EU Referendum in the UK

Are you just anti-EU, Kali? Or are you anti-United Europe too?

Hopefully the Union of South American Nations learns some lessons from the mistakes of the EU when it inevitable begins political unification. I expect much faster integration with them.

Been following Open Europe for a bit http://www.openeurope.org.uk/about-us/

Which is it with you, political realism or political idealism? If it's the former then the Council is woefully imbalanced in favor of France, Germany, and the UK and thus the 'integration' that the President is supposed to provide doesn't exist. If it's the latter then the President is a tyrant and the position should be abolished. Either way, you can't justify the undemocratic regime that currently powers the EU.

The hell it is.

What is that supposed to mean?

The US is not a union of nations, it is a union of states. There is a marked difference.

The larger a political entity becomes, the more detached it is from the people that it governs. As well, the more nations gathered together under one government there are, the more marginalizing the majority becomes. The UN is only marginally acceptable because it will not and cannot violate national sovereignty. The EU has no such qualms.

I would disagree wholeheartedly, where democracy is absent. In that case revolution (separation, in this instance) is the only thing that can actually work. People can't fight political disenfranchisement from within the political system.

You assume that internationalism is the mission at hand.

The Civil War did not do that. The Nullification Crisis was the first major precedent which mandated state subordination to the union. In any case that's not what I meant. States are not nations and never were.

Europe is incredibly different to America. Comparing France's relationship to the EU with California's relationship to the US is preposterous.

Then there's no harm done in evacuating it, is there?

Britain is one of the largest economies in the EU and is projected to become the largest in the near future.

I'm anti-transnationalism and anti-internationalism. But I particularly hate the EU.

I suppose its a bit of both. Realisticly I totally agree that it is not working, probaly becuase the political union was created peacmeal fashion and hence in need, and here is the idealism, of massive reforms to make it work.

However, the EU has: Created a situation were warfare in Europe is now almost unthinkable, certainly in North and Western Europe. Kosivo excluded as it was UN mandated and to do with genocide etc.
Created a zone were people can travel freely.
Increased European trade and trade standards drastically.
Helped develop human rights.

Sorry, should have a "way" at the end there. Unsimply put Realist IR theory states the role of the state is to protect its own survival, and increase its own security: usually by establishing a balance of power. However, with the increase of globalisation this has certainly begun to include a role in economic managment and a far more socially responsibile purpose for states. It is now the role of the state, arguably to fulfill its realist needs, to provided for a greater binding together of states. It is only the states that gain unfair power under the current status quo that resist this.

Technically true, but how does that address my point. I would agrue that Europe has more Uniting it than dividing it.

That is a fault in the system used. And the UN violates state sovereignty all the time, ever heard of the UN Convention of the Responsibilty 2 Protect. It was a big leap forward for humanity. And the EU is fundamentally different from the UN. The UN is an international organistation. The EU has become a pooling of sovereignty. And the EU isn't in the military buisness, yet. Which is good because as I have said IT NEEDS TO BE REFORMED FROM ITS CURRENT SYSTEM.

Democracy is not absent, it is limited. For a good example see the extension of the Franchise in British history. Also, note British abolition of slave trade which came about due to public pressure and strong internal demand for reform.

Excluding Texas I assume. And I would argue there is a major cultural difference between different parts of the US. The Civil War enforced it I mean, before that states clearly felt they had a right to secced, after it they dont.

Europe is incredibly different to America. Comparing France's relationship to the EU with California's relationship to the US is preposterous.

Well, aside from us being bound by trade regulations on over 50% of our trade and having no say in influencing that policy, and not being able to work within the EU to reform it and lowering our national security. No it wouldn't at all effect us. Just cause us leaving the EU wouldn't seriously effect it does not imply that the opposite is true.

Econmically we do relatively well yes, but politcally we are far less involved. Of course no one ever mentions that if Britain added its full economic weight to the Euro then it would be far and away the most powerful currency on earth and Britain would do even better.

Basiclly you are the epitome of Conservativism and stifling thought.

Could you explain why?. This is getting interesting...

