Last month, the European Union's slow meander towards a unified federation was brought a step closer to reality. President of the European Commission Mr José Manuel Barroso, the head of Europe's executive branch, heralded work done by the European Council and the challenge it presented to doubters of the EU's ability to get the necessary done (BBC, 2012).
As the EU takes these steps, the European Commission and the office of President are only going to become more influential. The office, holders of which have included former Italian Prime Minister Sig. Romano Prodi and British politician Mr Roy Jenkins, has faced some criticism over the indirect way in which the office is appointed - its indirectness insulating it from democracy (Mahoney, 2008).
However the indirect election of heads of state is not rare - the most famous being the Electoral College of the United States that elects the President. Also a similar case is Germany, where its Bundespräsident is elected by a grand convocation of both chambers of the German parliament.
In the US, delegates are appointed by the votes of the presidential election, and they in turn choose the next president. In both Germany and the EU, the delegates are the members of the respective legislatures.
Both the American & German systems have faced problems that call in to question how those offices are elected. Germany has only recently seen the resignation of President Wulff over corruption allegations (Pidd, 2012). And the United States has certainly faced controversy, with accusations that its electoral college is undemocratic - its process, which allows delegates to nominate a president against popular support, has received some criticism (Amar & Amar, 2004). Such problems might suggest that such models are not the best for the EU to emulate - that instead a more direct method of election might be preferable, and increase accountability.
As a means of balancing out and outmatching the often limited powers of these Presidents, there usually sits a body of elected representatives in whom is collectively vested the power to make law. For Europe that body is the European Parliament.
The European Parliament recently demonstrated the power of an effective assembly of elected representatives when it refused to ratify the ACTA Treaty, stopping the establishment of the treaty after massive public outcry across Europe. In doing so it went with public opinion over the will of the 22 member state government who had individually chosen to sign the treaty (RTE, 2012).
However, an alternative body with the power to offer checks and balances is not the same as an organisation that itself is accountable. With thoughts along those lines, steps have already been proposed to make the European Commission more democratic (Mahoney, 2010).
So, along with Germany and the United States, the European Union has an effective means to balance the potential power of its relatively insulated executive office. But as with those other offices, it must be proactive in raising its visibility and increasing its accountability - lest it become mistrusted for the indirect democracy by which it is appointed.
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References:
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+ Helen Pidd's 'German president resigns and could face prosecution in corruption scandal'; 17 February 2012.
+ Honor Mahoney's 'Barroso admits legitimacy problem for commission president post'; at euobserver.com; 28 February 2008.
+ Akhil Reed Amar & Vikram David Amar's 'The Electoral College Votes Against Equality'; September 8 2004.
+ RTE's 'MEPs reject anti-counterfeiting trade agreement'; 5 July 2012.
+ Honor Mahony's 'EP president wants future EU commissioners directly elected'; on euobserver.com; 23 March 2010.
Monday, 30 July 2012
Monday, 23 July 2012
Opposition and the blame game
In 'On Liberty' John Stuart Mill claimed that, for the good functioning of a system of government, two opposing forces must always be represented:
Few parliaments of recent memory have represented such an abstract division.
Britain is largely split between implacable rivals - Conservatives and Labour. So too is Germany - between CDU and SPD. The recent French elections, despite carrying hope for the French centre, have only further entrenched their left and right camps.
As for opposition parties: in the US, there have been suggestions (Cohen, 2012) that Republicans may have stepped a long way beyond merely keeping the government honest, and in the UK Labour has faced criticism (Lucas, 2012) for only beginning to develop prospective policy two years into this parliament (Wintour, 2012).
So why do these parties play the opposition role as they do? Why do they approach opposition as part of the strategic manoeuvring needed to challenge for the leadership?
It shouldn't really be a surprised that parties choose to build towards victory at the next election. But we should still be wary when parties offer little in the way of policy before elections - beyond the vagueness and vagueries. Because, in its own way, this absence of substance is tied directly to those aims of victory - the lack of policies making the party a less easy target to pin down.
All of it this is rooted with the primary problems of majoritarian democracy - there is power to be won. When held with a majority then the opposition becomes moot, a consolation prize for the loser. So the sides face-off to secure the all-to-often occurring majoritarian tendency of uncontested rule; where there are winners with power and losers without - rather than the representation of people in all the decisions of their lives that stands as the democratic ideal. And while they compete with tactical and strategic point-scoring, a great many things of importance are allowed to slip onto the back-burner in the name of victory in some greater ideological conflict - and this trend is troubling.
