) degrees of separation are better than relying on tv commercials, which are geared to presenting a given candidate as he or she wants to be seen. A viable republic ought not rely on a candidate’s preferred self-presentation because judgments in governance involve the actual person–hence the voters ought to know it.

A major implication from my reasoning here is that both American and European state governments ought not allow the balance of power to shift too much to the US and EU level, respectively. On the last day of the U.S. Constitutional Convention, George Washington, who had kept quiet throughout in his role in presiding, asked the delegates if they would make one change. Rather than a U.S. House representative to represent at least 40,000 inhabitants, the minimum should be 30,000 because that would allow for greater democracy. Of course, the setting of a minimum is far different than a maximum; the average district population has never been 30,000.  At the turn of the twenty-first century, it was more than 600,000.  The constitutional delegates would have thought such an arrangement to evince an aristocrisy, there being so few representatives relative to the population. The average citizen's voice would surely be lost, the designers of the U.S. constitution would be wont to say.  I suspect their response would be not just to send more power back to the state governments, but also to urge many of the large and medium states into federal systems themselves. Particularly where a state is heterogeneous, it makes sense for it to have a federal system with states ranging from large metro areas to four or five counties (as in Germany, whose Lander span from Bremen to Bavaria).  Unsere grosse Staaten sollten von Deutschland lernen. It could be that in modernity, the West has grown too accustomed to larger and larger electorates.  Has the E.U., for example, set any limit to its expansion from the vantage point of its democracy deficit?  Furthermore, has the U.S. tackled the problem of how to reconcile the large districts in the U.S. House with the problem of that body itself having too many members?  If it continues to be assumed that Congress can and should legislate on virtually anything, the tradeoff between representation and the size of the House must be addressed.

In the wake of Greece’s announcement that it would indeed need a bailout, Angela Merkel’s coalition partners suddenly got cold feet. Germany was slated to provide 8.4 billion euros out of the EU’s total contribution of 30 billion. Leaders of the FDP feared that the payout would ruin that party’s hopes of providing tax relief.  The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle,told ZDF television, “It has yet to be agreed that Greece will actually get assistance from Europe at all.” He added: “We will not write a blank cheque”. FDP deputy leader Andreas Pinkwart said it would be “a slap in the face of German employees” if the government would give billions of euros to Athens, and tell Germans “there’s no money left for easing their tax burden.” The FDP’s  finance expert Hermann Otto Solms also criticized Finance Minister Schaeuble’s plans. “It was wrong to put the pot of honey in the middle of the table right from the start,” he said. “That was a signal for the Greeks to just help themselves.” The right thing to do would have been to offer Greece no help and direct them straight to the IMF, Solms told the Passauer Neue Presse daily.
The government’s role in the rescue package also received criticism from Chancellor Merkel’s second coalition partner, the CSU party, which is based in the region of Bavaria. CSU parliamentary leader Hans-Peter Friedrich said his party would prefer Athens to leave the eurozone and solve its problems by “re-introducing its former national currency, the Drachme, at a devalued rate of exchange.”  Friedrich’s opinion was echoed by economist Joachim Starbaty from Tuebingen University. Greece was “no longer competitive within the eurozone,” he said. “It’s impossible for the country to repay its debts and the loans it now receives because its economy will be unable to accumulate surpluses for a long time “, he said. “Devaluing a national currency is the only chance for Greece to regain its competitiveness. Starbaty announced he would lodge an official complaint with Germany’s Constitutional Court should parliament in Berlin give the green light to the bailout package.

However, the German financial houses were very powerful at the time, and they could have pushed Merkel into going ahead with the deal anyway. Germany’s financial institutions held some €28 billion, or $37 billion, in Greek bonds.  About half of it had been downgraded by S & P to junk.  Indeed, 14 billion is more than the 8.3 billion that Germany is set to pay as part of the EU rescue. Deutsche Bank’s chief financial officer, Stefan Krause, indicated that the bank would feel the effects of a deeper Greek crisis. “We don’t have much exposure to Greece directly. We are not concerned,” Mr. Krause said during a conference call with analysts. He added, “We could not completely isolate ourselves if the situation gets worse.”