Reforms through what mechanism? The Assembly can't do anything and Britain isn't in a position to radically change the entire structure of the EU to suit its whims. As stated before, the disenfranchised cannot 'reform' their problems away.

Europe is no more free from war than any other place in the world. The balance of power just happens to make it unlikely in the status quo, and that is primarily is due to NATO and the UN, not the EU.

This is acceptable, and is the kind of thing that the EU should be doing and should have stayed doing.

How, exactly? The EU hasn't done anything to 'develop human rights' outside of proclaiming what it thinks they are and not lifting a finger when its members violate it (France and Italy, much?).

States are still far more influential than corporate entities and are still subordinate to their people, not to the Earth. Only loonies claim to be 'citizens of the world.'

In what possible way have you reached that conclusion? It seems that you are redefining the role of the state based on your own wishes for the role of the state, not on empiricism.

So in other words the role of the state is still overwhelming to gain and retain its power...

You claimed the US was the first union of nations. It wasn't. And I would definitely argue that Europe has considerably more dividing it than uniting it.

The UN has never enforced any resolution on any member state because it has no mechanism to enforce them. Its members must enforce its resolutions for it (usually through independent sanctioning, which has a questionable effect at best). It cannot violate state sovereignty because it cannot actually do anything.

Idealism plain and simple.

Yes, I said as much.

That's one of its biggest flaws.

It needs to be razed and rebuilt according to a much simpler and non-political blueprint.

Appointed members are the ones who decide policy. The Assembly is ineffectual at best, and has no say in whether or not the Commission is actually going to enforce the policy they 'pass' the way the want it to, or at all.

That's not an example of success. Slaves didn't determine their own future, it was decided for them. That's inherently wrong, and an example of why the disenfranchised cannot rely on reform to solve anything.

Texas was an independent state, but it was never a nation. It was a colony, if anything.

The US is not a conglomerate of nations, it is a union of states. There is one American nation.

That doesn't really have any bearing on this discussion; the USA is fundamentally different to the EU.

It actually does. The EU would be much worse off if it lost Britain. Especially in the status quo turmoil, other members might depart along with them. But in any case it's not justifiable to retain your dictator because he's got a trade agreement with China and you want to buy some cheap plastic crap.

Britain is one of the keystones in the legitimacy of the EU.

Nonsense, liberty is my primary concern.

Just because my view of the future is different than yours doesn't make it less progressive.

"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I would say the entire political system has to be torn down and rebuilt if we want it to be a political union. As always its easier to rebuild if you still have the foundations, especially if they are stable (trade and economic union).

Feel free to ignore the far stronger example of the Extension of the franchise. A very good case study would be the suffragette vs suffragist cause. The suffragists had managed to convince 48% of MPs to allow women suffrage working within the system despite having no political power. The sufragettes, acting in a violent and diruptive manner reduced ths to under 10% in a metter of months. The History of british enfranchisment is full of those working within the system gaining reofrm despite having no power and of other more reactionary parties retarding the cause.

Perhaps from an old fashioned realist perspective. All the more modern IR theories, including neo-realism accept that war in Europe is ulmost unthinkable due to the spread of democracy and a strong binding of economic dependancy and the pooling of sovereignty (the neo-realists don't like this one tbf) and the co-ordination of regional defence (which I admit was NATO lead but with the recent EU Security Resolutions is shifitng to EU control.

This is acceptable, and is the kind of thing that the EU should be doing and should have stayed doing.

How, exactly? The EU hasn't done anything to 'develop human rights' outside of proclaiming what it thinks they are and not lifting a finger when its members violate it (France and Italy, much?).[/quote:2kgxezrm][/quote]

From from a Scots Law background I can tell you the EU Declaration on Human Rights is highly authoratitive in Scottish Courts, and the Human Rights Act was passed to bring us into compliance with it properly. Think also of EU lead humanitarian interventions in the DRC and East timour. I don't get it, sometimes your vehemently opposed to any pooling of sovereignty, but when it comes to human rights the EU should have power to enforce it.

