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FAES Analysis Group Article 155: a political... and constitutionally adequate solution
At times, it seems to be forgotten that the Constitution is the supreme legal norm because it expresses sovereign political will. In other words, the legal supremacy of the Constitution is nothing more than the translation of the political principle of popular sovereignty into the legal world, a principle which constitutes the only source of legitimacy of power according to the democratic principle. In Javier Pérez Royo’s words, the Constitution is the intersection point between Politics (which creates it) and Law (which finds in it its last foundation of validity).
Well, few articles of the Constitution are so revealing of that specific political nature as article 155. A precept that, until a little more than a year ago, was almost a perfect unknown not only for the Spanish public opinion but also for a great part of scholars dealing with Public and Constitutional Law in Spain. Only a few experts had paid attention to commenting on it, analysing its significance and background, normally underlining its similarity -despite some differences- with the mechanism included in the German Fundamental Norm.
In this context, as is natural, the mere possibility of using it for the first time gave rise to prior debates on almost all its aspects, including its scope and possible limits: as if it were a quicksand zone, entering seems simple... but it is not easy to predict if it will come out and under what conditions. Subsequently, its application in Catalonia made it possible to observe its effects in practice, simultaneously opening the way for the Constitutional Court, in strict compliance with its function as supreme interpreter of the Magna Carta and guarantor of its validity, to analyse it. Indeed, as long as there are unconstitutionality appeals pending, the Court will have to pronounce not only on the instrument, but also on its specific use in the present case, which will undoubtedly make it possible to specify more precisely the possibilities and conditions of its application.
In any case, and while the High Court resolves these appeals, reflection on these points can contribute to the legal-constitutional debate, in particular, and to the political debate, in general.
Thus, at this stage, it is obvious that the mechanism provided in Article 155 underlines precisely the primacy of “the political” when the law is faced with its limits. If Law, as a normative order, is always characterized by resting, in the last instance, on the coercive capacity of the State, this precept (which, in this logic, defines a “federal coercive mechanism,” common in federal States) welcomes (legally) an appeal to the supreme political will of the Nation. In this way (and thus giving reason, paradoxically, to those who defend the need for a “political solution” to the breach of the legal system in force in Catalonia by the authorities of that Autonomous Community), article 155 is configured as the constitutionally adequate political solution, expressly provided by the constituents against certain threats to the system, which are also defined politically... precisely because they question its limits.
Thus, the Constitution foresees this mechanism as the ultimate ratio to face an essentially political conflict, which can be conceived as the stark confrontation between sovereignty (national, of article 1.2; and therefore, inclusive of the will of the Catalans) and autonomy (of nationalities and regions, article 2). When instruments of “[ordinary] control of the activity of the organs of the Autonomous Communities” (foreseen in article 153) are revealed as useless or insufficient, article 155 introduces this other procedure, whose political nature is expressed in practically all its characteristic elements.
1. It is only applicable in a conflict between two political subjects defined by the Constitution: the State, on the one hand, and an Autonomous Community (or, to put it better, its authorities), on the other.
2. The enabling circumstance for its use is not -as has sometimes been attempted to emphasize- the simple breach of legal or constitutional obligations, however serious they may be. On the contrary, it is a politically “qualified” breach, due to its extraordinary and serious nature, according to its literality.
• It is obvious that the generic constitutional reference to a breach of “the obligations that the Constitution or other laws impose on it” has to be completed, to the contrary with the exclusion of all those “ordinary” breaches (or conflicts), reducible to the control mechanisms of 153.
• The other, less concrete case refers to actions “that seriously threaten the general interest of Spain;” it is certainly an alternative case, but at the same level (“a” or “b”) as the previous one; from which it follows that gravity must be common to both.
3. The constitutionally foreseen procedure leaves in the hands of exclusively political subjects (excluding any prior legal control) the assessment of the concurrence of the factual assumption, the decision on the application of the mechanism, and the definition of its content: at first, the Government of the Nation must require a rectification from the President of the Autonomous Community concerned. Only “in the event of not being complied with” that requirement, the Government, “with the approval by an absolute majority of the Senate, may adopt the necessary measures to oblige the former to comply forcibly with those obligations or for the protection of the aforementioned general interest.”
In short, article 155 introduces into the very heart of the “State of Autonomies” a mechanism of political solution (i.e., founded on the political will of the people) to the legal and political conflict and which has nothing to do with the “conflict” with which independence seeks to legitimise the rupture of the constitutional order. The conflict that article 155 remedies is the one that arises when the authorities of an Autonomous Community exceed their power (constitutionally limited by the express political decision of the constituents) and lack the loyalty inherent in the political and constitutional principle of solidarity (STC 64/1990), that is, when they ignore those limits of their power and pretend to assert themselves as politically sovereign power.
#Catalonia #Constitution #Democracy #155 article
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Spanish Constitution of 1978
The Spanish Constitution is the fundamental law of the Kingdom of Spain. It was enacted on foot of the 1978 referendum, as part of the Spanish transition to democracy. It was preceded by many previous constitutions of Spain.
The constitutional history of Spain dates back to the Constitution of 1812. After the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, a general election in 1977 convened the Constituent Cortes (the Spanish Parliament, in its capacity as a constitutional assembly) for the purpose of drafting and approving the constitution.
A seven-member panel was selected among the elected members of the Cortes to work on a draft of the Constitution to be submitted to the body. These came to be known, as the media put it, as the padres de la Constitución or "fathers of the Constitution". These seven people were chosen to represent the wide (and often, deeply divided) political spectrum within the Spanish Parliament, while the leading role was given to then ruling party and now defunct Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD).
The writer (and Senator by Royal appointment) Camilo José Cela later polished the draft Constitution's wording. However, since much of the consensus depended on keeping the wording ambiguous, few of Cela's proposed re-wordings were approved. One of those accepted was the substitution of the archaic gualda ("weld-colored") for the plain amarillo (yellow) in the description of the flag of Spain.[citation needed]
The constitution was approved by the Cortes Generales on October 31, 1978, and by the Spanish people in a referendum on December 6, 1978. 88% of voters supported the new constitution. Finally, it was promulgated by King Juan Carlos on December 27. It came into effect on December 29, the day it was published in the Official Gazette. Constitution Day on December 6 has since been a national holiday in Spain.
Writing the preamble to the constitution was considered an honour, and a task requiring great literary ability. The person chosen for this purpose was Enrique Tierno Galván. The full text of the preamble may be translated as follows:
:The Spanish Nation, wishing to establish justice, liberty and security, and to promote the welfare of all who make part of it, in use of her sovereignty, proclaims its will to:
Guarantee democratic life within the Constitution and the laws according to a just economic and social order.
Consolidate a State ensuring the rule of law as an expression of the will of the people.
Promote the progress of culture and the economy to ensure a dignified quality of life for all
Establish an advanced democratic society, and
Collaborate in the strengthening of peaceful and efficient cooperation among all the peoples of the Earth.
Consequently, the Cortes approve and the Spanish people ratify the following Constitution.
Structure of the State
The Constitution recognizes the existence of nationalities and regions (Preliminary Title).
Preliminary Title
As a result, Spain is now composed entirely of 17 Autonomous Communities and two autonomous cities with varying degrees of autonomy, to the extent that, even though the Constitution does not formally state that Spain is a federation (nor a unitary state), actual power shows, depending on the issue considered, widely varying grades of decentralization, ranging from the quasi-confederal status of tax management in Navarre and the Basque Country to the total centralization in airport management.
Article 143
Section 1. In the exercise of the right to self-government recognized in Article 2 of the Constitution, bordering provinces with common historic, cultural and economic characteristics, island territories and provinces with historic regional status may accede to self-government and form Autonomous Communities in conformity with the provisions contained in this Title and in the respective Statutes.
Social rights
The Spanish Constitution is one of the few Bill of Rights that has legal provisions for social rights, including the definition of Spain itself as a Social and Democratic State, subject to the rule of law (Sp. Estado social y democrático de derecho) in its preliminary title. However, those rights are not at the same level of protection as the individual rights contained in articles 14 to 28, since those social rights are considered in fact principles and directives of economic policy, but never full rights of the citizens to be claimed before a court or tribunal.
Other constitutional provisions recognize the right to adequate housing [1], employment[2], social welfare provision[3], health protection[4] and pensions.[5]
Due to the political strength of the Communist Party of Spain during the Transition, the right to State intervention in private companies in the public interest and the facilitation of access by workers to ownership of the means of production were also enshrined in the Constitution.[6]
The Constitution has been reformed once (Article 13.2, Title I) to extend to citizens of the European Union the right to active and passive suffrage (both voting rights and eligibility as candidates) in local elections.
The social democratic PSOE government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has announced its intention to undertake a major reform of the constitution during its tenure. The proposed modifications would include
1. succession in the monarchy on the basis of age only, and not gender, thus abandoning the traditional Castilian rules set in the Siete Partidas. While the rights of the current heir apparent Felipe, Prince of Asturias, are to be maintained, the goal is to reform before his eventual children are born. This issue has been refreshed when Felipe's wife, Letizia Ortiz, announced her first and second pregnancies and after the birth of the Infanta Leonor of Spain. The Prince however has reminded reformers that there is time since he comes first in the succession line.
2. an overhaul of the Spanish Senate transforming it into a chamber of territorial representation
3. officially incorporating the European Constitution (should one be approved)
4. listing the names of the existing autonomous communities
The proposal has been met with scepticism from some quarters (notably in the main opposition party Partido Popular, PP) because some of these reforms deal with protected sections of the constitution, which would require supermajorities in order to be modified (see below). Furthermore, even an amendment of a non-protected part of the Constitution would require the agreement of the main opposition party or at least some of its representatives, because it would require the support of three-fifths of each House, which is 210 votes in the Congress of Deputies and 159 in the Senate.
The current version restricts the death penalty to military courts during wartime, but the death penalty has since been removed from the Code of Military Justice and, hence, has lost all relevance. Amnesty International has still requested an amendment to be made to the Constitution to firmly and explicitly abolish it in any eventuality.
Protected provisions
Title X of the Constitution establishes that the approval of a new constitution or the approval of any constitutional amendment affecting the Preliminary Title, or Section I of Chapter II of Title I (on Fundamental Rights and Public Liberties) or Title II (on the Crown)—the so-called "protected provisions"—are subject to a special process that requires (1) that two-thirds of each House approve the amendment, (2) that elections are called immediately thereafter, (3) that two-thirds of each new House approves the amendment, and (4) that the amendment is approved by the people in a referendum.
Curiously, Title X does not include itself among the "protected provisions" and, therefore, it would be possible, at least in theory, to first amend Title X using the normal procedure to remove or reduce severity of the special requirements, and then change the formerly protected provisions. Even though such a procedure would not formally violate the law, it could be considered an attack on its spirit.
The reform of the autonomy statutes
The "Statutes of Autonomy" of the different regions are the second most important Spanish legal normatives when it comes to the political structure of the country. Because of that, the reform attempts of some of them have been either rejected or produced considerable controversy.
The plan conducted by the Basque president Juan José Ibarretxe (known as Ibarretxe Plan) to reform the status of the Basque Country in the Spanish state was rejected by the Spanish Cortes, on the grounds (among others) that it amounted to an implicit reform of the Constitution.
The People's Party attempted to reject the admission into the Cortes of the 2005 reform of the Autonomy Statute of Catalonia on the grounds that it should be dealt with as a constitutional reform rather than a mere statute reform because it allegedly contradicts the spirit of the Constitution in many points, especially the Statute's alleged breaches of the "solidarity between regions" principle enshrined by the Constitution. After failing to assemble the required majority to dismiss the text, the People's Party filed a claim of unconstitutionality against several dozen articles of the text before the Spanish Constitutional Court requiring for them to be struck down.
The amended Autonomy Statute of Catalonia has also been legally contested by the surrounding Autonomous Communities of Aragon, Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community[7] on similar grounds as those of the PP, and others such as disputed cultural heritage. As of January 2008, the Constitutional Court of Spain has those alleged breaches and its actual compliance with the Constitution under judicial review.
Prominent Spanish politicians, mostly from the People's Party but also from the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) and other non-nationalist parties[citation needed], have advocated for the statutory reform process to be more closely compliant with the Constitution, on the grounds that the current wave of reforms threatens the functional destruction of the constitutional system itself. The most cited arguments are the self-appointed unprecedented expansions of the powers of autonomous communities present in recently reformed statutes such as:
• The amended version of the Catalan Statute prompts the State to allot investments in Catalonia according to Catalonia's own percentage contribution to the total Spanish GDP. The Autonomy Statute of Andalusia –a region with a lower contribution to Spain's GDP than the one of Catalonia– requires it in turn to allocate state investments in proportion to its population (it is the largest Spanish Autonomous Community in terms of population). These requirements are legally binding, as they are enacted as part of Autonomy Statutes, which rank only below the Constitution itself. It is self-evident that, should all autonomous communities be allowed to establish their particular financing models upon the State, the total may add up to more than 100% and that would be inviable[8]. Despite these changes having been proposed and approved by fellow members of the PSOE, former Finance Minister Pedro Solbes disagreed with this new trend of assigning state investment quotas to territories based on any given autonomous community custom requirement[9] and has subsequently compared the task of planning the Spanish national budget to a sudoku.
• The Valencian statute, whose reform was one of the first to be enacted, includes the so-called Camps clause (named after the Valencian President Francisco Camps), which makes any powers assumed by other communities in its statutes automatically available to the Valencian Community.
• Autonomous communities such as Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia or Extremadura, have included statutory clauses claiming exclusive powers over any river flowing through their territories. Nearby communities have filed complaints before the Spanish Constitutional Court on the grounds that no Community can exercise exclusive power over rivers that cross more than one Community, not even over the part flowing through its territory, because its decisions affect other Communities, down or upstream.
See also
1. Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution states: "All Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing. The public authorities shall promote the necessary conditions and establish appropriate standards in order to make this right effective, regulating land use in accordance with the general interest in order to prevent speculation. The community shall have a share in the benefits accruing from the town-planning policies of public bodies".
3. Article 41 states: "The public authorities shall maintain a public Social Security system for all citizens guaranteeing adequate social assistance and benefits in situations of hardship, especially in case of unemployment. Supplementary assistance and benefits shall be optional."
4. Article 43 states: "The right to health protection is recognized. It is incumbent upon the public authorities to organize and watch over public health by means of preventive measures and the necessary benefits and services. The law shall establish the rights and duties of all in this respect."