Particularly when it allows parties to conceal their policies and governing intentions while in opposition - then, if elected to office, to govern piece-by-piece through legislation; forcing journalists and others to act as translators and interpreters between these fragments and our attempts at building a macro-impression of that party's intentions.
And so, as these things cloud our vision, we're robbed of the oversight for which Mill described opposition as necessary.
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References:
==========
+ John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty'; 1859.
+ Michael Cohen's 'Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?'; in The Guardian; 9 June 2012.
+ Caroline Lucas' 'Labour's lack of alternative vision'; in The Guardian - Letters; 15 January 2012.
+ Patrick Wintour's 'Jon Cruddas to co-ordinate Labour's policy review'; in The Guardian; 15 May 2012.
'It is almost a commonplace that a party of order or stability and a party of progress or reform are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life, until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity.'Here we have, not the ideological divisions of parties, but the opposing forces in a reasoned argument - the argument for the status quo versus the argument for change. And they are roles that cannot be played to their full measure through specific and persistent ideological polemics.
Few parliaments of recent memory have represented such an abstract division.
Britain is largely split between implacable rivals - Conservatives and Labour. So too is Germany - between CDU and SPD. The recent French elections, despite carrying hope for the French centre, have only further entrenched their left and right camps.
As for opposition parties: in the US, there have been suggestions (Cohen, 2012) that Republicans may have stepped a long way beyond merely keeping the government honest, and in the UK Labour has faced criticism (Lucas, 2012) for only beginning to develop prospective policy two years into this parliament (Wintour, 2012).
So why do these parties play the opposition role as they do? Why do they approach opposition as part of the strategic manoeuvring needed to challenge for the leadership?
It shouldn't really be a surprised that parties choose to build towards victory at the next election. But we should still be wary when parties offer little in the way of policy before elections - beyond the vagueness and vagueries. Because, in its own way, this absence of substance is tied directly to those aims of victory - the lack of policies making the party a less easy target to pin down.
All of it this is rooted with the primary problems of majoritarian democracy - there is power to be won. When held with a majority then the opposition becomes moot, a consolation prize for the loser. So the sides face-off to secure the all-to-often occurring majoritarian tendency of uncontested rule; where there are winners with power and losers without - rather than the representation of people in all the decisions of their lives that stands as the democratic ideal. And while they compete with tactical and strategic point-scoring, a great many things of importance are allowed to slip onto the back-burner in the name of victory in some greater ideological conflict - and this trend is troubling.
Particularly when it allows parties to conceal their policies and governing intentions while in opposition - then, if elected to office, to govern piece-by-piece through legislation; forcing journalists and others to act as translators and interpreters between these fragments and our attempts at building a macro-impression of that party's intentions.
And so, as these things cloud our vision, we're robbed of the oversight for which Mill described opposition as necessary.
==========
References:
==========
+ John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty'; 1859.
+ Michael Cohen's 'Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?'; in The Guardian; 9 June 2012.
+ Caroline Lucas' 'Labour's lack of alternative vision'; in The Guardian - Letters; 15 January 2012.
+ Patrick Wintour's 'Jon Cruddas to co-ordinate Labour's policy review'; in The Guardian; 15 May 2012.
Monday, 16 July 2012
Veto and concentration of power
Former UK Prime Minister Mr John Major recently told the Leveson inquiry that he felt challenged over his government's position on Europe by Rupert Murdoch and the strength of his media empire (BBC, June 2012). The accusation levelled at Murdoch was that he had suggested that the Prime Minister would face unfavourable press coverage from his media outlets if he didn't alter his European position.
If true, along with the rest of the scandal surrounding News International, it would be suggestive of an extraordinary amount of power being built and concentrated, over a matter of decades, within the news empire. So much in fact that it had developed the potential to threaten veto.
The power of veto, meaning to forbid, describes the use of political position to block the passage of policies by withholding support from, or generating opposition to, those policies with sufficient numbers - or political leverage - to prevent them.
Mr Major, at Leveson, described how he perceived Mr Murdoch to be angling for a change of the Government's European policy - away from seeking a place at the heart of Europe heart, toward a referendum on leaving it (BBC, June 2012).
The power of veto always represents a threat to the balance of any set of relationships. A veto, by deriving its power from commanding sufficient authority to forbid actions on the part of another, tips the balance away from the ability of individuals to think and act freely.
In the case of journalism, it faces similar criticism to that which has plagued the British police for decades - not enough accountability and oversight (Robertson, 1991). As with the police, the solutions are not so clear cut.