Analysis:

Germany’s direct exposure to Greek debt provides another reason why the Greece's financial problems were very much Europe’s problems. “It’s not just a question of paying for Greece’s luxury pensions. There are intrinsically strong German interests as well,” said Alessandro Leipold, former acting director of the I.M.F.’s European Department. Even so, the politics within Germany shouldn’t be ignored either. The ability of one state to pull out of the EU’s attempted bailout of another of its states illustrates the EU’s vulnerability in having so much authority continue to reside with the state governments.  Ultimately, the risk is one of dissolution of the union.  To be sure, giving the EU too much power would risk consolidation–something that the US is in risk of “achieving.”  The trick is to create and perpetuate a federal balance of power, wherein the two governments for each bit of territory can check each other.  The FDP’s interest in giving the residents in the state of Germany tax relief suggests that states will indeed look out for themselves at the expense of other states, even if one is going bankrupt.  Starbaty’s reference to the “eurozone” ignores that the EU is not just a “zone” wherein there is the euro currency.  Even for the states having the euro, the EU is much more.  In fact, becuase the EU’s ECJ (European Court of Justice) has decided that EU basic law trumps state basic law, it is not clear to me that the  Starbaty is going to the correct court.  That is, an EU court has the jurisdiction to decide on the EU’s assistance to one of its states, even if the EU is counting on its state governments for the funding.  There has been such reliance in US history, and as Hamilton attested, it did not work out well.  Unfortunately, getting away from that problem led the US on a track too close to consolidation.  

Perhaps the US and EU can learn from each other.  The EU is now where the US was in its first fifty or so years.  That is, the EU has passed the Articles of Confederation stage, as the Articles did not have a legislature (i.e., EU Parliament), a President, an executive branch (i.e., the European Commission), and a supreme court (i.e., the ECJ).  Even so, the EU’s governmental institutions are weak relative to those of the states.  This makes it difficult for the EU to effectively respond to a crisis in one of its states because another state, such as Germany, can thwart a viable solution.  In short, the EU needs to move closer to the middle in achieving a federal balance of power.  As the US has already overshot it, perhaps the EU can showcase how federalism at the empire level (i.e., a union consisting of nation-states) can work.

Sources:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5506597,00.html ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/business/global/29banks.html?pagewanted=1

In an article from MSNBC on the public debt crisis facing some of the EU’s states, the reporter writes: “Analysts are also growing more worried about the U.S. budget deficit, which remains higher than that of most eurozone nations. But Greece, Spain and other troubled countries in Europe do not command the kind of economic clout the United States does and, in many cases, have yet to escape the Great Recession.”

I contend that this statement is misleading because it is premised on a category mistake.  Firstly, the EU is not simply “eurozone nations.”  In having a Parliament, Supreme Court (the ECJ) and a Senate or Council representing the states, the EU has a government. Accordingly, some of the governmental sovereignty that used to be held by the state governments has been transferred to the EU, so the governments of the union and its states are both semi-sovereign.

Secondly, of course the respective state governments of the EU do not “command the kind of economic clout the United States does.”  That they should evinces a category mistake. Both the US and EU operate common markets.  That a part of one common market is not equivalent to a common market made of such parts should go without saying (see: fallacy of treating a part as a whole).

Thirdly, in treating the US public deficits and debt as equivalent to those of the EU’s state governments, one ignores the fact that many of the US’s state governments also face daunting public deficits and debt.  In other words, comparing the US debt to those of the EU’s state governments is misleading.  Because the EU government does not have a significant debt (that I know of) and some of the US states do have such debt, the comparison understates the debt on the US side.

In general terms, the presumed comparison assumes that there are no significant differences between a union of states and a state of such a union with respect to political or economic functions.  It might be, for instance, that because an empire-scale union is further from the people, accountability with respect to running up debt might be different than in a state.  I suppose it could be argued that the political entity composed of the states could be expected both to buffer public demands for more spending and to be more profligate than what the people want.  In any case, my point is that different dynamics come into play at the empire-level. Ignoring the qualitative differences in going from a kingdom-level polity to an empire-level policy made up of kingdom-level polities results in the kind of statements I have critiqued here (i.e., as if the US merely has more economic clout than a state of the EU, rather than that the US is not comparable with a state in another union). 

