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Gort posted:I don't like the idea of tiny member states holding as much power in a house as giant ones. Luxembourg gets a senator, and Germany gets a senator. That's the American senate system, and it's terrible. One person, one vote.
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Dec 17, 2020 17:11
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Cicero posted:It's the American Senate but even worse, as the delta between the biggest and smallest states by population is yet larger.
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Dec 17, 2020 17:14
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Just split up Germany then. I suppose you could give a senator to each of the German states 
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Dec 17, 2020 17:14
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Unicameral > bicameral Senate's exist to slow down democratic decision making and curtail the power of the parliament. gently caress them all.
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Dec 17, 2020 17:26
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Philonius posted:The existing EU parliament should be trimmed down a bit (750 members is very unwieldy), and elected by pan-european elections, with the same ballot in every country. This would require political parties to appeal to the entire EU population, and would promote integration. I think it's important to avoid a district or country based system, as this always leads to a two-party situation, and disenfranchised voters. In theory, this promotes politicians who consider all of Europe in their proposals. In practice it'll be German, French, Italian and Spanish interests that get the focus. Those four countries have over half the population and while that should count for something, in effect the other countries will start feeling left out and you're not going to see any decent politicians spending time wrangling the votes of all the 'small' nations without it being on an extremely populist platform.
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Dec 17, 2020 18:12
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Campaigns will also be national by nature - without a integrated european media market there's no way for one group to push a pan european campaign message. You'll end up as before where national politicians run national campaigns to vote to send them to europe, but with even less interest in smaller EU states. Further federalization between diverse European states requires a greater European identity for it not to go even worse than it currently does.
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Dec 17, 2020 18:42
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nimby posted:In theory, this promotes politicians who consider all of Europe in their proposals. Like, you could make the exact same complaint for anything where there's some sort of majority and minority. "Only monogamous interests are accounted for! Nobody cares about the swingers!!" Yeah no poo poo, because there's fewer of them. That's how democracy works.
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Dec 17, 2020 19:35
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Just split up Germany then. In the context of this idea, I'm all for it and it would be perfect! I even suggest splitting it beyond the current 16 German states. We need at least 160. 320 would be better. Sucks for all the other states not doing it, though. 320 senators to the other 26 states having 330 combined, talk about uneven. But eh, A Buttery Pastry said it so it's clearly a good idea. Hey, maybe we can fuse the other states together to reduce the number of senators so the final legislature is "less unwieldy" than 750? Too bad we just split Germany up, so I guess it's now 320 German senators to 1 senator elected by everyone else. I foresee no problems! (I'm exaggerating a lot, but you see the main problem, yes? But if we're talking about splitting every European state to kill the individual nationalism of each, then sure, let's do that. Currently against the will of a majority of voters, though. Maybe a strong EU-army + coup? Or hoping most people would be on board, eventually.)
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Dec 17, 2020 19:43
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Cicero posted:It's the American Senate but even worse, as the delta between the biggest and smallest states by population is yet larger. “Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.” Can't be worse than what we got!
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Dec 17, 2020 19:48
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nimby posted:In theory, this promotes politicians who consider all of Europe in their proposals. Here in the US we tried giving the 400,000 people in Wyoming an equal number of senators as the 30 million people in California, and uhhh well let's just say this has caused problems
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Dec 17, 2020 20:16
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Proportional representative but with moderate overweigth to the smaller Nations. Legally mandate that each list canidates must be similarly built up. Cant find enough finns to fill out the list? Then you dont get stand for election. I also think 20% of the seats should be reserved for a random selection of regular EU citizens Who may only serve one full period and would be banned from holding elected office for the next 10 years Lets get some bartenders and shop clerks in the room together with all the lawyers and bankers.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:08
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nimby posted:In theory, this promotes politicians who consider all of Europe in their proposals. It feels like this would be a self-feeding loop too, at least in some cases. For example official Finland has made it implicitly clear that Finnish governments regardless of coalition (except for the fascists I suppose) will mostly support the Germany-France line because Finland views the EU as a component of national defense, as joining NATO isn't a popular idea. So whatever piddly amount of representation our five million people would merit would wind up as even more in the position of yes-men and -women, because Russia isn't exactly disappearing from the map any time soon. And more generally, the EU is also very much an economical union, and the internal market can be used similarly to "hold smaller nations hostage", if you pardon the hyperbolic wording.