6. "La elaboración de la Constitución", Miguel Herrero y Rodríguez de Miñón
7. Admitidos los recursos de Aragón, Valencia y Baleares contra el Estatuto catalán.
8. Solbes cuadra un sudoku de 23.000 millones · ELPAÍ
9. "Solbes rechaza vincular la nueva financiación a las balanzas fiscales", El País. 03/12/2007
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Col·lectiu Emma - Explaining Catalonia
Monday, 5 june 2017 | EDITORIAL
Why Europe should welcome a referendum in Catalonia
The Catalans' historic grievances with Spain have intensified in recent years. A deadlock has been created by the Spanish refusal to even consider repeated proposals coming from Catalonia, including an honest attempt to renegotiate the 1979 autonomy charter. Starting in 2005, a new text was drafted and approved by the Catalan Parliament, and subsequently endorsed by the Spanish Cortes, but not before several key provisions had been pared down or simply removed. In the end it was ratified, resignedly, by the Catalan people in a referendum. But then in 2010 a not unbiased Constitutional Court ruled that several articles were unconstitutional and gave a restrictive interpretation of many others. In practice, the resulting text, far from improving the earlier charter, served to set limits to the scope of Catalan self-government, and the entire process revealed how little the Spanish side was willing to advance in that direction. At that point it became clear that the current system of territorial administration, established in 1978 after a long period of centralized rule, was being used to perpetuate the Catalans' status as a permanent minority in Spain. Today a growing number of Catalans feel that their collective affairs are being run by Madrid without regard for their needs and often against their vital interests, and many have lost all hope of a fairer bargain within the Spanish framework.
The Catalan government has pledged to hold a referendum on the relationship that Catalan society should have with Spain – whether to maintain in some form the present state of political subordination or start off as a new independent nation. That was the course of action chosen by Quebec in 1995 and by Scotland in 2014 and respected by the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom. But the Spanish authorities, relying on a narrow – some say partisan – interpretation of the Constitution, have declared such a referendum illegal and have vowed to prevent it. They are also working to undermine its preparation. In their reaction to alleged acts of disobedience by Catalan elected representatives, the state institutions seem to be reverting to some of the ways of the dictatorial past, to the point of threatening the very pillars of democratic governance.
The stated resolve of the ruling coalition in Catalonia to hold a referendum regardless should not be seen as a show of defiance but as an act of democracy. In this the leadership is following the mandate given by the hundreds of thousands who have been peacefully demonstrating year after year since 2010; by the 2.3 million who cast their ballot in a symbolic vote in November 2014; by the nearly 2 million who handed a majority to pro-independence forces in the September 2015 elections to the Catalan Parliament; and, last but not least, by the three-quarters of the Catalan population that, according to every opinion poll, favor holding a referendum, irrespective of their eventual vote in it. It is for Catalans to decide on their society's collective future, and asking them directly is the only reasonable way to find out where everyone stands on such a fundamental issue.
In the end, a referendum is a good solution for all. Certainly for Catalans, because, whatever the result, it will necessarily open a dialogue on a fresh relationship with Spain, one that must be based on the recognition of their rights as a people, including the right to have the final word on the shape that such a relationship should take.
It may ultimately be good for Spain too, by forcing its government and the rest of political forces to reassess the foundations of the regime installed in 1978. This was the outcome of a transition to democratic rule designed and implemented by a political establishment whose members grew up under Franco's dictatorship. A satisfactory resolution of the Catalan question will give Spanish society a chance to finally break free from the ghosts of its authoritarian past and to address the flaws of a political system that is gravely conditioned by its origins.
And it will also be good for Europe. First, for a practical reason, because it will help to solve an age-old problem that, if allowed to fester, will only escalate, adding another front of instability on a continental scale. And second, and most important, as a matter of principle. In these days of political uncertainty, when in many countries the European project is being questioned from different camps, the Catalans' stance, determinedly pro-European, firmly grounded on democratic principles and relying on strictly peaceful methods, should be held up as an example for all as the only acceptable way of resolving controversies between nations and within states.
Sooner or later all European countries as well as their common institutions will be called to take a stand on this issue. It is a matter of democracy that the Catalans' legitimate claims as a historic nation and their inherent collective rights as a people are recognized, and it is a matter of justice that their constant and peaceful struggle is rewarded.
This is a joint statement prepared by Col·lectiu Emma and endorsed by Col·lectiu Praga and Col·lectiu Wilson.
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Catalonia is facing its most important vote in its modern democratic history. Regional elections on 21 December 2017 are supposed to finally settle the independence issue once and for all. Following the triggering of Article 155, which allowed the Spanish government to impose direct rule over the region, political parties have been regrouping and preparing for the decisive vote. But will things look any clearer the day after the elections?
The vote is expected to be tight. Record turnout is expected (possibly more than 80% of eligible voters) and most polls suggest a tie between separatist and unionist parties. Every single vote will count in the race to get to the 68 seats required for an absolute majority in the regional parliament.
What do our readers think? We had a comment from Paul arguing that, whatever the result (and given potential boycotts), it’s unlikely the elections will really “settle” the issue. At best, Paul says, a pro-unity vote might delay any call for independence for a while, whereas a vote for separation will open a huge can of worms Europe-wide.
To get a response, we put Paul’s comment to Charles Powell, Director of the Elcano Royal Institute, a think tank in Madrid. What would he say?
I don’t really agree. I think that even if the pro-independence parties win, they have now realised that the unilateral route to secessionism is closed, and they can exercise power but I very much doubt they would press for independence as they have been doing in the past. If the parties in favour of Spanish national unity win, then it will be obviously a much quieter period. I’m basically expecting a stalemate, whatever the result is, without any significant change.
To get another perspective, we also spoke to Rafael Arenas García, a Professor of Private International Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a former leader of the anti-separatist Catalan Civil Society organisation. We asked him if he agrees with Paul:
Next up, we had a comment from Susana, who thinks that the situation after the election will be even worse than it is today. She predicts pro-independence parties will win again, but with a strong showing for pro-unity parties. Meaning, essentially, a divided Catalonia.
Does Charles Powell think the situation has become even more complicated?
I don’t think they will be worse because democratic elections are always a good thing. I think Catalan society is more or less evenly split into two blocs, and whoever wins will win by a very small margin. In fact, the outcome I am predicting right now is almost a repeat of the 2015 election results. In other words a situation in which the pro-independence parties would have more seats, but without a majority of votes, and I don’t think that will significantly change the status quo.
Next, we also put Susana’s comment to Carles Boix I Serra, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University in the USA, and currently leading a research project at the University of Barcelona. What would he say?
The elections will probably not settle the issue. If the pro-independence parties win, they will take back control of Catalan institutions and will try to open a negotiation with Madrid – yet we know that Madrid has already said it will maintain Article 155, which allows it to intervene in the governing of Catalonia. If the unionists win, which I think to be unlikely, the issue will not be settled either. Unionists are divided between a ‘hard’ and a ‘soft’ wing. The latter – mainly the socialist party, is basically supported by very elderly people, so over time they will lose votes. Besides, they won’t be able to deliver on any of the promises they are making now. So it’s going to be hard to settle the issue in the sense of a ‘Spanish victory’.
To answer Susana’s question, well, the thing is that both blocs are divided and they are divided between Left and Right, so yes, there is a possibility – and this complicates things – that there will be a sort of hung parliament, where maybe the pro-independence parties do not have the majority of seats, and clearly it doesn’t look like the pro-unionist parties will have that either. There is a group in the middle, called the “Comuns” (Catalonia in Common) that may hold the key to governing and it’s going to be difficult, if that happens, to have a stable government. We don’t know, but there’s a chance, and we will know more a week from now.
Finally, Mino suggests that the only way to finally resolve this question is to hold a legal referendum like the one in Scotland. What does Charles Powell think?
I don’t agree because basically we would have a “never-endum” rather than a referendum. In other words, whichever party wins – let’s assume the parties in favour of Spanish national unity win – that will not put the issue to rest. Those who advocate independence will continue to want a referendum until they win it.
How would Carles Boix react to the same comment?
If Mino means a referendum agreed by Spain in Catalonia, then yes, I think it is the optimal way to settle the issue, and this what the pro-independent Catalan parties are asking for. In fact, the strategy behind the referendum of October 1st was mostly to force the Spanish government to negotiate because, up to that point, Spain has said ‘no’ to all demands for a referendum, which, by the way, is possible within the constitution.
Notice that the pro-independence block, instead of going all the way to independence, just went for some sort of symbolic declaration of independence, preferring to avoid a full conflict. They really wanted the Spanish government to sit down and negotiate. That strategy didn’t work out. Spain simply took over the Catalan institutions. In any case, yes, a referendum is the best, most democratic solution. But Spain has been rejecting this systematically, so I’m not sure exactly where this leaves us at this point.
And how would Rafael Arenas García respond to Mino’s comment?
Will the Catalan elections settle the independence issue? What will change for Catalonia after the elections? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below and we’ll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!
IMAGE CREDITS: CC / Flickr – La Moncloa – Gobierno de España
81 comments Post a commentcomment
What do YOU think?
1. Ivan Burrows
They tried democracy & when they didn’t like the answer they sent in the attitude correction police. Welcome to freedom of expression, the EU way.
• Karolina
No, they didn’t because the referendum was not centrally organised and was not legitimate. There was no proper debate prior to allow people to decide and many didn’t vote because it wasn’t legitimate.
What Ivan Borishnikov is posting above is the how the Kremlin propaganda machine wants it to be in order to give some legitimacy to its own illegal referendum in Crimea.
• Philip Cantos
You have any clue about the matter? I don’t think you did your research right. Democracy doesn’t mean complete freedom to do whatever you want. Laws exists.
• Ivan Burrows
Philip Cantos It means listening to the people who elected you, not beating them.
• Karolina
The ones that want to remain part of Spain they also voted the same government, theoretically. The gov’ment’s role is to implement Spanish law and not to listen to groups of people selectively…
• jthk
Do you mean that democracy has no different from totalitarianism? So, why people using democracy to represent everything good?
2. Tarquin Farquhar
No, the Spanish will either fix the elections or the succession will result in Catalunya being an ‘independent state’ WITHIN Spain!
• Karolina
Hi Tarquin have you get credible data we can look at that the central gov’ment in Madrid is planning to cheat at the elections?
• Tarquin Farquhar
Hi Karoliar, you’re confusing opinion/predictive-insight with fact – your command of English is well, erm, oh – not so commanding!
I have a right to opine just as you have the right to conjure up facts and present them as real.
The Spanish constitution is corrupt – it does not allow a region to self-determine.
The Spanish police are corrupt – in the last vote they beat up and abused Catalunyans.
The Spanish judiciary are corrupt – they imprisoned people for merely exercising their right to self-determination.
Spain has a history of corruption – I rest my case.
QED :)
• Karolina
In other words, you have no proof, so you are just commenting on typos and trying to make the most out of it, because belittling other people is what you are here for. Makes you feel better about yourself and your invented accusations…
• Karolina
And by the way, expressing yourself against a democratic constitution of a country=you are an enemy of that state and if the law worked properly, you would be arrested.
3. Karolina
It depends on the outcome. If the pro-unity parties win, then, yes, the issue will have been settled. However, if the secessionists win, then there will need to be a proper credible referendum. You can’t hold back the tide for ever…
• Francesc Del Arca Hernàndez
Did you know Portugal declared indepence from Spain? Hahaha It was because the spanish Army was in Catalunya, once more, opressing us (its the only way the castellanos feel more spanish…). The joke’s on you.
• Conrad Miranda
Did you.know that the company Inc charge of vote counting “Indra”. Has been linked un corruption cases with the goberment party un Spain ?
• Eduardo Tomé
Francesc Del Arca Hernàndez well you have since 1640, so 377 years to reverse the situation nnd to deal with the Spanish army, And you only maneged a referendum that was a joke.
• Francisco Caleira
Funny thing. Catalonian independentists have shortage of memory. They suddenly forgot Jordi Pujol and family. Artur Más also convicted. All CiU and PDeCAT are a nice example of very democratic people. At least Europe have something to laugh about. Only irrational people point fingers to PP before looking to the mirror and see who appointed the Puigdemont clown is as bad as who they criticise. Dumb people…
4. Christine Harris
Upcoming elections will be democratic, free and fair. The result will reflect the will of the electorate
• Sami Sami
democratic and fair?
and those in prison and exile who can not even campaign?
• Pilar Riesco
Sami Sami actually they will get more votes because they are in prison. Puigdemont is on holidays, no exhile
• Русский Шпион
La compañia encargada de contar los votos se llama Indra, imputada por financiar ilegalmente al partido popular, intervenir en los resultados electorales de diferentes paises y por múltiples irregularidades desde que se encarga de el recuento de votos. En las elecciones generales pasadas se detectaron votantes que hacia mucho tiempo que ya estaban fallecidos, las residencias de ancianos religiosas llegaron a entregar los sobres cerrados y llevar masivamente ancianos que no sabian que tenia el sobre. Los censos no cuadraban y asi un monton de irregularidades las cuales son de conocimiento de todos. Intentar maquillar estas o cualquier otras elecciones en españa solo puede significar dos cosas. Una. Desconocimiento anormal del país donde Vives. Dos… Intento fracasado de intervenir en la opinion de lectores de los cuales es mejor que no sepas lo que piensan de tu absurdo comentario…
• Clare Carline
How will it be free and fair when the contrct to run the elections wasn’t even put out to tender, then given to a company being investigated for illegally tansferering funds the the ruling P P party?
5. joan
We demand her immediate freedom that of all the political prisoners catalan in the spanish jails.
Visca la llibertat i la democràcia!
• Susana
Tehere is no political prisioners are they are not in prison for hteir ideas, (note that other independentist are not inprison). They are in provisionary prison because of their crimes. Do not manipulate truth
6. Русский Шпион
7. Anna Domenech Rifa
The company in charge of counting the votes is a corrupted and pro-PP one. I won’te believe the results
• Francisco Caleira
No problem it’s a development from the 1-O, where people voted multiple times and Amazon included some extra votes in the polls boxes. LOL. At least people around Europe are having a laugh…
8. Olga C-K
Brexit is a proven mess. Catalun-exit would be an even bigger one. Only big countries can have a significant role in the world scene. Catalanists are so fanatic that they ignore law and talk about freedom although they live in a democracy; they invoque fake news when they don’t have valid arguments; they turn against EU for not supporting them, although they claim they want to be part of it. Like spoiled children they accept only what suits them. Pathetic!
9. Sam
The separatist movement in Catalonia has a long history stretching back more than 100 years in its modern phase. Put simply, Catalonia feels that it is different from Spain and should have control over its own affairs, the PP Spanish feel that Catalonia shouldn’t be different, and should be run on centralist Spanish lines. The election won’t change these underlying sentiments, so tension will remain whatever the election outcome. 155 has created a situation where the party with just 8% of the local vote is running the region and those who were elected to run Catalonia are now in prison.
The only hope is that the election becomes the start of a proper constitutional debate and reform which could then ease the situation in the long term. Currently PP will not let that happen leaving no other outlets for Catalan frustration other than towards the independentists. Without movement from PP this current vote is a harsh choice between PP’s Spain or Catalan separatists with practically no middle ground, as neither PSC/PSOE or Cs seem to have any inclination to force PP to give ground, and the separatists have no political power to make the changes they want.
10. Pineda Bp
Let’s not forget that these elections were imposed by the spanish government. The campain has not been fair, with the president in exile and 3 candidates in prison, and we will see if the spanish government interferes in the counting of the votes. So far we have seen some problems with most of the international community not receiving their vote in time.