I think we moderns tend to skip over category mistakes when they have become the default in our societies.  This makes us susceptable to relying on erroneous results from comparisons based on such mistakes.  In other words, we take too much for granted in what we read (and hear) in the public square.  Although we don’t realize it, we desparately need Socrates-like writers (and speakers) to point out to us that we don’t know as much as we think we do.  This goes for such writers ourselves.  My thesis on the EU and US is of course merely a theory or argument…far from perfect, perhaps wrong, and doubtlessly improveable by others.  One way out of our epistemological presumptuousness is to subject taken-for-granted assumptions in the public square , including my own, to critique.  We simply do not go far enough, which permits vested interests to get away with too much.

Socrates, where art thou?  You should have slipped out when you had the chance. You were aiding Athens…not corrupting the youth.  Your detractors were just jealous (they owe you a written Apology).  Please come back. Spit out that hemlock.  We need you!

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35268117/ns/business-washington_post/

In other posts, I have argued that the EU and the US are of the same political genus or level.  That is, both are modern empire-level Unions that contain polities on the scale of the early modern kingdom.  In other words, the American states are roughly equivalent to the European states.  I have also argued that once this basis of comparison is established, useful comparisons (and contrasts) can be made.  Contrarywise, likening apples with oranges is apt to lead to erroneous conclusions (which has been the norm).   In the March 2, 2010 issue of the NYT, Roger Cohen illustrates how useful EU-US comparisons can be.  He is careful to compare the EU now not to the current US, but to the US a few decades into its founding.  One would not compare new with old wine; new should be compared with old when it too was new.   The US under its Articles treaty (and before that as a military alliance) was far less integrated politically and economically than the EU is today (which is roughly at where the US was in 1790). 

Lamenting the concern of the EU states that have done a better job than others (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) on debt-management, Cohen sees a parallel in the early US.  He writes, “More than two centuries ago, the newborn United States faced a similar crisis of integration. With the Constitution approved, Alexander Hamilton, as treasury secretary to President George Washington, grappled with proving that the government of the 13 states that now existed on paper could function in practice. The economy was a shambles, beset by debt incurred in the fight for liberty. In 1790, Hamilton set about establishing the financial credibility of the federal government. Central to his proposals was that the government would assume the debts of the states. This precipitated the “assumption” crisis because different states had different levels of debts and had proved more or less conscientious in paying them off.”  Cohen maintains that a similar “assumption” crisis would befall the EU as states like Finland and Germany brissle at the EU assuming the outstanding debt of some of the Southern states (notably Greece).

Cohen goes on to note that the “assumption” crisis was resolved in the US by creating Washington, D.C. near Virginia to appease Madison and Jefferson (the US’s institutions had been in New York City).  Cohen doesn’t see any such deal in the works in Europe, so he concludes that the tensions between having a centralized currency and federal (i.e., EU and state-level) fiscal policy will continue.  Comparing oranges with oranges (which is rare…at least during the winter of 2010 given Florida’s cold weather then), he argues that “Greece is a far smaller economy than crisis-hit California, but thanks to Hamilton, California’s travails are absorbed within a huge economy where most taxing and spending is done by the federal government. Athens agonistes has no such cushion.” This is a very good point.  After the earthquake of 2010 in Chile, I was thinking along similar lines (i.e., the difference that a SAU would make for Chile’s recovery). 

However, Cohen falters from his otherwise excellent basis of comparison.  Ignoring the governmental sovereignty that the European Court of Justice has ruled belongs to the EU over its state governments (and constitutions), he  views the EU as simply “the halfway house of monetary union, fiscal divergence and à la carte national politics.”  In actuality, the EU is far more—just ask a European whether he or she has encountered any of the EU’s laws and regulations (which go beyond monetary union).  I suspect that Cohen is thinking of the EU only in terms of its monetary authority and generalizing that to “what Europe is.”  His ending line, “The differences between America and Europe go beyond the political to their very nature,” can be interpreted as a denial of the EU-US basis of comparison that is the basis of his comparisons (oranges with oranges).  If the EU is merely economic whereas the early US was political and economic, then the EU and US are not of the same political genus, which would render comparisons between them questionable at best.  But the EU does have political or governmental institutions, such as a court (the ECJ) and a parliament.  The ECJ functions as the Supreme Court (even ruling against state constitutions at odds with EU law in an EU enumerated power).  Furthermore, the EU Parliament has a role in the enactment of laws that cannot be reduced to state laws.