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Dec 18, 2020 00:47
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Baudolino posted:Proportional representative but with moderate overweigth to the smaller Nations. Legally mandate that each list canidates must be similarly built up. Cant find enough finns to fill out the list? Then you dont get stand for election. I also think 20% of the seats should be reserved for a random selection of regular EU citizens Who may only serve one full period and would be banned from holding elected office for the next 10 years Lets get some bartenders and shop clerks in the room together with all the lawyers and bankers. I don't understand the obsession with giving extra votes to a certain type of minority: the "I live in a small country/state" minority. Why do they deserve extra votes any more so than any other form of minority, whether that be racial, religious, or whatever? Most people used to be farmers and now very few are. Farmers often feel neglected. Do we give every farmer 40x the votes to make them feel better? I understand why some might take these anti-democratic routes for the same of compromise to get smaller countries on board, but in principle it's simply wrong. People's votes shouldn't be worth more or less because of where they live. If they're voting on the same thing, every voter should be equal. Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 01:02
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Cicero posted:I understand why some might take these anti-democratic routes for the same of compromise to get smaller countries on board, but in principle it's simply wrong. People's votes shouldn't be worth more or less because of where they live. If they're voting on the same thing, every voter should be equal. I agree with the theory that everyone should be counted equally. But my fear is that should Europe go Full Democracy Now, we'll see a lot more Germans in power than their proportional population would indicate, for example. Europe doesn't have a strong shared language, or a unifying cultural background strong enough to have people consider themselves Europeans who want the best for Europe. To get elected you have to either be a citizen of a large member state do you can profit off of the larger voter base, or spend a lot of effort setting up national campaigns to get a foot in the door in countries where they never heard of you or your positions and they don't understand a word you're saying. Smaller state politicians aren't going to have the cash to do that and might just be drowned out. That's without even consider that most people don't really give a poo poo about European politics and unless something drastic changes, never will.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:24
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Cicero posted:How about just using democracy? what you're missing is the basic fact that you need the consent of the countries that make up the EU and the smaller ones won't go for it if they see they can be safely ignored by the big powers in such an arrangement
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Dec 18, 2020 02:34
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The more immediate concern is that treaty negotiations can take up to a decade after which you need referendums in a number of countries where its liable to be rejected in a few countries. Can't go back, can't go forward, just stand in the rain and attempt to fashion an umbrella from your underwear.
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Dec 18, 2020 06:05
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you aren't seeing national governments surrendering that sort of authority to the actually existing parliament, why in the world would they do it for an anachronism like an upper house
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Dec 18, 2020 06:12
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The US senate/electoral college system that a racist iowa farmer has quite a few more votes than someone in a homeless tent is not a good one to model from.
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Dec 18, 2020 07:10
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If the small states get nothing from joining such a union then they won't join, if they are forced, it will poison the european project.
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Dec 18, 2020 08:22
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Yeah bicameral parliaments were never popular due to their organizational benefits, it's always been about minor interest putting reigns on major interests.
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Dec 18, 2020 08:34
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Philonius posted:I've been giving some thoughts to how the EU 'ought' to be organized, if your goal is further federalization. Replacing the European Commission with an upper-house European Senate doesn't make sense. Judging from the rest of your post I guess you meant the European Council. The Treaty of Lisbon curtailed veto powers by individual countries and moved to qualified majority voting for most decisions already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_European_Union https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/unanimity.html quote:The latest amendment to the treaties, the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in 2009, increased the number of areas where qualified majority voting in the Council applies.
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Dec 18, 2020 09:31
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Campaigns will also be national by nature - without a integrated european media market there's no way for one group to push a pan european campaign message. You'll end up as before where national politicians run national campaigns to vote to send them to europe, but with even less interest in smaller EU states. Further federalization between diverse European states requires a greater European identity for it not to go even worse than it currently does. That's the whole problem though - the current way the EU is organized stands in the way of achieving greater European identity. In my country, candidates for the EU parliament run as members of one of the national parties (mostly). Once elected, they disappear into a mass of representatives from all over Europe, none of which is or ever will be known here, because they can only run in their own countries. As a consequence, European politics are hard to follow for ordinary citizens, partly because it's not getting enough media coverage, and partly because out of 750 parliamentarians, only 10-20 will ever be relevant to them. That's why I'm advocating a pan-European ballot. Instead of an initiative proposed by someone outside their reach, a voter will instead see that it's proposed by (say) the EU green party, the same EU green party that appears on their ballot. And whether they agree with their politics or not, or whether they voted for the coalition in power or not, at least people will recognize that they have some level of influence over the process. Right now, EU laws and decisions might as well be handed down from on high as far as the average citizen is concerned. Cicero posted:How about just using democracy? I agree, and if I got to design a political system from scratch, I would not include a senate. We do have to face political realities though, and I very much doubt member states would agree to completely give up their say and move to purely proportional representation, as things currently stand. Right now they have veto power over the most important issues, so moving to a system where they are reduced to majority votes in a senate is already a big sacrifice.