Having said that, these elections are not going to solve anything, they are not a referendum and until the Spanish government doesnt want to dialogue and keeps on repressing the catalans, no solution will be met.
• JM Comba
Well if you break the law that’s what you get, kiddo. It’s called state of law; you should check it; it may give you some valuable information. Obviously this is not going to settle anything. It is difficult to try to get along with supremacists, xenophobic biggots who are driven by hatred. Perhaps that is why your best friends are vlaams belang; a far right wing party. Anyway is your choice to decide to be leadered by mr. Puigdemont who has as much of a democrat as he has of courage. Funny to see him flee the country and act as he were the promised leader. He was meant to guide you to the promised land yet it was only him who went somewhere else; to Brussels. Nobody can take this man too seriously especially when other independentist leaders have at least had the guts to face their deeds.
• Pineda Bp
Thanks for answering JMComba, your lack of respect toward other opinions illustrates what I was talking about ;)
• Conrad Miranda
JM Comba , the was a state of law to when Franco was Alive . That’s what you people dont undarstant , when there is conflict between law And democracy , democracy ALWAYS takes preference , hence its the Will of the people . Laws are not the Will of the people , laws ( speatially in Spain ) are made by corrupte people with there on selfish interest in mind
• Pedro Castro
Conrad Miranda, democracy says there’s not a majority for independance. That should cover it.
• Pineda Bp
But Pedro Castro it says there is a 47.5% of people in favor of independence, I think that even though it doesnt reach 50% it means that a huge amount of the society is in its favor and therefore Spain should listen to the population and at LEAST talk about it instead of repressing the independentists and jailing their leaders
• Jokera Jokerov
JM Comba, “supremacists, xenophobic biggots who are driven by hatred.”, is that you, because it looks like you!
11. Imir Vlad
1. separatist parties represents will of less than 50% population
2. separatist parties received less votes in 2015 than non-separatist parties (because of Catalan voting system, they had close majority in parliament)
3. separatist parties received in referendum again less than 50% participation in referendum. Referendum itself was totally uncontrolled (in the end of chaos, people were able to print their voting papers themselves and throw them to urn in any place they wish, even on street)
4. despite of everything mentioned in first 3 points, separatists parties representing minority of population (significant 40+% minority, but still minority), declared independence unilaterally, just showing how they do not care about others which do not share their point of view (in my point of view, they are just intolerant as any other nationalists in the world – nothing new here, nationalism is everywhere the same, from 19th century to now on)
5. I also think that these election will not solve anything, but Spanish government has full right to protect country (Spain, but also Catalonia itself) against intolerant minority. I really doubt, that Spanish government will change its stance, if separatists will still represent less than 50% of Catalan population.
6. Spanish government is just putting borders to minority which thinks, that they can do anything.. against Spanish law, against Catalan law, against constitution and against other people in Catalonia. Spanish government will just continue putting these borders. This game can continue even for years, either until separatists understand that there are also others, not just themselves, or until separatists gain overall decisive majority which will force Spanish government to reflect that.
• JM Comba
I absolutely agree with you.
• Conrad Miranda
If its all so clear And simple as you say . Why the hell dont you let US have a referéndum And we finally have a propper answer ???
• Mònica Gonyalons
Someone from Slovakia, living in Alicante, knows a lot about Catalonia 👍😂😂
• Mònica Gonyalons
Conrad Miranda, bc they know we will win, thats it! And they will lie, and pay money to everybody to talk against Catalan Independentism!! Margallo, made a tour all around Europe and the World. And now he owns to many favours!!
• Júlia Riot
How can you still argue that secessionism is minoritary when you need a majority in the Parliament to be able to form a government?
• Imir Vlad
I meant minority in votes.. not representing more than 50% of population.. in my point of view (which is anyway invalid because I am Slovak, as Monica stated above), to do such “small” thing as creating a new state and changing borders in Europe and even more doing it unilaterally, it is really bad to do it with representing less than 50% of population.. there is no wonder that there is resistance to such acting..
• Pavur Pezev
Imir Vlad, and why Slovakia separated from Chekhoslovakia?
• Catalin Campeanu
I’m sure that russian propaganda is pretty efficient. Just reading some comments around here. This is exactly what they want, a divided Europe, made by tens of tiny impotent states like catalonia would be.
• Imir Vlad
Pavur : Eslovaquia not separated from Checoslovaquia.. There was no referendum and there was no unilateral way.. Majority of Checos and Eslovacos were against separation (my family included, I was only child back then) and decision was taken mutually by Czech and Slovak politicians in federal parliament without asking people for opinion. And yes, most shitty politicians back then, were nationalist ones, which used same hate narrative like now many indepe Catalans, showed same closed minds, and were ignoring or insulting other Slovaks which were not thinking the same way.
12. Catalin
When we should all try to be more united than ever, facing all those economic and political challenges we listen to all traitors payed by Moscow. I wonder, wtf all those separatists believe? That they will live hapily ever after as in Catalonia? Retards!
13. Montse Rat M. Escrig
In my opinion, whatever happens with the elections today, the problem will not be solved at all. Only a referendum could help
• Stoil Zlatarov
Yeah, kinda funny how European leftists are scared of the “fascist” conservatives that aren’t even in power, while the real fascists are in the European parliament and the governing parties of the dominant EU countries.
• Sabin Popescu
Stoil Zlatarov you might have to read again what fascism really means
14. Jokera Jokerov
Is Spain a direct democracy like switzerland or a representative democracy like the rest of the EU? Is Catalunya a representative democracy? Then it is for the Parliament to decide and for the people to approve. The majority in Parliament in Barcelona is for independence. They should vote it and there should be a referendum of dis/aproval.
After days of ill-tempered rhetoric, the central government said it regretted last Sunday s injuries and suggested Catalonia should hold a regional election to settle the crisis.
Given Catalonia is not a colony, post-Franco Spain has not committed gross human rights violations in the region, and Catalonia enjoys political inclusion at every level of government in Spain, it fails to meet the three circumstances of International Law which could have given them independence.
17. jthk
It appears that Spain can only settle the Catalonia independence issue by giving up democratic election everywhere! Do the Spanish or Catalonia people prefer settling this way? If not, stop tearing the country apart.
• jthk
democracy needs to play according to law, particularly the supreme law, according to which, a country is built, Constitution. If people do not respect even their constitution, the country either does disintegrate or there will be war to protect the country being disintegrated. Territorial sovereignty cannot be compromised. According to the principle of democracy, Catalonia’s independence needs a referendum of the whole Spain, which is all Spanish people, not just the Catalonia region. If Catalonia’s illegal referendum can ever be justified, all local ethnic groups of the Catalonia region can also use a referendum to get independence from Catalonia.
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More debates from this series – Catalonia View all
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http://www.debatingeurope.eu/2017/12/14/will-catalan-elections-settle-independence-issue/
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Accessibility links
Spain PM Calls New Catalan Secession Plans 'Authoritarian'
• Associated Press
FILE - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Wednesday described as "authoritarian delirium" plans by the ruling parties in the northeastern Catalonia region to declare independence from Spain within 48 hours of a promised referendum Oct. 1, if voters say "yes."
Rajoy told a business meeting that Spaniards and Catalans could rest assured that the "confrontational' gestures of the pro-independence parties will never win over the democratic state.
He was speaking a day after Catalonia's governing parties presented details of a proposed law covering the planned referendum. The law says if the "yes" vote wins, independence will be declared within two days regardless of the vote's turnout percentage.
Spain has pledged there will be no referendum because it violates the country's constitution.
Also Wednesday, the Constitutional Court formally ruled that the Catalan government could not use part of its 2017 budget to finance the referendum, following a legal challenge by the Spanish government.
Catalonia and Spain have been at loggerheads for years because of the regional government's plans to hold a secession vote. The government has challenged in the Constitutional Court nearly every measure taken by the Catalan government and has succeeded in blocking most. In addition, prosecutors have opened legal proceedings against several former and current Catalan officials over the issue.
In the promised referendum, Catalans would be asked to answer yes or no to a single question: "Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?"
Polls consistently show the 7.5 million Catalans are evenly divided on independence, but a majority supports holding a referendum.
The region has failed to win the backing of any major country or international body to hold the vote without Spain's approval.
Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona, represents a fifth of Spain's GDP.
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Before Sunday's elections in Catalonia, Artur Mas, president of the region's parliament, promised a referendum on independence for one of Spain's most important regions if he won re-election.
But after the election, Mas has a more difficult task because his center-right Convergence and Union coalition lost 12 of its 62 seats, a strong setback for a party that was hoping to gain a simple majority in the 135-seat legislative body.
The Catalan Republican Left party was the big winner in the elections, winning 21 seats, according to the Catalonia elections web site, which reported 98% of the votes had been counted.
The Catalan Republican Left party also backs independence, and the two parties could form a majority in parliament on the independence issue.
They, however, differ on most other issues, especially economic policy.
Voters in Catalonia, the most powerful economically of Spain's 17 regions, heeded the call that these would be historic elections, even if independence wasn't on the ballot Sunday. They voted during a deep economic crisis in the eurozone countries, especially in Spain and in Catalonia. Voter turnout was the highest in 24 years for Catalan elections, officials said.
The Spanish government in Madrid vows to block any self-determination referendum, arguing that the constitution does not permit a region alone to decide its independence.
Last September 11, an estimated 1.5 million people -- 20% of Catalonia's population -- filled the streets of Barcelona, the Catalan capital and Spain's second-largest city, demanding independence.
Soon after, Mas called snap regional elections, two years early. His government already has enacted deep spending cuts trying to balance the regional books and has asked Madrid for $6 billion in emergency credit to pay its bills.
"The crisis has made many people in Catalonia desperate," said Gonzalo Bernardos, a University of Barcelona economist. "They see a dark future. Then hope springs, that with Catalan independence, things will be better."
Catalonia has its own flag and language -- Catalan -- and various analysts say the economic crisis has brought long-simmering nationalist sentiment to the forefront.
Catalans complain of cultural repression and economic sleights by Madrid dating back centuries.
With just 16% of Spain's population, Catalonia produces 19% of the nation's wealth.
Catalonia argues that it sends far more in taxes to Madrid than it gets back in central government spending, and that Catalan taxes help support poorer Spanish regions.
The regions administer key public services such as health and education, and in Catalonia's case, also the police and prisons.
In addition to Mas' party, three other major parties will be closely watched as potential power brokers in the new parliament.
The Catalan Republican Left doubled its bloc, as it held just 10 seats before the election.
The Catalan branches of Spain's ruling conservative Popular Party -- which opposes independence -- gained one seat, for a total 19 in the new parliament.
The main opposition Spanish Socialist Party, which urges a federalist system for the regions, will be the biggest loser, dropping eight seats to 20 representatives.
A survey earlier this month by the Catalan government's polling center showed 57% of Catalans would vote for independence, a 6% increase from last June and a 14% increase from a year and a half ago.
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Breaking News
Catalonia Lawmakers Approve New Independence Effort
FILE - F.C Barcelona supporters wave Estelada or pro-independence flags. Catalonian lawmakers are due to vote on a measure to begin a secession process on Monday.
Lawmakers in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region approved a measure Monday for a renewed effort to seek independence.
A majority in the regional parliament backed the plan to launch a roadmap put forth by the Together for Yes coalition and leftist CUP party, which together control 72 of 135 seats. They hope the process will lead to secession within 18 months.
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy promised last month to use "all political and legal means" to stop an independence push, including taking the matter to the country's Constitutional Court. He called desires for Catalonia to break away "an act of provocation."
Catalonia is an autonomous region of 7.5 million people that accounts for about 20 percent of Spain's economic output.
The independence movement there is more than a century old, but gained momentum several years ago with Spain's economic crisis. A year ago, the region held a referendum on independence that the government dismissed as invalid. About 80 percent of those who voted supported independence.
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January 16, 2014
REUTERS/Albert Gea
Today’s vote by the legislature of the Spanish region of Catalonia to formally petition Spain’s government to authorize a referendum on Catalonian independence is a reminder that Europe will face a challenge this year for which it seems unready. Even though Spain has firmly opposed the referendum, the Catalonians are sure to press ahead. This fall, both Catalonia and Scotland are likely to hold referenda on whether to become independent states. Europe is treating the issue of independence as an internal matter for Spain and the United Kingdom – a mistake that risks cracking the continent’s delicate unity.
Scotland will hold its vote with the consent of the United Kingdom. The two governments are negotiating over how to manage the political and economic uncertainty and strain resulting from the referendum itself, and the possibility of an independent Scotland.
Catalonia’s regional administration last month announced a November date for its referendum, which the Spanish government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy immediately vowed to block. Yet Catalonia continues to move toward a unilateral declaration of independence. The separatist movement has sustained its momentum since it organized a massive demonstration in Barcelona in 2012 that led the region’s parliament, days later, to approve a resolution affirming Catalonia’s right to declare independence.
It will be Europe, in the end, that decides whether Catalonia will be an independent state. The continent's phobia of self-determination and its lack of any coherent approach to newly independent states leaves it ill-prepared to make this decision, which will strain the very foundation of Europe.
Spain and Catalonia are locked in a legal debate over Catalonia's right to hold a referendum and declare independence. While Catalonian regional premier Athur Mas has listed legal arguments that permit a referendum, Prime Minister Rajoy vows to use the Spanish courts to block what he considers an unconstitutional vote. For Europe, this domestic legal debate is largely irrelevant. If Catalonians choose independence, they will seek international recognition as an independent state based on the will of the people, not on provisions of the Spanish constitution.
International law neither permits nor prohibits the holding of referenda by aspiring states. Under international law, a state must have a territory with a population subject to the control of a government – criteria that Catalonia will meet. It also must be sovereign, meaning that other states must recognize it as independent. This is how the Catalonian issue will be owned by the other European states.
For two decades, Europe has avoided developing a common, or even coherent, policy on recognition. Many in Europe still believe Germany ignited the war in Yugoslavia by its premature recognition of Croatia in January 1991. The European Union's failure to deal with Northern Cyprus has created a half-member EU state where all Cypriots are EU citizens, but only half the country is governed by EU laws and regulations. Kosovo is in international limbo. It is recognized by 103 countries, excluding five EU member states, and maintains stabilization and integration agreements with the EU. It is a member of the World Bank and IMF, but not the United Nations.
When Catalonia asks for recognition, Europe will be ill-prepared to answer. This is dangerous.
Europe as a whole is unlikely to deny recognition to Catalonia. That would create a frozen conflict in the core of Europe that will drain political capital and economic resources of an economically fragile Spain. In many European states, non-recognition would be perceived as anti-democratic. It will be extremely difficult to justify, given that more than two dozen states have achieved recognition in the past twenty years, and that Scotland is likely to join that list.
Europe as a whole also is unlikely to recognize Catalonia as independent and admit it to the European Union. That move would encourage further referenda in Belgium, Cyprus, Slovakia, Romania, and possibly Italy.