In what possible way have you reached that conclusion? It seems that you are redefining the role of the state based on your own wishes for the role of the state, not on empiricism.[/quote:2kgxezrm]

No, in fact my Politics and IR lecture just last week came to this very comclusion so I can assure you it is the way academics (outside the US which is still old realist and behaviouralist") are going. I didn't say the state wasn't the most important actor and i'd didn't say its goals had changed I just said that the way in which it acts to secure those goals has been forced to change. Economic power is becoming more important that military, and the ability to attract TNCs is the best way to increase econmic power. Think of the Tiger economies of Asia, powerful states with very small armies. I agree a "world state" is at the moment an idealist view but the practicalities of achiveing it are becoming better and better defined.

Agian technically true to the letter of the law but the UN passes resolutions allowing other states to violate other states sovereignty, although arguably they don't really need this at all but it makes them feel better and makes the UN feel useful.

It also give states a new tool for gaining security, via legitimacy. Arguably states would never want to engage in humanitarian aid, and when the UN calls out very few states react, but those who do, who arn't USA, are given a manner of legitimacy. Japan has been recently increasing its legitimcay thusly via humanitarian aid projects, yet another way the role of the state has changed. IR is fucking complex and makes very little sense at the best of times

Generally speaking I tend to thinknormative idealism is thing we should aim for, maybe thats just me though.

Yes, I said as much.[/quote:2kgxezrm] Which means comparing them really adds very little to this debate.

Appointed members are the ones who decide policy. The Assembly is ineffectual at best, and has no say in whether or not the Commission is actually going to enforce the policy they 'pass' the way the want it to, or at all.[/quote:2kgxezrm] Well the members of the Council of Ministers are democratically appointed. But as I said, its LIMITIED, not absent.

Depends on who you ask I guess, especially in the ante-bellum period.

Arguably that balance between nations and states has been moved throughout history. Perhaps then Britain is a better example, its a Nation of Nations, so is Gemrany come to think of it. In fact im begining to wonder if we Europeans arn't simply more willing to come to gether insipte of differneces than the US that would rather keep people apart unless they all share a common what: history, culture, ideology, enthnicity?

Not that fundamentally, i still think the idea could be comparable, though there are definate differences.

The EU certainly wouldn't be as badly effected as Britian. If other counttries started leaving then yeah, fair enough. But as I said it would only be a set back, it would not bring about an end of Unification, even if we had to have another war to make us recognise we need this to work properly. And we would be able to trade with China fine. But if we wnated to trade with Europe, which we do alot of, we would still be bound by the EU's regulations, and all of a sudden we have no say what so ever in shaping them.

In comparison to Gemrany and France we arn't the biggest contributor to EU legitimacy. If we tried to do more we could be, as well as giving a big boost to the EU.

No, the fact that your view involves the implementations of systems that are clearly not the best normative approach are what make you less progressive. xD

You can never have absolute power. Neither can you be incoruptable. So I present this: what happens when an incoruptable system gains absolute power.

What? It's better to tear it down and rebuild it or it's better to use the existing foundations?

Metaphors aside, just looking at the mechanics of the EU should make you understand the futility of supporting it. If you had your way and could control even the actions of the British you would be incapable of enacting the reform you want, for reasons that you've already stated. The British political influence in the EU is relatively small given their economic impact, and it's very clear that Germany and France have their own, vastly different, ideas about where the EU should be headed.

Hmm, radical extremists use violence to further their agenda - agenda becomes unpopular; gee, who would've guessed?

I could use the obvious counterexamples of the Civil Rights movement in the US, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the independence movement in India, but it is simple common sense to understand that the disenfranchised are inherently disadvantaged by remaining in the system that disenfranchises them.

Despite all of the political science brouhaha that's flared up in the last couple of decades, the only model that explains everything that states do is the realist (predominantly Westphalian) model. Rational self-interest is the fundamental human behavior, and it's reflected in international relations through the state. International institutions don't exist because globalization is unseating the state as the primary international actor, they exist because they benefit (or in the past benefited) their constituent member states.