Undoubtedly from his truncated view of the EU,  Cohen generalizes too much in concluding that “ever closer union” will not occur in the EU because of the differences among the state governments’ respective debt-levels (relative to the state economies).  The EU is much more than a currency, I would argue, and other lines of integration will not necessarily be impeded by monetary divergences.  To be sure, political differences from the latter may spill over onto other policy domains, but I believe that Cohen is being to much of a monetary reductionist in casting doom on the EU as a whole.

Comparing the EU now to the US in 1790, there are more adequate structural safeguards against consolidation at the Union-level of government than there were in the US.  For example, the heads of the state governments sit on the European Council whereas the counterparts in the US sent delegates to the US Senate (which represents the state governments even today).  The US could learn a thing or two from the Europeans and replace the US Senate with the Governor’s Association.  More balance in power between the state governments and that of the Union would be more likely as a result.  Of course, that the EU began with regulations and is only now picking up powers that are more typical for the Union level could mean that the EU could consolidate power from its state governments (esp. as Europeans gain more of a sense of being Europeans…perhaps in 100 years or so…as was the case in the US).

My advise to the Europeans is: don’t be afraid to deny all that the EU has become, and redouble your efforts to safeguard the state governments from an encroaching EU government.  These to things sound contradictory, but they are not.   For only by realizing what the EU is politically (i.e., a federal government) will you realize how important it is to construct a federal structure that works against a consolidation of power far from the people of Europe.  Of course, this does not mean starving the EU, for then dissolution and possible future wars would be likely.  So it is a federal balance that should be strived for, and you can structure your Union (and its states) in such a way that balance is achieved (you are not yet there) and maintained.  US History provides a case study of what NOT to do if this is your goal.  We have really screwed up federalism here (and most of us don’t even realize it).  Hopefully, by comparing the EU with the US you can do better.  Maybe that will prompt folks like Cohen to look at Europe and say, “Hey, we can do that too. Afterall, the US is a Union of states too.”   It is of course possible to re-trace and correct for a wrong turn federally speaking.  Anyway, bonne chance, mes Amies!  Gut Gleuck! Viel, viel Gleuck!

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/opinion/02iht-edcohen.html?hp

In its 1993 Maastricht Treaty decision, the German Constitutional Court decided that national authorities are not bound to respect and apply Community law to the extent that it exceeds the outer boundaries of Germany’s transfer of sovereignty to the European institutions.  It has also ruled that no transfer of sovereignty is valid to the extent that it results in the violation of the fundamental individual rights guaranteed in the German Constitution.  But that court’s latest ruling on this subject indicates a willingness to rely on the ECJ for the vindication of those fundamental rights.

A willingness to rely on the ECJ shows how tenuous the EU is. The German Court could simply disallow a disadvantageous ruling of the ECJ. In contrast, the ECJ undoubtedly views its rulings as binding on the EU’s states. This is a recipe for conflict. Being skeptical that the EU institutions are too far from the people and viewing the EU as akin to an international organization, most of the EU’s states are apt to resist being subject to an averse ECJ ruling. I contend that such states are mistaken in their premises here.  The EU Parliament, for example, is directly elected by citizens of the EU. Furthermore, the Parliament as well as the Commission and the ECJ give the EU governmental institutions that make the EU a federal government rather than a single-issue international organization. The recipe for conflict, in other words, lies in misunderstanding rather than simply in differential interests.

At the same time, there is a conflict of interest in having the ECJ be the decider of last resort on disputes between the EU and a member state. According to Bermann and Nicolaidis, “Systems which more or less readily accept the notion of implied federal legislative pre-emption—treating such pre-emption as basically a question of statutory interpretation—almost invariably vest federal courts with the power to determine whether there is federal legislative pre-emption or not.  The situation in the EU appears to be evolving in much the same general direction. Thus, even if the Community’s Treaty-based legislative authority  on a certain subject is concurrent only, this will not in itself prevent the EU legislature from legislating pre-emptively on that subject… . The Community’s internal market harmonization is widely considered to be pre-emptive.” In other words, there is a conflict of interest in having an EU-level institution (the ECJ) decide on federal pre-emption.

