The euro zone faces the same choice as the Holy Roman Empire and American patriots of old: how to overcome discredited forms of confederation. Rather than digging themselves into a deeper recession and democratic deficit through austerity measures, the states in the common currency need to form a full and mighty union on Anglo-American lines. They must create a strong executive presidency elected by popular vote across the euro zone, a truly empowered house of citizens elected according to population and a senate representing the regions. . . .
This is the only framework that will endow the euro zone with the democratic legitimacy to reassure the bond markets, underpin the implementation of good financial governance across the entire union and defend its interests and values on the world stage.
More than 200 years ago, the choice was between the Holy Roman Empire and Britain. The Americans opted wisely and prospered; the Germans continued to muddle through only to see their empire extinguished. History thus holds out both a great opportunity and a terrible warning for the euro zoners. (Brendan Simms, "The Ghosts of Europe Past", NYT, 6/10)
I wonder, rather, whether the old Hapsburg Empire isn't the better model. The fight between Prussia and Austria during the 18th and 19th Century was won eventually by the more homogenous, centralized, and militaristic state. As, especially toward the end, Austria played whack-a-mole with one nationalist insurgency after another, the Prussians were consolidating the northern German states into a superpower, and one that got a crazy kaiser in the 1890s that led them into WWI and a crazier fuehrer in 1933 that led them into WWII. Give me a Hapsburg any day over a Hohenzollerin.
But that was then and this is now. It's hard to imagine the kind of balance-of-power military game played in Europe over the couple of hundred years before WWII being played out among the new great global powers in the coming century. Mutually Assured Destruction forces the game to be played on another board, one where the weapons are economic not militaristic. So I suppose there is a kind of inevitable logic in the EU becoming a stronger, more centralized and economically integrated state if it wants to play its role as a great power in the global game with the US, China, and the other emerging economies.
But I'm skeptical. It's at a disadvantage that neither the US nor Germany coped with to the same degree. The "United States of Europe" will be a lot like the old Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of states with very strong and very diverse local identities, and which will want to guard its autonomy and sovreignty jealously. If it was hard for an emperor to rule, will it be any easier for a democratically elected USE government?
And as the world becomes economically more integrated and as multinational corporations homogenize everything, there is likely to be intense backlash along the lines of what we're seeing in Istanbul right now. There will be ongoing reistance by locals irked by the efforts of technocrats trying to realize their abstract, centralizing, power-consolidating fantasies. There will be levels of resistance and fragmentation in inverse proportion to the intensity of efforts by a technocratic elite to consolidate and homogenize. Isn't that what we're seeing in the US? Isn't that the driving force behind the Tea Party and its resistance to what it sees as Federal technocratic overreach? And who's to say they're wrong? Not me.
The challenge lies in that in a complex, globalizing world there have to be central institutions that coordinate efforts to deal with the big issues I talked about the other day. The market and the uncoordinated efforts of individuals and groups aren't going to solve problems associated with climate change, for instance, and neither are they going to solve or even mitigate problems of economic injustice. These are issues where the rules have to be developed and enforced with some degree of centralized legal authority.
So some balance between local autonomy and centralized rules enforcement has to be struck. Barring some kind of singularity or another, It might take another two hundred years to get there, but that's what has to happen. And it will probably look a lot like the Holy Roman Empire of old--not with its imperial, crown-and-altar trappings, but in its balance between local autonomy and a legal framework enforced by a central authority with broadly accepted legitimacy.
See also Finding the Balance between Centralization and Localism I.