For journalism, some sort of direct political oversight would be a dangerous step towards censorship. During the outcry caused by the hacking scandal, some quiet voices have been urging people to remember that tabloid journalism has played a beneficial role, not to mention the role journalists apparently played in uncovering the recent scandal.
The problem for journalism has not been regulation and law, as Ian Hislop put it, 'Most of the heinous crimes that ...have made such a splash at this inquiry are already illegal' (BBC, January 2012). Rather, the source of the problem appears to be the vast concentration of power caused by conglomerate media companies - where the possibility exists (though it is not necessarily used) for several media outlets to coordinate their 'message'.
The importance of journalism calls for sensible & considered solutions to come out of the Leveson inquiry. Lord Leveson has already assured the PCC that censorship is not on the cards (BBC, July 2012). To ensure that things remain that way, the most pressing need will be the restoration of real editorial independence - to prevent the coordination of the massive multimedia campaigns that have so unbalanced the relationship between the state and the press. Editorial independence is important not only to the prevention of an immensely powerful but unaccountable industry continuing on its present path, but it is also needed to stop the inevitable measures that would have to be taken to curb those institutions: the heavy regulation that would end large parts of press freedom.
==========
References:
==========
+ BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: John Major reveals Murdoch's EU demand'; 12 June 2012.
+ Geoffrey Robertson's 'Freedom, the Individual and the Law'; Penguin, 1991.
+ BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: Ian Hislop says new press laws not needed'; 17 January 2012.
+ BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: Judge has "no truck" with censorship'; 10 July 2012.
If true, along with the rest of the scandal surrounding News International, it would be suggestive of an extraordinary amount of power being built and concentrated, over a matter of decades, within the news empire. So much in fact that it had developed the potential to threaten veto.
The power of veto, meaning to forbid, describes the use of political position to block the passage of policies by withholding support from, or generating opposition to, those policies with sufficient numbers - or political leverage - to prevent them.
Mr Major, at Leveson, described how he perceived Mr Murdoch to be angling for a change of the Government's European policy - away from seeking a place at the heart of Europe heart, toward a referendum on leaving it (BBC, June 2012).
'In the dinner it became apparent, in discussion, that Mr Murdoch said that he really didn't like our European policies - this was no surprise to me - and he wished me to change our European policies. If we couldn't change our European policies his papers could not and would not support the Conservative government. As I recall he used the word "we" when referring to his newspapers. He didn't make the usual nod towards editorial independence.'As Mr Major used vetoes to get what he wanted in Europe, so Murdoch apparently tried to veto Mr Major to get what he wanted.
The power of veto always represents a threat to the balance of any set of relationships. A veto, by deriving its power from commanding sufficient authority to forbid actions on the part of another, tips the balance away from the ability of individuals to think and act freely.
In the case of journalism, it faces similar criticism to that which has plagued the British police for decades - not enough accountability and oversight (Robertson, 1991). As with the police, the solutions are not so clear cut.
For journalism, some sort of direct political oversight would be a dangerous step towards censorship. During the outcry caused by the hacking scandal, some quiet voices have been urging people to remember that tabloid journalism has played a beneficial role, not to mention the role journalists apparently played in uncovering the recent scandal.
The problem for journalism has not been regulation and law, as Ian Hislop put it, 'Most of the heinous crimes that ...have made such a splash at this inquiry are already illegal' (BBC, January 2012). Rather, the source of the problem appears to be the vast concentration of power caused by conglomerate media companies - where the possibility exists (though it is not necessarily used) for several media outlets to coordinate their 'message'.
The importance of journalism calls for sensible & considered solutions to come out of the Leveson inquiry. Lord Leveson has already assured the PCC that censorship is not on the cards (BBC, July 2012). To ensure that things remain that way, the most pressing need will be the restoration of real editorial independence - to prevent the coordination of the massive multimedia campaigns that have so unbalanced the relationship between the state and the press. Editorial independence is important not only to the prevention of an immensely powerful but unaccountable industry continuing on its present path, but it is also needed to stop the inevitable measures that would have to be taken to curb those institutions: the heavy regulation that would end large parts of press freedom.
==========
References:
==========
+ BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: John Major reveals Murdoch's EU demand'; 12 June 2012.
+ Geoffrey Robertson's 'Freedom, the Individual and the Law'; Penguin, 1991.
+ BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: Ian Hislop says new press laws not needed'; 17 January 2012.
+ BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: Judge has "no truck" with censorship'; 10 July 2012.
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