Given this conflict of interest, how the EU institutions are viewed in the member states, and how ruinous nullification by a state would be, I suggest that EU-state disputes be adjudicated by a special court whose justices serve on a rotating basis taking leave from the state constitutional courts. This solution would mitigate perceived distance between the EU and state institutions.

Sources: Judgment of 22 October 1986, in Application of Wunsche Handelsgeselischaft (Solange 11), Case 2 BvR 197/83, 73 B. Verf. GE 339, (1987) 1 3 CMLR 225 (Ger. Const’l Ct.).
George A. Bermann and Kalypso Nicolaidis, Basic Principles for the Allocation of Competence in the United States and the European Union, pp. 483-504 in Nicolaidis, Kalypso, and Robert Howse, eds., 2001. The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 494, 495.

I think one difference between the E.U. and U.S. is that specific EU institutions have presidents, whereas the US has just one overall.  There is the President of the European Council and the President of the European Parliament, and the President of the EU Commission. Each institution has a president presiding over it. Well, actually, the US Senate has a President (who is the VP of the U.S. Government). The President of the U.S. Senate is largely ceremonial, though he can break a tie. I do think that the term president is used differently as applied to the EU and US…which makes it interesting to study!

In terms of comparing the US and EU more specifically, I would say that Van Rompuy’s office—President of the European Council—is equivalent to the President of the U.S. Senate (though only roughly equivalent). The European Council is still intergovernmental because the state governments themselves sit on it, whereas since the 17th amendment wherein US Senators are popularly elected (rather than appointed by State legislatures) the US Senate has been less intergovernmental (though the Senate represents polities rather than the voters, and each polity has equal suffrage as per international law).  Even today, the U.S. Senate is technically an international body along the lines of international law because polities rather than individuals are represented (i.e., members). This was very much in the minds of the founders when the Senate was created. However, the election of the Senators by the people of the States makes the Senators accountable not to their state governments, but to the people of their state, and there is a difference with respect to the interests of the state governments in the U.S. federal system.  Specifically, the citizens may not want to protect the interests of their respective state governments, whereas the state officials would want to do so.

I hope the European Council stays intergovernmental, as the E.U.’s state governments should be directly involved in EU governance for the European federalism to remain viable…as per the theory at least.  In fact, just yesterday I told a friend that the E.U. is a stronger federal system than is the U.S.  The latter is heavily biased toward consolidation, which creates pressures because of the inherent diversity that exists when a polity is made out of large republics.

The philosophy of leadership in the EU is evinced in the fact that the major governmental institutions each have a president.  The EU Commission, the European Council, and the EU Parliament each have a full-time president.  Also, there is a rotating E.U. Presidency occupied by what in American terms would be the governors—each one assuming the office on behalf of his or her state for six months. The presidents of the European Council (e.g., van Rompuy in 2010), the Commission (e.g., Barroso in 2010) join whichever State occupies the E.U. Presidency in jointly representing the EU abroad. This picture, as well as the underlying political philosophy, differs from that which has been dominant in the US, wherein the U.S. Government has only one president representing it. The Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate do not jointly represent the US with the US President abroad. My main contention is that both approaches have their pluses and minuses, as do their respective undergirding assumptions; both are heavily informed by culture, which in turn is formed by historical experience. Because it typically goes unquestioned in the U.S. that only one person can be in charge (i.e., “The buck stops here”) and this generally accepted premise has led to criticism of other unions—namely, the E.U.—I pay particular attention here to making the drawbacks of our own system transparent. At the very least, this project might prompt greater humility in the recognition that our system is not necessarily the default that others should emulate. The E.U. should not become a replica of the U.S. even if both are federal governments on the empire-scale. Indeed, in some ways, we might learn something by looking at the E.U.’s system of governance and even potentially improve our own from the observations. Simply put, humility regarding one’s own dominant assumptions is not of weakness; rather, it is inherently of strength and confidence as well as a willingness to improve by learning from other cases having different presuppositions. Such an attitude would also make us a better partner to the Europeans.</p>&#13;
<p>The “unitary” leadership theory, which is dominant (and typically unquestioned) in the U.S., is evinced even in the classic epic film, The Wizard of Oz. When the Wizard leaves Oz in his balloon, he announces that the Scarecrow would rule in his place by virtue of the Scarecrow’s brain. The Scarecrow would be assisted by the Tin Man (by virtue of his heart) and the Lion (by virtue of his courage).  This is Platonic rationalism applied to governance—reason controlling the passions of love and courage in not only the psyche, but the polis as well. This assumption was evinced in the U.S. constitutional convention.Governeur Morris, on August 9 in the convention, argued “we should be governed as much by our reason, and as little by our feelings as possible.” (Madison, Notes, p. 421. Both the assumption that intelligence is primary and that one of the three characters must be singled out as the ultimate boss are vulnerable to critique. The Wizard could have announced that the three figures would be co-rulers: reason, love and courage ideally governing in balance. To set reason above the other two can be reckoned as artificial. It could be argued that as governance involves power, which can result in other people being hurt emotionally or physically, the leader’s heart ought to be forefront—assisted by reason and courage. In other words, both Plato’s ideal of reason dominating the passions not only in the psyche, but also in the polis, and the assumption that one person must be chosen to be the executive can be questioned; they are both cultural assumptions. In criticizing the E.U. for its multiple presidents, one might keep the subjective nature of these assumptions in mind rather than simply castigate the Europeans.