Europe likely will fail to develop a common approach, with some states recognizing Catalonia, and others denying recognition. The international community then will follow the pattern. In this case, Europe will suffer both consequences, creating a frozen conflict in Spain and prompting additional referenda on independence. It also will create a "state" with the euro as its currency, and 7 million people who could wind up retaining their European Union citizenship, while living outside the European Union.
Dr. Paul R. Williams is the Rebecca I. Grazier Professor of Law and International Relations at American University and the co-founder and President of the Public International Law & Policy Group. He has published articles on the international law and policy ramifications of state secession.
Roushani Mansoor is a former Fulbright-Clinton Fellow to Bangladesh and a current Law Fellow at the Public International Law & Policy Group
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The issue of European integration has played an important role in the debate over Catalan independence. Francesc Trillas writes that an independent Catalonia would have competing motivations in the sense that closer European integration would potentially undermine its independence, but stepping back from European integration would have a damaging effect on its ability to trade with other European states. He argues that pushing for a federal Spain within a federal Europe would offer Catalonia the best solution.
The costs and benefits of secession for a relatively rich region like Catalonia cannot be disentangled from the the issue of European federalism. By such federalism, I mean democratic (and not technocratic) common decisions applied to a selection of key policies for countries in the Eurozone, along the lines of the proposal for a budget commission by Thomas Piketty. That would imply the de facto elimination of national borders on these issues.
Credit: Ivan Milinaric (CC-BY-SA-3.0)
An article by the economist Rodriguez Mora and co-authors illustrates the ‘border effect’ in international trade. If Catalonia were to secede and a new border was created, exchange with the rest of Spain would decline to a level similar to that between Portugal and Spain. The article calculates that the cost of this decline in trade would reach 9 per cent of GDP, which is more than the fiscal deficit that Catalonia would save relative to the rest of Spain. The authors also find that the border effect is in general substantial between pairs of European countries, even in the context of the single market and the currency union.
Critics have said that the reduction in trade between Catalonia and the rest of Spain would take time, and even in the long run it is hard to imagine that Spaniards would lose the ability to interact with Catalans (who speak Spanish and do not have any personal reason not to trade with Spaniards), and that any decline would be compensated for by increased trade with other (presumably European) countries.
But trade is not something that just happens without institutional pre-conditions. If the gradual reduction in trade with the rest of Spain is compensated for by an increase in trade with the rest of the EU, it would mean (unless one thinks that trade does not need supporting mechanisms) that relations with the rest of the EU would have to include institutions that facilitate the volume of trade that Catalonia has built with Spain over centuries.
Within Spain, these institutions have included a common language, taxes, currency, army, movement, soccer league, TV channels, large firms, songs, jokes, friendships and cultural projects. With Europe, it does not need to be the exact same mechanisms, but some common institutions beyond the existing ones (and beyond the Champions League) would be necessary. It seems reasonable to expect that the EU would provide a starting platform for it. It is plausible to think that Catalonia can free ride on some institutions and enjoy their benefits without being a member of the EU, although some of the benefits are difficult to enjoy without being a Member State (financial support programmes, antitrust policy, banking credit). It seems more likely that, for enjoying the trading benefits of a more integrated market, Catalonia would be asked to contribute to its costs, assuming that all other Member States accepted the new country after secession.
But then, if all these institutions and a more integrated European market are established, it will presumably also include the rest of Spain (for simplicity, let’s just call it ‘Spain’). To be stable and acceptable for workers and regions whose income streams will be more uncertain, and to promote a balanced pattern of demand across Europe, the new market will need to be accompanied by increased interpersonal and interregional transfers. These transfers will need to be substantial, because the starting point would be, according to the World Bank’s Branko Milanovic in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, the difference between the richest and poorest country. In the EU this stands at a ratio of 4 to 1, compared to 2 to 1 in the US between its states, or also 2 to 1 between the autonomous communities in current Spain (see table below, in which income per capita is expressed in index numbers).
Table: Richest and poorest jurisdictions in the US, EU and Spain
Note: The table is based on income per capita. The average jurisdictions in the US, EU and Spain are given a value of 100, with the poorest and richest jurisdictions shown as index numbers relative to the other values. Catalonia is shown for ease of reference. The ratio indicated is an approximate ratio of the difference between the richest and poorest jurisdictions. Source: Branko Milanovic; Spanish Statistical Office
Since Catalonia is above the average mean income in the EU, it would be a net contributor in Europe, as it is a net contributor to the Spanish budget today. Whether having to pay more into the EU than it would get out would be equal to or less than its current net contribution to the Spanish budget is not clear. What is certain is that the total ‘elimination’ of Catalonia’s fiscal deficit would not seem plausible in a more integrated Europe.
Then why separate from Spain if only to meet it again in a more united Europe and continue on with a fiscal deficit (this time to the EU, instead of Spain)? Some say it is because of the opportunity to build better institutions. But good institutions take time to establish, not least because there are significant transaction costs in a transition period. If we cannot become like the Portuguese in a day, we will not become like the Danish overnight either. Actually, we need to work hard on this, because according to the only study that I know of on the institutional quality of government of European regions, Catalonia has the lowest quality of government of any region in Spain. Even if we do this hard work and in the end become like the Danish, because under Spain we risk becoming like Maduro’s Venezuela (if I am interpreting some secessionist rhetoric correctly), with all due respect, something else may happen.
If we join the rest of Spain in a more integrated Europe with freedom of movement, presumably many Spaniards will get fed up with their own institutions and will want to emigrate to Catalonia, which will still be geographically close, at least. We will probably still share many cultural commonalities (even more than with the Portuguese), but income per capita will be much higher because of much better institutional quality. Different income levels with a similar culture and close proximity facilitate immigration. We may end up with a population composition that makes us even more similar to Spain than at the beginning, contradicting one of the supposed benefits of independence – namely, that very different preferences for public goods can be satisfied.
But perhaps I am going too fast, and I am solving Rodrik’s trilemma in my preferred idiosyncratic way: forget the nation state, and promote democracy and economic integration. Others may prefer to keep nation states and to abandon the project of deeper EU integration, but then they should not expect to trade much more with other European countries. Instead, they would have to build an economic strategy based on something else – A hidden natural resource? Fiscal haven? Privileged relationship with an emerging superpower? Protectionist regression?
Since secession in a more integrated EU does not seem to make much sense (as more and more secessionists acknowledge, at least in private), the true costs of secession for Catalonia are the costs of favouring the wrong solutions (in my view) to Rodrik’s trilemma: either sticking to a nation state in globally integrated but deregulated markets which compromise democracy (in order to attract investments without international cooperation, taxes and regulatory standards would be constrained to be low: then the cost is inequality), or sticking to the nation state with democracy but without access to integrated markets, which may be the preferred option of a rupturist left or a populist and protectionist right (and then the cost is inefficiency).
Making the right choice for Catalonia, as I see it, with Rodrik’s trilemma in Europe, involves supporting, for efficiency and equity reasons, a rapid transition to a federal Europe within a federal Spain. More policies will need to be commonly and democratically decided in Europe to support a common fiscal policy, a banking union and mutualised debt. Other policies can remain at the level of the Member States or at a lower level, and in those Member States where there are strong and diverse national identities, these will have to be accommodated using the instruments of successful federal democracies. Federalism can combine institutional innovation and diversity with common policies, including international capital taxation that can raise funds for income and regional transfers, as well as for government infrastructure projects.
A modern democratic, as opposed to technocratic, European federalism must create the mechanisms to share sovereignty and at the same time facilitate institutional innovation and flexibility in the context of the challenges of the twenty-first century. A more integrated and cohesive Europe will then be an enormous contribution to world cooperation, able to promote peace and correct global market failures and inequalities.
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About the author
Francesc Trillas – Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
Francesc Trillas is an academic in the Department of Applied Economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Researcher at the Public-Private Sector Research Center at IESE and at the Institut d’Economia de Barcelona. He has published in several international journals and specialises in regulatory economics, applied microeconomics and institutional and political aspects of the economy. He is the author of the blog Real Progress.
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https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/01/27/a-federal-spain-within-a-federal-europe-would-offer-the-best-solution-for-catalonia/?replytocom=29864
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Conference report: How to save the EU
November’s conference, which brought together 50 leading economists, political scientists and experts on the EU, discussed ways to save the EU from nationalist and populist forces. Britain had voted to leave the EU in 2016; Poland and Hungary were now led by governments who were chipping away at the rule of law and the norms of liberal democracy; and support for populist right-wing parties – and to a lesser extent, the populist left – was on the rise in both Western and Eastern Europe. These developments raise many questions. Which social groups within the EU have lost confidence in it and why? What does the backlash against liberalism across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) mean for the Union? Is the EU the answer to globalisation or is it hampering member-states’ ability to deal with it? Can the EU help foster an inclusive European identity, allowing it both to absorb inflows of people from poorer countries and to let national and regional identities flourish? Could the euro yet become a force for closer political integration in the EU?
Most participants agreed that the backlash against the EU – or liberalism more broadly – was not solely down to poor economic performance. Though unemployment and job insecurity did contribute to support for populism, identity and immigration were at least as important. The two also interacted in complex ways, in part reinforcing each other, and were hard to disentangle empirically. Anti-EU sentiment was also as much about hostility towards elites as it was about European integration. Support for populist parties was not obviously driven by age: the young were anti-populist in some countries, such as Britain, but voted for populist parties in large numbers in others, like Italy. A unifying theme seemed to be a sense of insecurity, resentment of elites and illusions about life outside the European Union. The complexity of the EU’s machinery and laws, its recent policy failures, and the inchoate benefits of the Union also made it an easy target for populists.
There was broad consensus that the EU had the potential to be a force for good in the globalisation process, both internationally and in protecting (or at least managing) the repercussions for its citizens. But participants also agreed that the EU often fell short of that potential. Many people at the conference voiced concern that the EU was not doing enough(or was not given the mandate) to fight the negative effects of economic integration, such as the increasing concentration of benefits in certain regions, or tax competition, which citizens rightly perceived to be unfair. Some also argued there was untapped potential to integrate more closely while creating more equitable growth at the same time. On a global level, the EU did have the power to shape globalisation’s rules but was not using that power effectively.
Most participants thought the illiberal backlash in Central and Eastern Europe was of great concern, with Poland seen by many as the biggest problem, mainly because of its size. But the reason for the backlash was controversial. Some argued that economics explained at least part of it, as solid GDP growth had been faster than the growth in living standards: much capital was foreign-owned in these countries, and a sizeable chunk of profits were repatriated to Germany and elsewhere. Central and Eastern Europe’s electorates viewed their countries to be rule-takers, not rule-makers in the EU, and they deemed the single market to be biased in favour of the Western member-states. Some participants argued CEE countries needed strategies to create more high-paying jobs, to make the economy work for their citizens. The risk for Europe was not so much an exit of any of these countries, but a de facto exit from the values and rules of the EU. Some argued that treating CEE countries as second-tier member-states was poisonous, as was lecturing them. Offering Poland a seat at the top table was crucial, said one. But most important, argued many, was to show that Europe fights on the side of average citizens, for example against corruption, in order to support the pro-European, liberal sections of CEE countries. There was no consensus on whether EU funds should be made conditional on democratic principles and the rule of law.
Participants agreed that the eurozone was not about to undertake big reforms. Some argued that it was futile to pretend otherwise and may in fact help the anti-EU cause. But others countered that cautious steps towards further integration within the eurozone were possible, and desirable. The conference’s economists did not agree that re-nationalising fiscal policy was a good idea, especially the restructuring of public debt within the eurozone. While many saw the political benefits, the economics of national discretion in fiscal policy with a common monetary policy did not add up. The euro had proved to be a source of disintegration in the EU between euro-ins and euro-outs, with one economist saying that the euro could only become a source of integration if governments overcame their current zero-sum thinking on economic policy.
Populists had made migration a central issue, and many argued that migration from outside the EU was bound to increase rather than subside, with Africa being the main challenge in future decades. The debate heated up when it came to the economic benefits of migration, with some forcefully arguing that the benefits had been empirically demonstrated, and the academic debate had been won, but not the public debate. This led the conference to discuss ways to improve the debate about migration, and whether immigration from outside the EU could be integrated into a European narrative. There was consensus that being empirical about the facts was best, but politically unlikely to be of much help. But most agreed that the way in which politicians and the press framed migration was important, as the different perceptions of migration in European countries showed. Some argued that there was scope for the EU to act, such as in Africa or to better manage the influx of migrants. As one participant put it, it was not immigration per se that worried many, but the sense that it was uncontrolled and unlimited.
During and following the UK referendum on EU membership, a lot of discussions and articles have been had on the economics for or against membership. Understandably, the arguments in favour of membership have been centered exclusively on "trade related benefits and jobs" whilst those against membership on "contributions and costs". To my knowledge there has not been an all inclusive argument with both sides of the argument fully monetized and explained so that the "ordinary" citizen can have a true vue of what is at stake. The CER may take the lead on such an exercise and actively make it public.
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“Free Trade is Dead – Long Live Free Trade”
When Donald Trump became president of the United States of America in 2016, many feared that his straightforward and harshly announced policies might have a perceptible impact on the new world order – politically and economically. With him being a businessman, a certain “deal culture” was established in American politics. Tax cuts, immigration laws and a stubborn foreign policy are just a few examples for his style of governing. On the other hand, the People’s Republic of China emerged as one of the most influential global trading partners. With China becoming a member of the WTO in 2001, its economic strength was somehow institutionalized in global trade politics. Most notably, China’s influence on the African continent was subject to recent discussions in both media and politics, raising concerns about human rights issues in affected African communities.
Somewhere in-between, the European Union struggles to entrench its place in global trade politics. As the largest single market in the world, the EU could have a far bigger impact than it has today. This became evident when President Trump announced to apply higher tariffs on EU exports going to the US. The EU did not just seem disoriented, its reaction also showed what position the EU finds itself in.
With Brexit ahead, tensions in Eastern European countries and weak economies in Italy and Spain, the EU quite obviously has many fronts to fight on. Additionally, the EU is about to slide into an environment economists call “Japanification”. Low economic growth, accompanied by low interest rates and low inflation limit the opportunities of monetary policy to further stimulate the economy. Neither lowering interest rates (which seems almost impossible in the EU) nor Quantitative Easing show the necessary effects to boost European growth rates. In countries like Japan, such a process does not affect social cohesion and income or wealth distribution on a large scale, as wealth is already distributed much more just than it is in other “Western” economies. But countries in the EU or North America might experience another outcome. Whereas both Germany and the USA, for example, have to operate in slightly different economical systems, the extent of wealth inequality is at least partially similar. It’s therefore to be expected that a persistent state of “Japanification” might require political action to limit a further increase in social inequality.