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Dec 18, 2020 12:39
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His Divine Shadow posted:If the small states get nothing from joining such a union then they won't join, if they are forced, it will poison the european project.
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Dec 18, 2020 14:11
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I still say that pan-european elections need to be a thing just because they re going to be hilarious.
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Dec 18, 2020 14:11
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eurovision song contest already exists tho
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Dec 18, 2020 14:20
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Cicero posted:How about just using democracy? Of course you're not wrong that the American experiment shows that massively favoring smaller states is a bad idea too, and if the goal is eventual European integration then that's a toxic thing to include as a building block. It might make some sense now, to offset existing institutional power that's (ideally) getting dismantled, but you have to plan for afterward too. Which is why I'm 100% serious when I suggest the solution is breaking up the larger states. Divide Europe into a 3-6 million pop regions, each having 5-10 representatives. "Legacy countries" smaller than that can just be regions on their own still with proportional representation, with every region having at least 1 representative. At the very most this can result in a region being represented at a factor 2 more than another, though given the actual sizes of the smallest countries and the number of seats in the EU parliament this would be closer to a factor 1.5 due to Cyprus just squeezing into having 2 representatives. Which frankly isn't a big deal given how little this skews the overall result. Not like 1 extra vote from Cyprus is really gonna gently caress with the overall calculus of 750 seats. A pure pan-European list system has the obvious problem of potentially leaving entire regions unrepresented, which simply doesn't work for a federal system. Like, the Baltic Countries might get someone with the broad political leanings they support, but no one able to take regional concerns federal. That said, a pan-European list makes sense in terms of creating a pan-European political system that is far less beholden to national politics. Perhaps a compromise between the two could work? Basically a system where half the seats are regional representatives, divided proportionally but with at least 1 per region. This leaves some regions overrepresented and others underrepresented, but that is easily remedied by weighing the votes. Slovenia would for example be underrepresented at the regional level, and so you'd make their votes count 135% at the list level. Conversely, Malta would not count at all and Luxembourg would only count for 33%. Talking current size of EU parliament obviously. Cicero posted:Yeah. To me it looks like the optimal strategy is that you create the trade union or whatever using correct principles, and if that means initially small countries don't join because they don't get special privileges, so be it. The economic benefits of such a union will likely entice many of them to still join, eventually. Want the benefits? Then play by the same rules as everyone else.
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Dec 18, 2020 14:38
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Truga posted:eurovision song contest already exists tho A system where each nation has one party but you can't vote for your own seems like a great idea. Von der Leyen in gala dress announcing that Greece's 12 points go to Cyprus!!! It would kick off a continental war right after of course but what an unforgettable night it would have been.
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Dec 18, 2020 17:21
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Moving towards a true federation instead of a flimsy coalition seems improbable because for a federation to work, you'd need some kind of shared feeling of belonging together among the common folks. Now we have elites who move across national borders very fluently and can feel true camaraderie with foreign colleagues, and working class filth who either have to go abroad to slave away for capitalists and experience racism every day or who see foreigners coming from poorer countries to steal their jobs. USA is as close to a monoculture as you can get for a country of that size, and even they are struggling with keeping everyone devoted to the federal project. It feels like a sisyphean task to reform EU from what it is now into a federation when most people don't want that now and to change this you need unanimity, and it doesn't look like the stress on societies is going to reduce in the coming decades. We are having more climate pressure, more asylum seekers coming, more economic competition from China, population ages more. With all these challenges, I'm not sure if federation is ever going to be feasible - in a democratic, peaceful manner. OTOH all of these challenges would be so much easier to face if we did have federation. It's like United Nations, we know it needs to be reformed or things will go horrible, but we won't be able to reform it until after things go horrible, just like with League of Nations. But I haven't given up hope with EU yet, and our future is not a binary choice of either we achieve the internationalist utopia or we descend into a nationalist hell. And who knows, maybe future generations will be brainwashed by Chinese social media companies and there will be one world government after all! 