In his article in Newsweek, for example, William Underhill criticizes the E.U. in arguing that “Europe still lacks the unity it needs for a proper partnership with the U.S.”  What is needed, Underhill maintains, is a greater clarity of purpose. This is being impeded, he argues, by the “continuing muddle over who’s in charge in Brussels.” Underhill traces the root cause to the inordinate power still being enjoyed by the state legislatures. I don’t think the fact that the EU has multiple presidents (i.e., of EU institutions) is a function of the relative power of the state governments at the expense of the EU; The union’s lack of energy, on the other hand, results in large part from the entrenched power of the states. No do I agree with Underhill that the lack of clarity of purpose is a function of there being essentially four co-presidents in the E.U. Government. In other words, the problem is not that the E.U. has too many chiefs. The system of multiple presidents representing the EU is a function of the dominant philosophy of leadership in the EU, which has been formed out of the European culture that included dictatorships. The resulting theory can be called “pluralistic” leadership and governance because no one person is put at the helm. That is to say, no one person is trusted to have a monopoly of power. Given the twentieth century in Europe, this assumption is reasonable.

The hegemony of the “pluralistic” theory of leadership in the E.U. in the twenty-first century is due to the disastrous “One Man Rule” of several of the twentieth-century European nationalisms (e.g., Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini).  Europeans living in the century after that of the two world wars are much more cautious regarding “one man rule” because of the other things that can come instead of the promise of greater wisdom in one person. Mussolini may have made the trains run on time, but he did other things as well. I suspect that even the assumption that one person has much better wisdom than the rest has also been discredited by the practice of housing leadership in just one person as per the European nationalisms of the twentieth century. In the US, this view has been recessive because of the different experience even in spite of the colonists' experience with it in the form of George III and of the plurality that goes with an empire-scale polity. In other words, even the eighteenth-century Americans' experience should have produced a pluralistic approach. In the constitutional convention, Ben Franklin points to the inexplicable bias in favor of one-person leadership. "We seemed he said too much to fear cabals in appointments by a number, and ato have too much confidence in those of single persons" (Madison, Notes, p. 601). Even so, the plurality view can be found in theconvention.