On the political side, the European Union faces many other challenges that have emerged over the past few years. A very common term in European politics, which describes the origin of these specific circumstances, is “Multi-speed Europe”. It describes the different paces at which member states integrate themselves in the European Union. Especially with the EU’s eastward enlargement after the Cold War, it becomes obvious why this phrase matched the political situation in the early 1990s quite well. And even 30 years later, “Multi-speed Europe” could not be more up-to-date. This of course is applicable to economic development but can also be put in context to a rather normative view of the European Union. The heritage of Kaczyński’s and Orban’s politics demonstrates how Poland and Hungary were able to integrate their countries economically but at the same time heavily violate European core values. This again shows a significant flaw in today’s European politics.
The reason Chinese expansion is so broadly criticized is because Western-ruled countries fear an increasing Chinese influence in less developed parts of the world. But instead of putting a similar effort in Development Support into e.g. African countries, the EU struggles with homemade problems and is not even able to sufficiently sanction violations of its own current legislation as in Poland or Hungary. Inevitably, the question arises how the EU can strengthen its normative assertiveness both inside and outside its borders. From this point of view, every policy advice probably seems a little too naïve, but visionary thinking is exactly what the European Union needs right now.
The EU is the largest and most successful peace project of the past centuries. Those who were born in Europe over the last 70 years never experienced war and were raised in security and prosperity. But even the EU has a long and difficult story of progression. When my mom’s family came from Italy to Germany in the late 1960s, they were confronted with segregation and hatred. Now, over 50 years later, xenophobia between Germans and Italians seems to be inconceivable. But we again observe racism and exclusion – maybe not against our fellow Europeans, but against other minorities from outside of Europe. Populists in almost every country use the narrative of “us vs. them”, which fuels nationalist tendencies and is fundamentally directed against the core values of the European Union. So, the message for every whole-hearted European should be very clear: it is the duty of our generation to convince each and every citizen in Europe that the benefits of a united EU with open borders and free markets always outweighs possible disadvantages. Because if we are not able to convince citizens on the inside, we won’t be able to convince people on the outside. Nonetheless, the current situation in some Eastern European countries reasonably questions the effectiveness of these measures without a fundamental change in the structure of the European Union.
Without extended legislative competences of the EU, a more binding and comprehensive budget and the ability to effectively sanction violations of EU law, this project is almost doomed to fail. Especially when it comes to trade, strong and tight relations to countries outside of Europe could have the power to promote human rights and other European values. This could not just be the case for climate change issues, but also for development support, migration and the rule of law. For that, we need to reinvent free trade and return to the very core strengths of European trade policies. Right now, the African continent is probably the most accessible and worthwhile region where the European Union could use its influence. The recently established African Continental Free Trade Area offers many opportunities – so let’s be brave and put the European idea forward. There is so much to win and so little to lose.
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Back in the EUSSR
Historians still argue over the reasons why one particular geographical region managed to achieve such overwhelming military, economic and cultural power as to subordinate the rest of the planet, but the fact remains that as late as 1914, Europe dominated the world in a way no previous civilization could.
After two centuries of colonization and a century of industrial development, Europe – once known as "sunset lands" by the ancient civilizations of the Middle East – had stood on top of the world. On its eastern end was a stupendous empire that reached from Poland to the Pacific. On its western edge was a thalassocracy that boasted the sun never set on all its outposts.
This also helps explain why the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 were both global conflicts, even though they began in Europe and for European reasons.
Even today, the world feels the legacy of European power. The very concept of nation-state arose in Europe, after a series of religious wars ravaged the continent in the 1600s. Ancient democracy, philosophy, the three major denominations of Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), capitalism, socialism, liberalism, banking… all of these are concepts that were either originally conceived in Europe, or developed on the continent and then spread throughout the world by word, sword or gunpoint. Even after the European empires finished beating each other into rubble midway through the 20th century, the two superpowers waging a cold war for dominion over the world were European derivatives; the United States and the USSR were based on European philosophical principles – of individual liberty and class struggle, respectively.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, those who sought to establish a Pax Americana announced the "end of history" and heralded a "new world order." The past seventeen years have brought neither; quite the contrary, history is more in flux than ever, and there is not much order left in the world, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Cold War victors.
Dangerous Notions
The European Union (EU) is one of the things that emerged from the post-Cold War flux. The 1992 Treaty of Maastricht transformed what had formerly been a trade association of European countries into an actual political entity, currently one of the largest in the world (with nearly half a billion inhabitants).
To its supporters, the EU is a crowning achievement of democracy on the continent; a monument to peace, tolerance, and the transformative power of government planning. They might be right on that last one, if not on any of the others.
Democracy is hardly a pinnacle of civilization, as it is by definition at odds with freedom. The myth of "democratic peace" is just that – a myth. "Tolerance" is turning into its very opposite, as the Union seeks to ban speech in a misguided attempt to paper over a very real conflict between the shrinking native populations (a consequence of welfare statism) and the mainly Muslim immigrants who refuse to assimilate.
Last, but not least important, is the notion that European unity is by itself a good thing. History suggests it is rather the opposite. For centuries, attempts to achieve European unification brought nothing but bitter conflict. Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire proved fleeting. Napoleon dreamed of a united Europe (under French leadership, of course). So did Hitler. But when competition among European powers did not lead to conflict, it led to one-upmanship in economics, philosophy, culture, art, and all the other things that eventually made Europe a global hegemon rather than, say, China – which had been united for centuries.
"Slow-motion Coup"
A few days ago, a Swedish blogger by the name of Fjordman wrote an article titled "Towards a Totalitarian Europe" for the Euroskeptic blog The Brussels Journal, arguing that:
The European Union is basically an attempt – a rather successful one so far – by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and eventually abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d’état. It works because the national parliaments are still there, and most people don’t see how much has changed.
Fjordman claims that the EU resembles the Soviet Union "more than just superficially," calling it "An artificial superstate run by an authoritarian bureaucracy that overrides the will of the people and imposes its ideology on the populace."
What might this ideology be? Call it welfare statism. But also "diversity" and "equality." Fjordman’s particular objection is to the wholesale importation of immigrants from Muslim lands, who not only do not assimilate, but are encouraged by the Eurocrats to assert their beliefs as part of a planned breakdown of existing national cultures. "After all," he says, "it’s easier to control people who have no distinct cultural or national identity."
Another blogger, an Englishman going by the name Archonix, warns that the EU may be peaceful now, but if history is any indicator, it will soon become aggressive. He makes a compelling parallel between Bismarck’s unification of Germany in the latter half of the 19th century and the process of European "unification," both starting with a customs union and proceeding with small steps. Germany eventually turned imperialist to channel the resentments among its inhabitants created by the powerful welfare state. Archonix fears the EU might do the same.
Danger to Itself
One could argue that the EU is already turning conquistador, re-enacting the German Drang nach Osten by annexing most of Eastern Europe and parts of the Balkans. The new member countries may be poorer, but they also have (relatively speaking) more vibrant economies, unencumbered by thousands of laws and rules and regulations that stifle entrepreneurship throughout the Union. In this respect, the EU’s eastward expansion is a better strategy than importation of immigrants to replace a dwindling working population. However, the new members soon find themselves in the same predicament, as EU laws strangle their economies and their birth rates follow that of Old Europe. Enthusiasm for the EU may then quickly turn to resentment.
It could be, then, that the EU will be much more of a danger to itself, than to its neighbors. Fjordman gloomily predicts that the "EU can only become one giant Yugoslavia, either ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy in the fashion of Tito, or fall apart into civil wars."
One would think Yugoslavia’s tragic history ought to dissuade anyone from emulating it.
All Bark, No Bite
Despite the refusal of most EU members – notably, Germany and France – to support the American Empire in Iraq, prompting derisive talk of "New" and "Old" Europe, at the present time Brussels is an ally of Washington in its hegemonic designs.
It is important to note, however, that the EU is clearly the much inferior partner in this relationship when it comes to military matters. The U.S. has, at great expense, built a military intended to dominate the globe. As the 1999 invasion of Kosovo demonstrated, the EU barely has the ability to serve as an auxiliary to American legions. NATO is less of a military juggernaut than a leash that allows Washington to dominate European military matters almost completely. That makes the European Union much less intimidating than the Soviet one. Woe to everyone if the commissars ever decide a "Blue Army" would be the best way to accomplish their ends, though.
American imperialists, such as Richard Holbrooke, openly claim that interventions in the Balkans had the purpose of reasserting American hegemony on the European continent. The EU may be comparable to the U.S. in size, and have a larger population, but it is not yet a power of its own. Given all the disturbing aspects of the EU, that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Read more by Nebojsa Malic
Author: Nebojsa Malic
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Say yes to Sunday nights
Bob Harris
Radio 2
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What lies beneath: how Europe succumbed to toxic ideology and violence
A review of Ian Kershaw and Heinrich August Winkler’s accounts of Europe’s “age of catastrophe”, 1914-49.
In the current climate of apprehension about what an influx of Muslim immigrants might mean for European values, we should remember what those have included in the past: slavery, serfdom and tyranny, as well as religious wars, violent revolution and rapacious imperialism. And the horrors of earlier centuries pale beside what Europeans did in the 20th century to their own continent and the rest of the world. The titles of two new histories sum up that miserable story, with its ethnic conflicts, industrial-scale warfare, totalitarianism and genocide: “hell”, in the case of Ian Kershaw, and “catastrophe” for Heinrich August Winkler.
Twentieth-century Europe remains such a puzzle for us all. How could a civilisation that produced Shakespeare, Beethoven and Kant, which generated the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, or which formulated and promulgated ideas such as constitutional government and human rights, also have produced such appalling cruelties?
These two vast histories aim to explain why Europe went through such a very bad period between the start of the First World War and the end of the Second World War. Both authors try to find that difficult balance between looking at Europe as a whole and as a set of separate countries. For all that it is admirably researched, Winkler’s is the less satisfying, in part because he fails to define his terms. He talks of something called the west (which at various points seems to include the United States and Japan and at others seems to be only Europe) without ever clearly stating what he means by either definition: is it a set of ideas and values, a collection of nation states, or perhaps a typology of political, economic and social organisation? In this, the second in a projected three-volume history of the west, he starts out by saying that he will examine Europe’s “normative project”, which he defines, very briefly, as putting into effect the ideas and ideals of the American and French Revolutions. But which ones? The Rights of Man or the Terror? In any case, the “normative project” largely vanishes in what is nevertheless a useful and thorough history of Europe. If you want to know about the politics of Luxembourg as well as those of bigger states you will find that here.
Kershaw inevitably goes over much of the same ground but provides the more sustained analysis. In his view, several forces came together in the 20th century to produce a toxic brew of suspicion and hatred among Europe’s people. A new kind of nationalism emerged, driven by the assumption that nations are based on not only shared ethnicity, but blood – inhabitants of another nation were often described as being another “race”. Given the mix of peoples in Europe, demands for territory often led to nations claiming lands inhabited by those of other, supposedly lesser “races”. Class conflict often overlapped with ethnic conflict, so that, for example, Slavic peasants and Polish landowners found even more reason to hate each other. The long crisis of capitalism was undermining the legitimacy of the existing regimes, some of them weak enough to begin with. And caught up in the midst were Europe’s Jews, the unjustified focus for ethnic and class hatreds, blamed for the problems created by capitalism.
Both writers take some pains to look at ideas (fascism, communism, liberalism) or trends, from economic growth to changes in the position of women, that transcended borders. They also point out that Europe contained very different levels of development that were not necessarily coterminous with national borders. Such measures as literacy, standards of living or urbanisation were generally higher in the western parts of Europe. In terms of constitutional and democratic government, the east lagged behind. And while the likes of France and Britain had long since taken diverse peoples and instilled in them a strong sense of shared nationhood (though Britain failed with the Irish, who persisted in seeing themselves as a separate people), the old empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary had failed to do so before the First World War. Indeed, the gradual introduction of representative institutions and a broader franchise in ethnically diverse areas led to an unedifying search for spoils. After 1918 the dominant elites in the successor states often lacked the will to respect their own substantial ethnic minorities. Political leaders all too frequently used demagogic and ethnic appeals to their masses to keep themselves in power.
While there are clearly continuities between the worlds before and after the First World War, that prolonged and costly conflict served to shatter much of the old order and to speed the introduction of certain ideas, attitudes and practices. As Kershaw rightly says of 1914, armies with values belonging to the 19th century or earlier found themselves fighting a 20th-century war as Europe’s organised, industrialised mass societies hurled themselves against each other. In its course, European nations threw away the lives and talents of millions of their men and exhausted their resources. The French coined a new term: total war. For this was not like the wars of the previous century, fought for clear and limited aims, but rather a struggle between peoples for dominance and survival. In the course of the war, racial and national stereotyping entered the public discourse. For Germans it was the barbaric Asiatics; for the French and the British, the brutal Huns. Conflict broadened to include civilians: men, women, children were all part of the war effort. And in the mixed regions of the east and southern Europe and the Ottoman empire the first ethnic cleansings and genocides occurred, though they were not yet called by these names.
Towards the end of the war the US president Woodrow Wilson’s public support for self-determination, inspired by noble sentiments about the rights of peoples to govern themselves, spurred demands in the heart of Europe for ethnically based nations to be established in defined territories. New nations, which might have worked and traded with each other, too often fell out over competing claims to the same pieces of land. And because ethnic nationalisms are generally intolerant of multiple and overlapping identities, those who refused (or were perceived to refuse) to accept a single identity became useful scapegoats. Older traditions of anti-Semitism were now reinforced by the pseudo-sciences of racism and social Darwinism. The pre-war pogroms against Jews expanded with renewed vigour into the war and the postwar years. In Russia’s revolutionary civil war, for instance, up to 60,000 Jews were killed in the Ukraine.
The war made violence normal as a way of settling disputes and carrying out politics. Fighting on a large scale carried on for several years after 1918. In the Russian civil war, which finally ended in 1922, some seven million people died of various causes. In many countries, Italy and Germany among them, politics often took the form of violent street theatre, with opposing factions beating and killing each other. Mussolini rode to power in Italy in 1922 partly because his Fascists intimidated and cowed their opponents, and partly because conservative elites hoped that he could restore order. In Germany, adherents of the right committed 352 political murders between 1919 and 1922. And war retained its glamour and fascination. Despite what we might think, given the popularity of anti-war literature such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), many veterans joined paramilitary organisations after the First World War ended, 400,000 of them signing up for the German Freikorps, which fought in the Baltic and along Germany’s eastern borders.
The war also left large numbers of Europeans deracinated: what Winkler describes as “personal shock”. What had seemed solid – whether empires, regimes, their position in society, even their pensions and savings – vanished overnight. Not surprisingly, Oswald Spengler’s deeply pessimistic The Decline of the West (published in German between 1918 and 1922 and in English in 1926), which posited that European civilisation was reaching its end, was very influential and sold thousands of copies, especially in Germany. Many Europeans retreated from engagement in the compromise-heavy sphere of democratic politics because it seemed to provide few solutions in the present and little hope for the future. Outsiders, such as the self-serving Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, who attacked conventional society and expressed nothing but contempt for elected politicians, were dangerously attractive because they somehow sounded more “authentic”. As we look, today, at the antics of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, that seems uncomfortably familiar.
