Reviews for Towards a European Federation?: The EU in the Light of Comparative Federalism

The average rating for Towards a European Federation?: The EU in the Light of Comparative Federalism based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-11-20 00:00:00 Alian Watson A curate's egg of a book. The author's thesis is that political institutions support or ferment certain political cultures. That the separation of powers is good and Federalism the best system, but that Europe is not yet ready for federalism, in part because the superstructure of the EU will allow French bureaucrats to rip open their shirts and blouses and reveal the nakedness of their ambitions to charge across the barricades, like Liberty Leading the People, in order to dominate Europe. Active citizenship is an ideal which leads to the involvement and education of the citizen through politics, and that the political system should be dominated by an elite of professional, liberal lawyers. Then the author uses some words in some unusual ways. The state is used as a synonym for western European/ USA type polities (nowhere in the world apparently had a state until some Europeans came round), Europe is frequently used as a synonym for France, while democracy apparently means a type of government dominated by a class of lawyers through a system of courts - this doesn't come across as cynicism on the author's part but rather as his ideal which strikes me as a wilful misreading of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Then there is prejudice. Democracy is a Christian form of government because apparently only Christianity gives you a sense of moral autonomy. Any Christianity is fine, unless apparently you are a Spanish speaking Catholic in which case you are a threat to democracy in the USA, and of course Protestants are better than Catholics and you can see this is so because their democracies are better. As you might expect by this point Judaism is OK because intellectual liberal Jews have absorbed Christian habits of moral thinking while in a shocking surprise the author decides that allowing Islamic schools may not be OK. Then there is strangeness. The answer in his opinion to the democratic deficit in Europe is not to give the directly elected EU parliament powers to conduct investigations, enact or veto legislation, audit responsibilities, or the right to dismiss individuals for malfeasance or the like. No, the democratic deficit, in his opinion, should be resolved by creating an EU senate filled by politicians indirectly elected from the national assemblies and parliaments (who'd have guessed that jobs for the boys was the ne plus ultra in democracy?) and a supreme court system leading to the emergence of an unelected class of European elite lawyers. Which might be nice but most of us can't afford to pay for the lawyers or go through the court systems we've already got, let alone the mutant ninja warrior lawyers of the European elite. The active citizen, championed in earlier parts of the book disappears in the face of the liberal lawyer. Not that there was any attempt to discuss how the active citizen might be active and might involve themselves in the business of government nor any acknowledgement that to do so you need a surfeit of leisure time or that attending a public meeting and asking a smart question doesn't decide what got put on the agenda in the first place. In short Democracy is a misnomer, what Siedentop is championing is liberal Plutocracy moderated by Liberal laws. And then there is Montesquieu. Perhaps this says it all but there are more references to Montesquieu than to de Gaulle, Robert Schumann, Konrad Adenauer and the European Coal and Steel Community put together. Why? Because Montesquieu saw the 18th century French state as potentially despotic and devised the idea of the separation of powers as a guard against this, therefore the author believes that the French state is inherently despotic and therefore is despotically running the EU in its own despotic interests. No need to wonder what proportion of EU bureaucrats are French, how long on average they hold office or their relative numerical representation at different levels of the commission or any similar questions of a practical nature, because Montesquieu feared despotism that is enough for Siedentop to convict, and convict perpetually, the French of that charge. While I personally have no problem in imagining the French to be keen to influence the EU in their own interests, but one of my many shortcomings is my expectation of a higher standard of evidence from a book than I might find or offer in a casual conversation. Nor do I think one needs to reach back to the 18th century to see why a Franco-German alliance (and German acceptance of a French lead or of disproportionate benefits as in the case of the Common Agricultural Policy to France) was such a powerful driving force in the establishment of the EU institutions. It is even, in my opinion, quite possible that one or two events of 20th century history may well have had at least some slight impact on the thinking and attitudes of generations of politicians and administrators that might be worth considering as a counterbalance to a faith in potential despotism being the eternal driving force of any French state. Having said all that there is some virtue in publishing a book that sets out some ideal end state for European Union. The occasional references and understanding of the huge importance of organisational and political cultures are to be appreciated. However the book is written from a particular American point of view, that sees populism as bad and appreciates the good luck that the populist instincts of Carter and Clinton could be restrained by their wise liberal lawyer advisers. This is not a book that reflects the diversity of political developments in Europe has very little to offer on how the tensions, misunderstandings, differences in political culture (or even to nod to Braudel the different civilisations) and interrelations of European states affect EU outcomes and doesn't see, something that seems to me fairly obvious, that the EU is less a union at present but more a club of nation states designed to protect the European nation states. A little theory is a dangerous thing.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-09-09 00:00:00 Joshua Yarborough Great comparison of the American vs. European (esp. French) democracatic tradition. Very enlightening read!