In the convention, Randolph opposed “one person” as the executive (i.e., the President of the U.S.).  Besides noting that the “permanent temper of the people was adverse to the very semblance of Monarchy,” Randolph argued “that a unity was unnecessary a plurality being equally competent to all the objects of the department.” He “was in favor of three members of the Executive to be drawn from different portions of the Country.” (Madison, Notes, p. 58).  The assumption here is, as Sherman observed, that no “one man could be found so far above all the rest in wisdom.” (Madison, Notes, p. 62)  Furthermore, on July 20 in the convention, Madison pointed to the downside of the unitary leadership model. “In the case of the Executive Magistracy [i.e., the U.S. Presidency] which was to be administered by a single man, loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic.” (Madison, Notes, p. 333) Four days later, Williamson brought up another objection against “a single Magistrate”—“that he will be an elective King, and will feel the spirit of one.” (Madison, Notes, p. 357)  Similarly Ben Franklin averred that experience "shewed that caprice, the intrigues of favorites &amp; mistresses . . . were nevertheless the means most prevalent in monarchies" (Madison, Notes, p. 601). Besides the association with kingship, the empire-scale of the U.S. even in having thirteen republics was relevant. Williamson "did not like the Unity in the Executive. He had wished the Executive power to be lodged in three men taken from three districts into which the States should be divided. As the Executive is to have a kind of veto on the laws, and there is an essential difference of interests between the N. &amp; S. States [the case is different than in Britain].” (Madison, Notes, p. 357) Similarly, Col. Mason "was averse to vest so dangerous a power in the President alone . . . he suggested that a privy Council of six members to the president should be established; . . . two out of the Eastern [,] two out of the middle, and two out of the Southern quarters of the Union" (Madison, Notes, p. 596). In other words, the fact that the U.S. is on the empire-scale is an attribute exacerbating the downside of the one person theory that would not be present in the States of Europe (whereas it would be present at the E.U. level of governance). That is, the diversity inherent in an empire-scale polity made up of republics, which in turn are equivalent to the early-modern kingdoms in scale, is more difficult to square with having just one person at the helm--which brought up associations of a king (e.g. George III).  The empire-scale of both the EU and US works against the unitary theory, and the experience of the British colonists with kingship and of the Europeans in the twentieth century with dictators work against the approach as well. Furthermore, it might run contrary to being in a republic. On June 6, 1787, Wilson observed in the constitutional convention that the nature of republican government cannot “give to an individual citizen that settled pre-eminence in the eyes of the rest.” (Madison, Notes, p. 79).  This, Wilson noted, gives rise to a difficulty in rendering the executive competent to its own defense.

Americans ought not blame Europeans for wanting to avoid the "one person" consolidation of power in the E.U.'s government. From the standpoint of the problems with the “unitary” approach, the E.U.’s approach to having multiple presidents representing the E.U. abroad may be better than the imperial U.S. Presidency as a leadership approach for the U.S. This is the irony in pointing to the E.U. as having too many chefs in the kitchen—too many chiefs—while presuming that the U.S. model is and should be the default. Perhaps we (meaning here Americans, as I am one) ought not be so presumptuous, and instead examine our own presuppositions.  Being open to learn from others could make us stronger, which would include being humbler. Yet we are not even aware of the minority position expressed in our own constitutional convention against the “unitary” approach; we are much more familiar with the dominant position on the matter. Wilson, for example, expressed the dominant philosophy in arguing that a “principal reason for unity in the Executive was that officers might be appointed by a single, responsible person.”  (Madison, Notes, p. 67). In other words, unity and energy of government favor one person.  I contend that another assumption along with the unity and energy is that one person can be found to be distinct in being qualitatively more wise than the other candidates.

One might think that the colonial experience with King George III might have led the convention’s delegates to favor splitting the presidency up between two or more persons.  However, the colonists had accepted the imperial rule of the Crown; they viewed the province of Parliament to be solely within the host kingdom (Great Britain).  So it was the taxation by Parliament over the North American British colonies that had the colonists so much up in arms.  That the king went on to support the usurpation of Parliament to imperial rule implicated the king as corrupt in not having stood up for the distinction between rule of the empire (the domain of the king) and of the host kingdom (the domain of the king and of Parliament).  In other words, the real beef was with Parliament rather than with one man rule.  So Wilson’s view won out in the constitutional convention, and has remained dominant in the US ever since in part because the European nationalisms of the twentieth century were so far from the American experience.

Theoretically speaking, aside from the contending virtues of diversity, unity and energy applied to governance, the question seems to be whether certain human beings really are so distinct with respect to leadership and governance that the rule by one person is justified. Even without the European experience of the twentieth century, it is unlikely that there is apt to be one person in a republic so superior that he (or she) should be the unitary president. Furthermore, the Obamamania of 2008 in the U.S. and the subsequent wide-spread disappointment in the man in office (approval ratings in 2010 were down considerably from those just after Obama was elected) may suggest a fine line between the “great man” theory of leadership and hero-worship, which is a form of idolatry. Fortunately, the E.U. provides an alternative by which Americans may check such an excess and perhaps even re-evaluate the “wisdom” assumption undergirding one man rule. Of course, having three presidents in a council has the disadvantage of dissent and perhaps even conflict, hampering the energy of the European executive. Perhaps this disadvantage could be put at one extreme and hero-worship on the other—both underlying assumptions having their downsides.  The point is perhaps not to go to the extreme in either direction. The salience of popularity in the U.S. Presidential election of 2008 may suggest that the U.S. has gone too far in the direction of one man rule.  Part of the lack of energy at the E.U. level of leadership may suggest that the E. U. has gone too far in esteeming consensus—though this could have more to do with the power of the state governments than with the pluralistic approach to leadership. Both unions therefore have their respective challenges, and could thus ill-afford not to learn from each other.