Europe presented unpromising soil for the new democracies in Poland and Yugoslavia, or older, shaky ones in Italy or Spain. The widespread adoption of proportional representation only led to further political fragmentation and made it increasingly difficult to form stable coalitions. While democracy struggled in parts of Europe, its enemies mobilised, often using its own institutions against it. Challenged by new forces from below, the old elites, especially in eastern and southern Europe, drifted into counter-revolution and threw their support behind conservative parties advocating authoritarian governments. On the left, the new communist parties, modelled on Bolshevik lines, appeared to present a credible alternative both to authoritarianism and to “bourgeois” democracy. Under the strict rule of the Communist International, itself a tool of Soviet policy by the late 1920s, communists across Europe obeyed orders to attack and disrupt democracy. In the streets of Germany communists and Nazis sometimes fought together to destroy the Weimar Republic.
On the right, fascism in all its varieties was equally appealing to those who had given up on democracy. Across Europe, fascist leaders attacked what they saw as an outmoded and corrupt system, promising national renewal and a bright and bustling future. Here is how Mussolini described fascism in his 1932 article for the Enciclopedia Italiana: “The Fascist state, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people.” It is hard today to understand how even intellectuals could take such vacuous rubbish seriously as a coherent doctrine but many did. When Winston Churchill visited Italy in 1927, he wrote approvingly, “this country gives the impression of discipline, order, good will, smiling faces”. Although the impetus behind fascism differed from that behind Soviet-style communism – one was nationalist and racist, the other promised a classless utopia – in method and style both were totalitarian, another new word that had to be coined to describe the 20th century. Unlike older types of authoritarianism (of which there were still many examples), totalitarian regimes, whether in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany, sought to possess the souls and innermost thoughts of their subjects. Both types of totalitarianism used modern media and propaganda to mobilise and sway the masses; both had cults of the all-wise, omni-competent leader; both dealt with any dissent by means of intimidation, imprisonment or murder; and both needed enemies, internal or external, to justify their existence.
The First World War helped to create the conditions that made Europe’s descent into the second war and barbarism possible – yet it did not have to end like that. “But we do dance on volcanoes and sometimes the fires below subside,” said Gustav Stresemann, the German statesman. By the mid-1920s there were grounds to hope that he was right. The world had recovered, certainly in economic terms, from the war. Although the United States had failed to join the new League of Nations, it did not disengage itself entirely from Europe. American observers came to League meetings and American diplomats and bankers took the lead in trying to negotiate a more workable set of reparations demands for Germany, first in the Dawes Plan of 1924 and then the Young of 1929. Under Stresemann’s wise leadership, briefly as chancellor and then as foreign minister, Germany became an international player again, settling its outstanding border disputes with its neighbours in the east, joining the League, and working reasonably amicably with its former enemies.
In 1928 Germany, France and the United States signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a solemn agreement to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. Ultimately, 63 nations, including Britain, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union, added their signatures. Three years later Japan invaded Manchuria; in October 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia; five months later Hitler marched his troops into the Rhineland, which had been demilitarised under the Treaty of Versailles; and in 1939 Europe was at war again. What went wrong can be summed up in two words: “depression” and “Germany”. Without the collapse of much of the world’s economy and the consequent misery and mass unemployment, democracy and capitalism would not have been seen as bankrupt, failed systems. The extremes of fascism and communism would never have gained the traction they did. If the Weimar Republic had managed to survive beyond its first decade it might have struck deeper roots gradually in Germany.
For both Kershaw and Winkler, what happened in Germany was of critical importance to the fate of Europe, given that country’s location at the heart of the continent, its large population, strong economy and powerful military traditions. The Depression had a disastrous impact on an already polarised and resentful nation. The Weimar Republic was tolerated but not loved, even by many of its own supporters. Key elites, whether the military, the civil service or business, had never accepted it.
Weimar also bore the burden of having signed the Treaty of Versailles. Germans had never really absorbed Germany’s military defeat in 1918, a refusal to recognise reality which was endorsed enthusiastically by the High Command, with its irresponsible talk of German forces having been “stabbed in the back” by defeatists at home. As a result, in Germany, the treaty’s terms were widely seen as illegitimate and punitive, a national humiliation. Hitler and the Nazis offered simple solutions for the country’s complex economic and political problems. They promised a prosperous and dynamic nation, restored to its rightful dominance of Europe. Still, Hitler would never have got into power without the folly and blindness of those who should have known better – from the conservatives around the ageing President Hindenburg to the socialists who, at a vital stage, withdrew their support from the last workable coalition of democratic parties.
Not surprisingly, given that both are primarily historians of Germany, Kershaw and Winkler are at their best analysing the Nazi seizure of power and the steps by which Hitler moved inexorably towards war. Their accounts are less satisfactory when it comes to other players such as Britain and France and, later, the United States. It is hard to disagree with the conclusion, however, that Hitler was not to be appeased, no matter how far the democracies were prepared to go. His vision was of a Germany dominating Europe, if not the world, and of the expansion of the German race into territories that were to be cleared of their inhabitants through expulsion, starvation or murder. Europe as a whole was to be cleansed of Jews. For Hitler, genocide was not a by-product of the war but an integral part. And as both accounts make clear, he found many willing accomplices across Europe.
If Europe had been badly shaken by the First World War, it was all but destroyed by the Second. By 1945 millions of its people were dead or barely surviving. The great European empires were crumbling fast, and European nations lay at the mercy of the two new superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. In eastern Europe the Soviet Union was building its own empire. Yet within four years, Europe, especially the western part, had started to recover; more than that, the foundations for what turned out to be an enduring peace had been laid. Kershaw rightly describes it as “astonishing”, although his account of how it happened is regrettably brief.
We face the danger today of forgetting what Europe did to itself in the 20th century and how that came about. The passage of time has made us complacent and we assure ourselves that we would never make the same mistakes as our forebears did decades ago. Yet not all Europe’s demons have been killed for ever. Intolerant nationalisms are growing again. Let us hope that the fulminations of, say, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, against the dangers to European society from “outsiders” – whether gypsies or Syrians – are passing froth on the political scene and not signs of something deeper and more sinister happening below the surface.
To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw is published by Allen Lane (593pp, £30). The Age of Catastrophe: A History of the West 1914–1945 by Heinrich August Winkler, translated
by Stewart Spencer, is published by Yale University Press (998pp, £35). Margaret MacMillan is Professor of International History at the University of Oxford and Warden of St Antony’s College. Her books include “The War that Ended Peace” (Profile)
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In many countries the dominant image of nationalism is one of aggression and militarism, quite the opposite of a principled belief in national self-determination. The aggressive face of nationalism became apparent in the late nineteenth century as European powers indulged in a “scramble for Africa” in the name of national glory and their “place in the sun”. The imperialism of the late nineteenth century differed from earlier periods of colonial expansion in that it was supported by a climate of popular nationalism: national prestige was increasingly linked to the possession of an empire and each colonial victory was greeted by demonstrations of public approval.
In Britain, a new word, jingoism, was coined to describe this mood of public enthusiasm for aggressive nationalism or imperial expansion. In the early twentieth century, the growing rivalry of European powers divided the continent into two armed camps, the Triple Entente, comprising Britain, France, and Russia, and the Triple Alliance, containing Germany, Austria, and Italy. When world war eventually broke out in August 1914, after a prolonged arms race and a succession of international crises, it provoked public rejoicing in all major cities of Europe. Aggressive and expansionist nationalism reached its high point in the inter-war period when the authoritarian or fascist regimes of Japan, Italy and Germany embarked upon policies of imperial expansion and world domination eventually leading to war in 1939.
What distinguished this form of nationalism from earlier liberal nationalism was its chauvinism, a belief in superiority or dominance, a term derived from the name of Nicolas Chauvin, a French soldier who had been fanatically devoted to Napoleon. Nations were not thought to be equal in their right to national self-determination. Rather, some nations were thought to possess characteristics or qualities which made them superior to others. Such ideas were clearly evident in European and American imperialism, which was justified by an ideology of racial and cultural superiority. In nineteenth century Europe, it was widely believed that the ‘white’ peoples of Europe and America were intellectually and morally superior to the ‘black’, ‘brown’, ‘yellow’, and ‘Indian’ peoples of Africa, Asia, and the colonies.
Indeed, Europeans portrayed imperialism as a moral duty; colonial peoples were the white man’s burden”. Imperialism supposedly brought the benefits of civilization and in particular Christianity to the less fortunate and less sophisticated peoples of the world.
More particular forms of national chauvinism have developed in Russia and Germany. In Russia, this took the form of pan-Slavism, sometimes called Slavophile nationalism, particularly strong in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Russians are Slavs, enjoying linguistic and cultural links with other Slav peples in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Pan-Slavism reflects the goal of Slavic unity, which the Russians believed to be their historic mission. In the years before 1914, such ideas brought Russia into deepening conflict with Austro-Hungary for control over the Balkans. The chauvinistic character of pan-Slavism was derived from the belief that the Russians were the natural leaders of the Slavic people, and that Slavs were culturally and spiritually superior to the peoples of Central or Western Europe. It was anti-Western and anti-liberal.
Germany’s nationalist chauvinism was born out of the experience of defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. Writers like Fichte and Jahn reacted strongly against France and the ideals of its Revolution, emphasizing instead the uniqueness of German culture and its language, and the racial purity of its people. After unification in 1871, German nationalism developed a pronounced chauvinistic character with the emergence of pressure groups like the pan-German League and the Navy League, which campaigned for closer ties with German-speaking Austria, and for a German Empire, her “place under the sun”.
(to be continued… on the American Empire and the nature of nationalist chauvinism)
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Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index
Nationalism is a concept of identity which members of a particular government, nation, society, or territory may collectively feel. Nationalists strive to create or sustain a nation based on various notions of political legitimacy. Nationalist ideologies often trace their development from the Romantic theory of "cultural identity" and/or the Liberalist argument that political legitimacy is derived from the consent of a region's population.
Nationalism is a frequently misunderstood term. Nationalism does not necessarily imply that one nation is better than another, simply that groups of similar people should be governed by the same government, independent of different groups. Jingoism is a more extreme ideology that emphasizes the superiority of one nation over another.
See also: patriotism
Table of contents
1 Evolution of Nationalism
2 Forms of Nationalism
3 Nationalist theorists
4 Historical nationalism
5 Ethnic nationalist conflicts
6 See also
7 External links
Evolution of Nationalism
The nation-state was born in Europe with the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). Nationalism was still an elite phenomenon for a couple of centuries after that, but during the 19th century in Europe it spread widely and became popularized. Nationalism has dominated European and even global politics ever since. Much of 19th century European politics can be seen as a struggle between newer nationalist movements and old autocratic regimes. In some cases nationalism took a liberal anti-monarchical face whereas in other cases nationalist movements were co-opted by conservative monarchical regimes. Gradually through that century the old multi-national states such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to lose their grip, and various localized states were absorbed into larger national entities, most notably Germany and Italy.
By the end of the 19th century, nationalistic ideas had began to spread into Asia. In India, nationalism began to encourage calls for the end of British rule. In China, nationalism created a justification for the Chinese state that was at odds with the idea of the universal empire. In Japan, nationalism combined with Japanese exceptionalism.
The First World War marked the final destruction of several multinational states (Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to some extent Russia). The Versailles Treaty was marked by an attempt to recognize the principle of nationalism, as most of Europe was divided into nation states in an attempt to keep the peace. However, several multinational states and empires survived. The 20th century has also been marked by the slow assertion of nationalism around the world with the destruction of European colonial Empiress, the Soviet Union, and various other smaller multinational states.
At the same time, particularly in the latter half of the century, anti-nationalistic trends have taken place, notably often driven by elites. The European Union is now transferring power from the national level to both local and continental bodies. Trade agreements, such as NAFTA and the GATT, and the increasing internationalization of trade markets are also weakening the sovereignty of the nation state.
However, nationalism continues to assert itself in opposition to those trends. Globalization is violently opposed in street demonstrations (see ATTAC), nationalistic parties continue to do well in elections, and the most people continue to have a strong sense of attachment to their nationality.
Forms of Nationalism
Civic nationalism lies within the traditions of rationalism and liberalism. It is the theory behind constitutional democracies such as the United States.
Giuseppe Mazzini (Italy), Jules Michelet (France), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Germany), Roman Dmowski (Poland).
Islam is fiercely opposed to any notion of Nationalism, Tribalism, Racism, or any other categorization of people not based on one's beliefs. However, Islamist groups can be considered as racist and nationalist (and are therefore by some not recognized as truly Islamic).
In some cases there has been a reaction against nationalism. An example was the perception in pre-World War I, European socialist movements that nationalism was being used to prevent workers uniting against capitalism. Another example is in present day Germany, Israel and Ireland where there are people who are not comfortable with any nationalistic, patriotic, or even cultural symbols, because these have become associated (and permanently discredited in their view) with violent nationalism (see self-hatred).
Nationalist theorists
Benedict Anderson has stated, "only face-to-face contact can sustain community: nations are in some sense an illusion." [1] (see also [1]).
Historical nationalism
Historical events in which nationalism played an essential role:
Ethnic nationalist conflicts
Ethnic nationalist organizations
(Not including governments and formal armies)
Nationalism and patriotism
Patriotism and
chauvinism are nowadays often based in nationalism, but can for instance also come from a feeling of affiliation with an imperial dynasty.
Nationalism and language
Some theorists believe that nationalism became pronounced in the 19th century for the simple reason that language became more important as unifier due to increased literacy. With increasing numbers of people reading newspapers, books, pamphlets, etc... which were increasingly widely available and read since the spread of the printing press, it became possible for the first time to develop a broader cultural attachment that went beyond the local community. At the same time, differences in language solidified, breaking down old dialects, and excluding those from completely different language groups.
Even the U.S. have a long tradition of discrimination for other languages than english. Prominent examples are the german language which was nearly extinct during WWI. Also french and italian have nearly disappeared from U.S. everydays life.
On the other hand only the availability of an easy to learn language made integration of such different cultural and ethnic groups as they were found in the U.S. under a common identity possible. Whether a similar integration can be reached some day in Europe is still highly controversial.
Nationalism and racism
Although nationalism does not necessarily imply a belief in one's own superiority over others, excesses of nationalism have not infrequently led to racist variants of the theory (see Jingoism).
Around the beginning of the 20th century in many countries all over the world a tendency existed to mix nationalism with racism. One of the clearest examples of racist nationalism was embodied in the Nazi movement in Germany with the resulting Holocaust.
However there are other examples of racism that could have been motivated through nationalism, including ethnic cleansings during the Yugoslav secession war in the 1990s, the removal of Germans from the Wolga Republic during the 1940s, the repressions against blacks in the United States during the 1930s, the extermination of the Armenians in the Osmanic Empire in 1915, terror bombing and gas attacks by the British army in Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s, killing of the Boers in british concentration camps at the end of the 19th century, and others.
What makes nationalism so attractive?