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Dec 18, 2020 21:16
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The EU and the US if anything faced both similar issues and the result (and drawbacks were much the same). The US senate was formed originally due to the fact that the US government (such as it was) needed all the colonies to sign on the constitution and since the US itself was weak and had just won its independence, a sacrifice needed to be made. The Council of the European Union, which was formed from the Council of the European Community, was created in a similar context during the Cold War and the fact that Western Europe may be again a future battlefield. In that context, it made more sense to get Benelux on board even if it would could compromise the efficiency of the common market and the EU itself was rooted in EEC institutions. Also, at this point, while the larger states are still powerful, the expansion of the EU into Eastern Europe/Southern Europe has created a broad mix of population sizes and it is doubtful there would not be determined resistance that would greatly weaken the union. As for the challenges of the future, the EU's one real path is probably continual fiscal stimulus backed up by ECB bond purchasing and dumping that money into infrastructure and demand-side spending. Also, the EU is already in a position, where it very well may have to geopolitically balance itself between the Atlantic and Eurasia and act more as a buffer/mediator than a "combatant." (It doesn't help that European militaries in generally have worn themselves down to primarily defensive forces.)
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Dec 18, 2020 22:31
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The way you handle it is you write the constitution with a unicameral proportional legislature, and then don't give a poo poo if the small states don't join. Like the US did originally, the first 9 states to ratify the constitution started using it and the others eventually joined up because they couldn't afford not to. Except the US was dumb and included a senate and a bunch of protections for the slaveholding minority to punch well above their weight, don't do that part
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Dec 19, 2020 00:11
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what is the existential threat forcing smaller countries into the EU again
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Dec 19, 2020 00:15
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imo if Luxembourg decides not to join that's better than them getting 1000x the voting power of Germany or whatever the ratio is and getting to gently caress things up whenever they want like Wyoming does to us on the reg
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Dec 19, 2020 00:20
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the issue isn't luxembourg, it's that you're now proposing to place the smaller countries entirely at the mercy of the larger ones, which realistically disintegrates the union from the bottom up until it's just france leaving because the majority of the legislature is german
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Dec 19, 2020 00:24
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V. Illych L. posted:the issue isn't luxembourg, it's that you're now proposing to place the smaller countries entirely at the mercy of the larger ones, which realistically disintegrates the union from the bottom up until it's just france leaving because the majority of the legislature is german France still could vote with other countries to overule Germany, I don't see the problem.
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Dec 19, 2020 00:29
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Ok well if Europeans don't believe in democracy and one person one vote then I guess it's doomed because letting tiny minority interests block everything isn't a solution either
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Dec 19, 2020 00:30
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Do you believe chinese voters have a right to determine how you live? It's one person one vote after all. Democracy requires a single demos - a group of people who have a legitimacy to determine decision for the minority in the eyes of the minority. It's hard enough getting this is current sized nation states, and large democracies require botg more federalism and more nationalism to make that demos stick.
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Dec 19, 2020 00:37
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Celexi posted:France still could vote with other countries to overule Germany, I don't see the problem. right, except that as we've seen the core has a habit of uniting against the periphery to assert its interests - that's why it disintegrates from the bottom up in this scenario the point is that the present version of the EU is the best we're going to get under the present geopolitical framework. it's undemocratic and opaque by design, because the people writing the rules do not want to be held accountable for the poo poo they keep pulling, and the EU openly admits to facilitating that function there's no constitutional trick to make it work because it's an elite-based alliance of wildly heterogeneous groups with no serious external threat to keep it honest except for the scrutiny of the national populations. the EU as it exists is a *really bad idea*
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Dec 19, 2020 00:50
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The real power move is for France to annex Luxembourg because why does Luxembourg even exist
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Dec 19, 2020 00:51
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I guess I don't understand why German Representatives would all vote together on everything and tell everyone else how to live. Maybe I don't understand Europeans, but aren't there multiple political parties in Germany? That disagree on things? Maybe one party would agree with a French party on more things than with their rival German party? California Republicans and Democrats don't all vote as a bloc on everything just because they're all Californian. And yeah if we joined a federation that included China, each Chinese person should get an equal vote, that sounds good to me? I mean maybe first get enough other people to join so China isn't an absolute majority of the population but yeah more people -> more votes, that sounds right.
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Dec 19, 2020 00:53
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V. Illych L. posted:what is the existential threat forcing smaller countries into the EU again Like I said, the EEC was formed during the Cold War and everything was grandfathered in.
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Dec 19, 2020 00:56
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