Source on the EU: William Underhill, “Europe Still Has Too Many Chiefs,” Newsweek, November 22, 2010, p. 6.
Source of quotes from the U.S. Constitutional Convention: James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987.

The Hungarian state government assumed the over-all presidency of the E.U. on January 1, 2011 for six months. This instantly put the question of whether some of the state laws enacted the previous year violated E.U. constitutional law.  The extent of the breach is itself instructive for us in wondering how it is that a state government could find itself so obviously in violation and yet look the other way.  In other words, this case study suggests that European integration, and federal government in general at the empire-level, is not exempted from the tensions in federalism between the state governments and a general authority tasked with holding the union together. According to The Wall Street Journal,  "In some ways the dispute between Budapest and Brussels goes to the heart of a debate over the proper distribution of power between national governemtns and the central authorities of the European Union."  Hungary's governor, Viktor Orban, stated, "The EU basically has no right to interfere" in these sorts of policy decisions. In 2008, EU government officials had criticized Hungarian officials for relying on short-term fixes rather than long-term spending cuts to shirk the state's budget deficit.

In Hungary, "crisis" taxes that fell disproportionately on out-of-state businesses doing business in the state had been enacted.  The European Court of Justice had previously ruled against such taxes having a disproportionate effect, yet somehow the Hungarian legislature missed this point in enacting the law. It should come as no surprise that officials of other state governments in the E.U. claimed that Hungary was targeting select sectors and out-of-state companies in particular to balance the state's budget. Even so, a state official in Hungary claimed that the "question is: how much economic liberty you have in the EU? We think every state does hoave economic freedom--within a certain framework, we have different methods and models."  While the notion of a shared framework allowing of diversity fits with modern federalism, the diversity cannot contradict the basic principles in the framework.  In this case, a common market requires that states do not discriminate in intention or consequence against firms based in other states. In other words, a common market requires a level playing field.

Secondly, the state legislature enacted a new media law that became quite controversial in the E.U. The law passed by the state legislature in late 2009 allowed regulators to impose fines for "unbalanced" or 'offensive" reports and sets limits for the amount of time that can be devoted to certain types of news. The law also required bloggers to register with the state government. It should be <i>prime facie </i> evident that this law goes against the E.U.'s commitment to freedom of the press.  Guy Verhofstadt, leader of one of the parties in the E.U. Parliament, stressed that no state government should be allowed to put "restrictions to freedoms that lie at the heart of our union of values." From the standpoint of republican principles alone (i.e, being a representative democracy, or "free"), a government fining journalists for being unbalanced or for their allocation of news stories is odious. That a state government in the E.U. would even attempt such a thing ought to give pause to anyone who assumes that it most of the governmental sovereignty in the E.U. should remain with the states. In other words, there is a real need for the E.U. governmental institutions to provide a check with teeth on wayward states, or the union will dissipate.

Finally, European Central Bank officials claim the Hungarian government's changing of the selection process of the state's bank's rate-setting committee threatens the bank's independence. This change of law in Hungary illustrates the difficulties involved in having monetary policy set at the E.U. level (for states using the euro as their currency) while fiscal policy is set at the state level.  Bringing fiscal policy to the E.U. institutions would give the E.U. the added puissance it would need to effectuate a viable check on state governments that for one reason or another are confused about E.U. basic law and principles.  In other words, because the state governments being on the same page concerning the E.U. and its principles cannot be taken for granted, so more power should transfer to the E.U. level from the states--though while working on institutional firewalls to keep the E.U. government from encroaching on the states such that a consolidated central state results (similar to what has happened in the U.S.). 

Source: Gordon Fairclough, "European Probe Fuels Tensions with Hungary," The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011, p. A11.