The reason why nationalism has maintained its appeal over the centuries might be that belonging to a culturally, economically or politically strong nation makes you feel better regardless of your own contribution to this strength.
Nationalism and pride
Exceeding or violated pride or in the worst case both together can be the most potent driving forces for the rise of nationalism. In Germany the soil for nationalism was prepared by a sequence of a period with exceeding pride followed by a period of defeat and devastation. Whereas during the "Wilhelminian" era exceeding pride has been risen by the German government, the period after WWI was determined by violated pride due to defeat and the conditions of the Versailles treaty. In conjunction with the resulting economic devastation due to hyperinflation (1922, 1923, and 1929), this lead to the rise of Nazism and in the last consequence to WWII.
See also
External links
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Thursday, February 25, 2016
Derb’s Canceled Williams College Speach—”The National Question: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity In the 21st Century”
An interesting article from about another speaker canceled at a university. This follows this post about subsidies that illegal immigrants received. Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
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Williams College doesn't know what they're missing.Williams College doesn't know what they're missing.
Derb’s Canceled Williams College Hate Address—”The National Question: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity In the 21st Century”
I had already, at that point, prepared an address. Feeling that it would be a shame to waste my efforts, and loth to pass up an opportunity to spread some hatred in the world, I asked the editors at if I might post my address here, suitably formatted as an article and decorated with hyperlinks. The editors very kindly agreed. (REMEMBER, TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS TO VDARE.COM CAN BE EARMARKED FOR ME!)
Here then, for connoisseurs of “hate speech,” is the address I would have given at Williams.]
Introduction. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to speak here today.
My name is John Derbyshire. I am a freelance writer. My principal outlet nowadays is the online web magazine (which is why it such a worthy cause), though I do occasional reviews for print publications. hosts my weekly podcast, Radio Derb. mainly concerns itself with what we call the National Question, which we approach from a conservative position.
What is the National Question, and how does one approach it from a conservative position? Let me take those in turn.
9780684866697_l[1]The National Question. What is the National Question? I have a handy answer to that here: a book written in 2004 by the late Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard. Title of the book: Who Are We?—The Challenges to America’s National Identity. That is the National Question: Who are we?
The answer is of course that we are Americans. But what does that mean? That’s the National Question re-phrased: What does it mean to be an American?
The conservative approach. How about a conservative approach to the National Question? What does that mean?
Let me come at my answer indirectly by stating the un-conservative approach.
This un-conservative approach says: We, Americans, are a proposition nation. That is to say, we are a nation by virtue of our agreement on a set of propositions about the place of individuals in society, the relationship of the individual to government, and the proper scope of governmental powers.
It’s rather easy to mock this concept of a proposition nation. Suppose I were to trek up into the highlands of Ethiopia, get myself invited into the hut of some illiterate Amhara goatherd, and explain our founding documents to him; and suppose he were to respond with enthusiastic agreement. Did he thereby instantly become an American?
Conversely, here is a U.S. citizen every one of whose forebears arrived here before the Revolution, and whose male forebears fought with distinction in our country’s wars. He strongly disagrees with the principles of the Founders, and would have preferred we become a Christian theocracy. Should he be stripped of his citizenship?
Well, it’s easy to make fun. The proposition nation is not actually a completely absurd concept. It is not what the Founders intended, though; and, as the wisest of them would have told you, it ignores important features of our human nature in its social context. Both those features—contradicting the Founders and ignoring human nature—betray its un-conservative character.
So there is an answer, or the beginnings of one, to the question: What is a conservative approach to this topic? A conservative approach is one that rejects the merely propositional definition of Who We Are, or at least considers it inadequate.
We have in fact waded some way here into waters that get very deep indeed. What is a nation?
Let me work my way round the back of that by proceeding to the next few words in the title of my talk.
Race, ethnicity, identity. The three nouns “race,” “ethnicity,” and “identity” name three concepts that overlap considerably; whose main difference in fact is not so much in meaning as in provenance—where they come from.
The word “race” comes from biology; the word “ethnicity” comes from sociology; the word “identity” comes from psychology. What they all have in common is the notion of an individual belonging to a group.
In the matter of race, most individuals actually do belong to an actual group that can be objectively defined.
Race is a feature of the natural world. Members of any sexually-reproducing species mate predominantly with nearby individuals. Thus, if the species is widely distributed, localized and mostly-inbred groups develop over time, isolated from other groups. Each group has a distinctive menu of genetic variations, shaped by founder effect, genetic drift, and natural selection. These localized varieties are races.
Ethnicity describes the social behavior of individuals who perceive themselves as belonging to a group.
Identity is the interior view of that: the group membership as felt and understood by an individual.
Ethnicity as perceived kinship. Ethnicity does not of course describe just any kind of group. Most of us belong to several groups. You may belong to a church, a basketball team, a bridge club, the Republican Party, and the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. None of those is an ethny.
A good thumbnail definition of ethnicity is perceived kinship. The sociologist Pierre van den Berghe, in his 1981 book The Ethnic Phenomenon describes ethnic sentiments as, quote, “extended forms of nepotism—the propensity to favor kin over nonkin.”
That’s the “kinship” side of my thumbnail definition. The other side is the word “perceived.” People belong to an ethny when they believe they do. That’s why the word “ethny” belongs to sociology, not to biology. To quote Prof. van den Berghe again , quote:
Descent … is the central feature of ethnicity. Yet, it is clear that, in many cases, the common descent ascribed to an ethny is fictive. In fact, in most cases it is at least partly fictive.
Let me give an example. This is from a different author, also a professor, but this time of political science: Walker Connor. I’ve taken it from his 1993 book Ethnonationalism. He is speaking about the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Quote:
The political elite of the period did not believe that they were leading an ethnically heterogeneous people. Despite the presence of settlers of Dutch, French, German, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh extraction—as well as the presence of native Americans and peoples from Africa (the latter accounted for one of every five persons at the time)—the prevalent elite-held and mass-held self-perception of the American people was that of an ethnically homogeneous people of English descent.
Connor proceeds to give many examples taken from the words of our Founders. The Declaration, for instance, speaks of “our British brethren,” and grumbles that: “They … have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”
The wealth of mankind. The United States is by no means alone in having had to invent a partly fictive ethnicity for itself. As nations go, in fact, this has been rather the rule than the exception. One of the leaders of the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian unity in the middle 19th century, famously said: “Having made Italy, we must now make Italians.”
Likewise, modern Greeks boast themselves the descendants—the kin—of Homer, Pericles, and Aristotle. In fact Greece was massively invaded by Slavs in the Middle Ages, and modern Greeks have a large Slavic component in their ancestry. If you point this out to a Greek patriot, he’ll sock you on the jaw.
220px-Britons_coverAnd come to think of it, you can even take that ethnic identifier “British” that I just quoted the authors of the Declaration having used. As Princeton historian Linda Colley showed in her 1992 book Britons, British ethnicity was rather new at the time of the Declaration, a product of the wars with France in the earlier 18th century.
To this day, it has not altogether “taken.” For the English and Scots, at least, the older national loyalties—which, after all, went back several centuries—persist. When making out envelopes for the Christmas cards I send home to relatives over there, under the name of the city I write ENGLAND. It would never occur to me to write BRITAIN; let alone THE UNITED KINGDOM, an even more recent creation.
(The lady who described the intimate side of her marriage as, “I close my eyes, open my legs, and think of England” may not actually have existed; but the legend would likely never have gained currency at all if she had been quoted as saying “… of Britain.”)
Citizens in many nations nurse these subnational loyalties—ethnicities. They don’t invalidate the concept of a nation-state, any more than the fictive element in ethnic loyalties invalidates the emotional power of the ethny.
A human society must be administered under agreed rules. Its members need a common language in which to discuss their affairs. Laws must be written and approved by agreed procedures. Armies must be raised for the common defense.
Localized populations have, over many generations, come to common understandings, different from one population to another, about these arrangements. Each population, by long fellowship, cherishes customary traditions and observances. These are our nations.
Attempts to manage these things on a supra-national scale have, in the modern age, always failed at last. We see the European Union failing before our eyes, right now. Before that we saw the Soviet Union fail.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was a citizen of that latter supranational entity expressed a great truth. He expressed it in religious language, but the underlying fact about human sociality is independent of one’s spiritual outlook. Quote:
The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all peoples were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own peculiar colors, and embodies a particular facet of God’s design.
Longing for meaningful community. Homo sapiens is a social animal. We long to bond with other people, at many levels. We enlist the emotions aroused by blood ties rather carelessly, sometimes unscrupulously, to aid that bonding.
I have mentioned Prof. Huntington’s book Who Are We? Here is a quote from that book.
People are not likely to find in political principles the deep emotional content and meaning provided by kith and kin, blood and belonging, culture and nationality. These attachments may have little or no basis in fact but they do satisfy a deep human longing for meaningful community.
Note please that second sentence: “These attachments may have little or no basis in fact.” We live by myths and fictions. I don’t say that flippantly: it is an important sociological truth.
It is also of course a psych-ological truth. If ethnicity generally has some fictive component, identity may be entirely fictive. The name Rachel Dolezal mean anything?
The present situation: shaping forces. So how is this all playing out in the 21st century?
Today’s world has been shaped by two big clusters of events in the last century.
The first cluster consists of the two world wars and the Cold War. At the heart of this cluster was a flow and a counter-flow of ideas about human society. The flow was Marxist-Leninist universalism, “the proletariat has no country.” The counter-flow was despotic ethnonationalism, most prominent in Italy, Japan, and Germany in the second quarter of the century.
That was the first cluster. The second cluster you could file under the heading “Rise of the Third World.”
There was a political rise across the third quarter of the century, as former colonial possessions became independent and took up self-government.
There was also a demographic rise, in many cases a very spectacular one. Here’s one of my favorite illustrations of that.
In 1922 the British Isles had a population of 47.31 million. The territory called British West Africa, for contrast, had a population of 22.48 million. So the British Isles had over twice the population of British West Africa 94 years ago.
Once again:
• In 1922, the British Isles had over twice the population of British West Africa.
• In 2016, British West Africa has over three times the population of the British Isles.
This happened very quickly as history goes. Ninety-four years ago, my father was a young adult, a war veteran and a failed businessman. If demography is destiny, the shape of our destiny has been changing very fast these past few decades.
Universalism, ethnonationalism. These two clusters I’ve identified—one, the world wars and Cold War; two, the rise of the Third World—worked together in complex ways.
What, for example, brought about the end of colonialism?
Well, in Japan’s case it was simply defeat in WW2. For the European powers, it was in part a response to the Cold War.
Later Marxist-Leninism appealed directly to the colonized peoples. In many cases—Vietnam, for example, and the Portuguese colonies in Africa—it armed their insurgent groups.
There was a feeling on our side of the Cold War that we needed a universalist appeal of our own.
The phrase “of our own” needs some qualifying. Much of the Western intelligentsia was sympathetic to Marxist-Leninism, so the universalism came naturally to them. “The intelligentsia has no country!” … as it were.
Universalism was widespread beyond the intelligentsia, though. Seek out old copies of Reader’s Digest from around 1960. Yearning for the Brotherhood of Man long predated the arrivals of Marx and Lenin.
There is a pleasant symmetry here. If anti-national universalism found a ready market in the West, ethnonationalism had plenty of customers on the other side. The official Soviet name for WW2 was “the Great Patriotic War (Велика Отечественная Война).”
In Asia, where ethnonationalism is stronger, the Communists were even more frank. Mao Tse-tung referred to the Chinese Communist Party not as the Vanguard of the Proletariat but as, quote, “the vanguard of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people.” Ho Chi Minh argued against the division of Vietnam thus, quote: “We have the same ancestors, we are of the same family.” The press in communist North Korea frequently scolds South Korea for allowing mixed marriages, which, say the Norks, dilute the purity of the Korean race.
Note how, in all these ethnic appeals, the speakers harness those human emotions related to kinship. “We are brothers and sisters,” they say. “This is our fatherland [or motherland; or in Chinese, ancestor-land (祖國).]”
Hitler’s revenge. These paradoxes aside, the despotic ethnonationalism of the Axis powers in WW2 was widely understood, at any rate by governing and academic elites in the postwar West, to have delegitimized ethnonationalism altogether.
The logical fallacy is plain:
• Since despotic ethnonationalism generated such cruelty and destruction, ethnonationalism is an evil force.
The second thing does not follow from the first. Absolute monarchy has a fairly long rap sheet, but that is not an argument against monarchy. Constitutional Monarchy has proved one of the more benign forms of government.
Logic is not a major determinant in human affairs, though, nor even much in evidence. Those generalized, partly fictionalized emotions of ethnic kinship that had been normal and socially healthful components of national identity before fascism came up, were now seen as shameful, the very concept of the nation-state as illegitimate.
My colleague Editor Peter Brimelow calls this “Hitler’s revenge.”
Universalism in America: Civil Rights. Universalism as thus shaped by the world wars and Cold War was at work in the two great revolutionary upheavals of the U.S.A. in the 1960s: the Civil Rights movement and the 1965 Immigration Act. Both arose during the deepest depths of the Cold War. That is not a coincidence.
The Civil Rights movement was of course much more than a Cold War phenomenon, but the Cold War was a factor.
For example: In the later Soviet Union there was a strain of cynical underground humor aimed against the system. Its productions were known as “Radio Armenia jokes.” Here is a Radio Armenia joke I recall from my college days in the early 1960s:
Question from a listener to Radio Armenia: “Tell, me, Comrades, is it true that an engineer in America earns four times as much as one in the U.S.S.R.?”
Radio Armenia’s reply: “In America they lynch Negroes!”
Part of the desire among white Americans to get right with blacks came from awareness of being the target of that sort of critique: not only from the Soviets, but also from Europeans.
American elites have always been susceptible to the “cultural cringe” vis-à-vis Europeans; and midcentury Europeans, as soon as they had shaken off the dust of their colonies—in some cases, before—were striking poses of lofty moral superiority to the gap-toothed hillbillies of North America.
Universalism in America: Immigration. Similarly with the 1965 Immigration Act.
After some order had been brought to the U.S. immigration system in the early 1920s, permanent settlement was granted in limited numbers and based on national origin, with preference for settlers from north and west Europe.
This was grounded in a common-sense approach to ethnonationalism. If subnational ethnies became too numerous and strong, it was believed, the core of American nationhood, what Prof. Huntington called our “Anglo-Protestant culture,” would be threatened. This belief was perfectly rational.
By the early 1960s, however, with universalism in the ascendant, selection of immigrants by national origin was being seen, at any rate by key sections in our elites, as shamefully racist, a sort of border-guard Jim Crow. The 1965 Act was a response to this perception.
There has been much discussion about the motives of those who gave us the Immigration Act. Edward Kennedy, the floor manager for the Act in the Senate, famously promised that:
In fact, levels of legal immigration have been over a million a year since 1989; and the ethnic mix of 1960—89 percent white, ten percent black, one percent other—is a fading memory.