The idea makes some sense, don't get me wrong, but it isn't being tested now and doesn't have empiricism to fall back on. I don't doubt that Europe is just as capable of blowing out into war today as it was in the 30's. The only thing keeping that from happening is circumstance; a unipolar hegemony (and before that the bipolar nuclear stalemate) that makes any kind of aggression unthinkable for the aggressor. You'll find that virtually all IR theories hold that violent conflict increases with absence of a unipolar hegemony, and especially in the presence of a multipolarity.

I've never heard this idea before, in any venue, and I am extremely skeptical that it has any factual basis whatsoever.

The EU is not capable of sustaining a military apparatus that could replace NATO and for the most part people aren't too worked up about it.

That's nice, but again, there is no enforcement. The fact that your government has codified the principles laid out by the EU only goes to show that it lacks effective agency. That's a good thing, frankly, because an organization of that scope and power being able to effectively enforce its mandates would be an abomination unto liberty.

I didn't say they should, I said they don't. Just practically speaking, the EU is an incompetent, byzantine morass of jurisdictional and enforcement woes. It's a ship that's already sunk, with passengers that don't realize it because they've been told by the captain to avoid portholes.

One lecture is hardly evidence of any trend in the academia of Europe.

As it has been since the beginning (and long before) the advent of the nation-state.

That statement is incredibly questionable, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find any literature that supports that claim.

The 'Tiger economies' are actually evidence contrary to your idea that TNCs are the building block of economic prosperity, as most economic growth in these countries comes from homegrown corporations, not TNCs. There are, in fact, numerous barriers to entry for foreign corporations in much of Asia, which is one of the most widely credited reasons as to their independent economic success.

That is the only truth that matters.

So you again recognize that independent state action is far more prevalent and important than the actions of international institutions.

Soft power, which almost no one would claim comes from the UN, is of indeterminate importance in status quo geopolitics. Simply put: it's a buzzword that everyone likes to throw around without a real understanding of what it actually means, if it does indeed mean anything.

To affect any sort of real change it's far more important and useful to understand what roles the institutions that implement policy actually play and how exactly policy is developed. Unless you understand the systems that you act through and with you can never actually get anything done. See: anarchism, communism, libertarianism, etc. for examples.

If you recall, you're the one who brought it up as an example of state sovereignty being violated by an international institution...

The policy-making influence and power that the Assembly, the primary democratic institution of the EU, has is effectively zero. Even if they pass something it's not guaranteed to be enforced as they want or enforced at all, and there's absolutely nothing they can do to change that.

Quite frankly that's a good thing, because otherwise they would be violating state sovereignty left and right. But it is reason enough to abandon ship on the EU.

In any case it's not relevant to the discussion at hand.

It's really not a great idea to say that Britain is the shining example of 'a nation of nations,' as they have got the strongest separatist movements in the entirety of the Western world - all drawn across extremely national lines.

Germany is in a unique position within the EU because it not only gets to set the agenda for discourse, but it holds considerably more power than the other members. Unlike most other members of the EU, Germany can wield the institution to their national economic benefit, often at the expense of most of the rest of the EU.

Blah blah idealism blah blah Eurocentrism blah blah.

It is almost completely dissimilar to the EU.

It's a pretty important if . Britain plays more of a keystone role than you imagine, I would claim.

You assume that the end goal of the EU is a continent-state? That's simply preposterous.

This effectively cements your idealism to dangerous and irrational levels.

It was an analogy, not meant to be taken literally.

Britain is at least the third most important country in terms of legitimacy granted to the EU. Remember, as well, that the EU doesn't exist in a political vacuum and that Britain plays a much more significant international role that either France or Germany.

Obviously not, but a world state is very nearly the next most powerful thing.

The larger the state is the more corrupted it is bound to become, and certainly more distanced from its citizens.

I don't see the relevance.

@Kali

I feel this getting beyond the scope of this thread. And is moving onto theories of IR and a debate on the normative value of globalisation. Also it'll take an age to go through that reply properly.

Perhaps this is a debate suited to the mano-a-mano forum. A good way to try an relaunch it with a globally important debate issue. If not I will of courrse make a rebutal here.

Well that explains the US...

Don't think a formal debate would work because we're discussing two different topics at the moment, both IR theory and Britain's role in the EU.

It was never going to get passed, too few really wanted it... and I personally like being in the EU.