What accounts for the huge discrepancy between declared intent and actual consequences of the 1965 Act? Malicious dishonesty, or blank stupidity?
There are cogent arguments on both sides. I am personally inclined to the view stated by Prof. Huntington, that there was a deliberate intent on the part of our elites to move the governance of our country from a national to an imperial model.
Let me quote the relevant passage from Prof. Huntington’s book. It is rather long, I’m afraid, but I believe it strikes to the heart of the matter. Quote:
In the past, imperial and colonial governments provided resources to minority groups and encouraged people to identify with them, so as to enhance the government’s ability to divide and rule. The governments of nation-states, in contrast, attempted to promote the unity of their people, the development of national consciousness, the suppression of subnational regional and ethnic loyalties, the universal use of the national language, and the allocation of benefits to those who conform to the national norm. Until the late twentieth century, American political and governmental leaders acted similarly. Then in the 1960s and 1970s they began to promote measures consciously designed to weaken America’s cultural and creedal identity and to strengthen racial, ethnic, cultural, and other subnational identities. These efforts by a nation’s leaders to deconstruct the nation they governed were, quite possibly, without precedent in human history.
I should say there is also a line of thought that applies a Marxist analysis to these changes. In the Western world these post-WW2 decades saw the opening of a great new age of consumerism. Business was humming; and whole new types of business came up, especially in the services sector, that were outside the entrenched protections of labor union power.
Why not bring in willing workers from abroad who would accept lower wages than natives? Sure, they would incur social costs—housing, roads, energy, schooling, policing, healthcare, native unemployment—but government expenditures could take care of that. Privatize profits, socialize costs!
You can see the appeal to Capital. A school of economists came up to assure us that, yes, mass immigration would make us all richer.
Curiously, the fastest-developing nations of that era were the “tigers” of East Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. These nations held firm to their ethnic nationalism and shunned mass immigration; but they got rich anyway.
Nowadays of course they are having their comeuppance. Japanese people today are huddled under threadbare blankets as icy winds blow through their disintegrating houses. They subsist on tree bark, insects, and the flesh of their family pets. So, at any rate, I am given to understand by economists.
Universalism triumphant. By the late 1980s, antinational universalism was triumphant in the West. Immigrants from all over the world were pouring into our countries: not just the U.S.A. but Britain, France, Germany, Australia, …
One of the crowning achievements of this peak universalism was the European Union. A Marxist analysis can be applied here, too; but there is no doubt that the EU came up at least in part as a reaction against the despotic ethnonationalism that had brought such horrors to the continent in the 1940s.
Away with all ethnonationalism, then! There will be no more Spaniards and Dutchmen and Frenchmen and such men, only Europeans!
So barriers came down all over Europe. The Third World poured into the First World.
Then two things happened: one suddenly, one gradually.
Nations make a comeback. The first thing that happened was the end of the Cold War in 1991.
I assume I am speaking to an audience of Millennials here, persons with no direct recollection of the Cold War. To you people—and I don’t mean to be patronizing, I’m sure some of you know about this: but it can’t be said often enough—to you people, just let me say: the Cold War was a very big deal.
Here’s one data point at random. Time: about fifteen years ago, before 9/11. Place: the Manhattan town house of a very senior figure, an elder statesman, in the American conservative movement. Dramatis personæ: ten or a dozen conservative writers and policy intellectuals ranging in age from the thirties to the seventies, seated around the elder statesman’s dinner table.
We were discussing the state of the world. The discussion lapsed for a minute or two. Then one of the older persons present said, with what I recall as a perfectly genuine-sounding sigh of nostalgia: “How I miss the Cold War!”
Two or three others of the same generation murmured agreement. “Oh, yes!” One of the younger members of the company laughed, a bit nervously—the way you laugh when you’re not sure if you should laugh. The others just looked baffled.
Well, the Cold War ended, and policy intellectuals bent their attention to prognostications about the shape of things to come. What would the post-Cold War world look like?
endhistory Think-tanker Francis Fukuyama was first off the starting blocks. In fact he jumped the gun: his landmark essay “The End of History” was published in 1989, when the Soviet Union was still intact, though plainly tottering. Fukuyama foresaw a world in which Western-style liberal democracy would triumph everywhere.
It quickly became apparent that in defiance of Dr Fukuyama, History intended to go on for a while longer. The first Gulf War and more especially the violent break-up of what had once been Yugoslavia showed that ethnonational passions had by no means been extinguished by decades of Marxist-Leninist universalism.
The liberation of Eastern Europe likewise. Here is a story I heard from one of the participants.
After the Soviet troops withdrew from Hungary following the end of the Cold War, there was a political faction in the new Hungarian government clamoring for war against Romania. The Treaty of Trianon in 1920 had stripped Hungary of much of its territory, for example giving Transylvania to Romania, and Hungarian patriots had been seething about it ever since. (Some of them still are.) “Here’s our chance to get back Transylvania!” they clamored.
The U.S. ambassador had to talk them down off the ledge. If Hungary attacked Romania, he told them, they could kiss goodbye their chances of joining the EU. The Hungarians very much wanted to join the EU for economic reasons, so they came off the ledge.
That was Europe after the Cold War.
I should add, by the way, that the years after the Cold War ended were a Golden Age of geopolitical speculation. Francis Fukuyama kicked it off, but many fine minds followed. Prof. Huntington was one of them: his 1993 essay, later a book,The Clash of Civilizations is still well worth reading. So is Benjamin Schwarz’s 1995 essay The Diversity Myth in the May 1995 issue of The Atlantic, which ties together American and European developments. So are many others: it was, as I said, a Golden Age for geopolitical policy eggheads.
The resurgence of ethnonationalism was in any case too obvious to ignore. Francis Fukuyama’s End of History thesis became what Wall Street calls a distressed security. One wag, I forget who, proclaimed “the end of the End of History.”
The collapse of universalism. I said that two things happened at the end of the twentieth century: one suddenly, one gradually. The end of the Cold War was the sudden event. The gradual one—it is in fact still under way—was the collapse of universalism.
Let’s just go back to the 1950s and 1960s, when the old colonial empires of Europe and Japan had fallen or were in process of being dismantled. What had once been colonies were emerging as independent nations under self-government. What were the expectations for these new nations?
Again, you have to see this situation in the context of the Cold War, with much jostling for favors, East versus West. Overall, though, for persons of a universalist mindset, there were good reasons to hope.
These ex-colonies had experienced First World-grade government. They’d seen how it was done. Many of their elites had studied in Western universities.
Human beings are a very imitative species. Since human beings everywhere have common hopes, desires, and abilities, why should not Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, and the Middle East have nifty little parliamentary democracies up and running in no time?
A few of them did. A few more, especially in Asia, slipped into autocracy then came out at the other end after a decade or three into properly constitutional government.
Others, especially in Africa and the Islamic world, fell under the control of gangster-despots. Still others got some semblance of rational government, but were plagued by corruption, crime, poor human capital, and demographic pressure.
The result in these latter cases—Africa and Islamia—has been despair.
A young Third Worlder of fifty years ago—a citizen of newly- or recently-independent Nigeria, Pakistan, or Algeria, for example—could reasonably hope that his nation would develop into a comfortable welfare democracy like those of the First World; that his children and grandchildren, and he himself in his old age, could live in security and prosperity, as Australians and Japanese and Norwegians do.
Young Nigerians, Pakistanis, and Algerians no longer think like that. The hope proved an illusion. All over the Third World today, young people understand that their only hope for a decent, secure life is to get themselves into a First World country by any means possible.
Revealed preference. Fortifying the pull of First World living standards is technology: the comparative ease of modern travel, and the worldwide communications revolution, bringing pictures of those living standards into Third World hovels.
Another pull factor is what systems analysts call “the installed base”: communities of one’s fellow nationals or ethnics already settled in the First World by half a century of generous immigration policies.
And then there’s the push factor of demography. To repeat my earlier illustration:
Hundreds of millions of Third Worlders see no hope in their own countries. This is why you see boatloads of them crossing the Mediterranean, scaling the border fences of Spain’s African territories, crowding into the “Jungle” camp at Calais.
I’m sorry to say that when I see pictures of those boatloads, the phrase that comes into my mind is one from economics: “revealed preference.” The idea here is that if you want to know what people truly desire and believe, watching what they do is a much surer guide than listening to what they say.
The revealed preference of those boat people is to live in a First World country. Their hope—an entirely reasonable one—is to improve their lives thereby.
The fear of many First Worlders is that the boat people, if they settle in sufficient numbers, will reduce the host nations, or significant enclaves within them, to the wretched condition of the nations they’re fleeing. This fear is also entirely reasonable.
Despair, American-style. As in the world at large, so within the U.S.A. Fifty years ago—I was there, I was active, I remember it—it was assumed by almost everyone that with legalized segregation struck down, black Americans would soon rise and merge into the uniform American population as most other ethnies had done, and race would no longer be a significant social issue.
That hasn’t happened. Smart, capable, and well-socialized blacks—the “talented tenth”—have indeed merged as promised, but a huge black underclass remains, exhibiting spectacular levels of crime and social dysfunction. The underclass is proportionally much larger, and the social pathologies more intense, than is the case with any other race.
Revealed preference is in play here, too. Fifty years ago there was a faction among black Civil Rights activists who argued that blacks could never be happy or fulfilled in white society. Stokely Carmichael settled in Guinea; Maya Angelou lived in Ghana for a while.
You never see that now. Can you imagine Al Sharpton going to live in Guinea, or Ghana, or Haiti? What would he do there? To be sure, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the current darling of gentry white liberals, has left America. He has gone to live in … France.
Sharpton or Coates would starve to death in a black society. They are, in the plain ecological sense, parasites on their non-black fellow citizens.
The revealed preference of blacks everywhere today is to live in white societies, an implicit admission that they can’t create pleasant societies of their own and are dependent on other races for a decent living standard.
The orthodox explanation for black failure, at both the national and subnational level, is that it is the fault of whites. The peculiar success of East Asians at both these levels, in spite of past white colonialism and discrimination, suggests that this orthodox explanation may need work.
Looking forward. How may we expect nationality, race, and ethnicity to play out in years to come?
One thing we may reasonably expect is better understanding. A human society is the vector sum of many human personalities, past and present. Everything that we can quantify about the human personality—intelligence, extraversion, neuroticism, aggressiveness, and so on—is heritable to some degree, typically at around the fifty percent level.
This suggests that the human personality, and the societies it forms, are shaped to some degree by human genetics, the only known mechanism of heredity. It would therefore not be very surprising to learn that the different menus of genetic variation that characterize different races might tend to result in different societies.
At present we can’t do much more than speculate about these matters, but the fog is clearing fast. Almost every week I read something new out of the human sciences bearing on these topics. As one of Shakespeare’s characters says: The future comes apace. Or as Charles Murray likes to say: There’s a locomotive coming down the tracks.
Supposing this is right, how will this technology be made available? Who will be the decision-makers? Individual citizens, exercising their own volition under constitutionally-protected liberties? Or overbearing governments with grand plans of social engineering?
That will depend on which nation, which one of Solzhenitsyn’s “generalized personalities,” you find yourself living in.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
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We need to reinvent Western identities
These are very interesting comments. I think many societies decline because of a loss of identity. Or they have conflicting identities, which in England may be traced back to the Norman invasion as you suggest.
In South Africa, we have always had a conflict between the indigenous white or Afrikaner identity and the colonial British one. When there was a referendum on becoming a Republic in 1960, the white electorate voted narrowly in favour. Natal province, although politically conservative, voted 76% against the Republic as they wanted to remain under the British queen as titular head of state.
Eventually the vast majority of whites had a strong South African identity. But a small, liberal/leftist minority identified more with Britain and especially the values of the British Labour Party. This was true of the academics and the journalists who were all trained at the universities. Despite being a minority, they had powerful institutions on their side, such as the English-language press and the four very liberal universities: Wits, Cape Town, Rhodes and Natal. The British churches too, were on their side, such as the Anglicans and the Methodists; in South Africa they more or less espoused the Marxist so-called “theology of liberation”.
Finance came from abroad: from Britain, Sweden and Norway. Together with the intense propaganda campaign orchestrated in the world media in the 1980s and betrayed by FW de Klerk who tricked them into thinking he would make only certain concessions but not surrender completely, the SA whites finally capitulated.
What those European patriotic parties have in their favour, is that they are drawing on the strong national identity of some European nations. Those identities have not yet been divided although the multiculturalists are trying their best by referring to Muslims and Africans as “New Swedes”, “New Germans”, etc.
Jared Taylor in his book on “White Identity” also makes the point that whites in the USA will have to adopt a strong identity, just like the other races of blacks, Hispanics and Asians. But together with such a racial identity, I think white Americans must also celebrate their cultural and historical heritage.
One of the lessons of history is that a people without an identity will not resist. That is also why liberals and socialists fear nationalism. The former French Socialist president, François Mitterand, said: “Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre”, or nationalism is war or means war. That is not true, but without some form of patriotic feeling people will not resist oppression, invasion or dispossession by others.
A line must be drawn between Americans and the hyphenated pseudo-Americans. By calling themselves “African Americans”, blacks are actually doing you a favour. They have no idea what “African” actually means but they must be encouraged in pursuing a distinct identity to yours.
A lot of people here refer to the West and Western culture that is decidedly under threat. Pat Buchanan, Samuel Huntington and others have written about that. So have Pim Fortuyn and Martin Bosma of the Dutch Freedom Party and other European authors.
I think we must work on a renewal of our Western/European identity as a kind of “metadiscourse” uniting us all, but then also focus on what makes us local, tribal, members of families and geographical groups. The states in America have wonderful histories that are still recollected, but could be embraced even more, like Europeans also rediscover their ancient roots in the pricipalities, duchies, and so on.
The pressure is on all of us to reinvent ourselves, while reaffirming our roots and ancient heritage.
One thought on “We need to reinvent Western identities
1. Jacob Mouw
Western writes will have to write top selling populist stories like Da Vinci Code – or unlike DVC if one were to take religion and American catholics in consideration, in order to influence mass identity.
Currently a very hot topic in the economic-oriented USA is the rise of China. The SA – Angola – Cuban war story is relevant, as it determinded who would become the next superpower, either Afrikaner-Southern-Africa, or Communist China.
Written as such, such a little e-book in English could become popular, as it relates directly to the perceived existing economic threat to the USA from autocratic China, which become a superpower thanks to the SA-Angolan-Cuban war, which outcome simultaneously led to the demise of the nuclear United States of Southern Africa under Afrikaner autocracy.
Thus pointing to the o so obvious mode of future survival of Westerners in the USA, namely autocracy. Lekker controvercial but obviously true to make it sell.
Somebody has got to do it, and I will eventually if now one else does.
The Western USA now needs a type of white Putin, and not a Democrat.
We Dan, can stir an evolution in the USA – they won’t and can’t do it themselves, because those good people have no deep culture and do not know what an opposing state or culture is.
I think we can do it without mentioning the name of an American who lost his life in this political game of life and death, which we so enjoy.
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