Europe: from emancipation to empowerment

Marx is dead. But so is Hayek. With neoliberalism crumbling, Europeans are beginning to wonder what it is that is really wrong with the current European Union. The paper proposes the following answer: To this day, European integration has not been a process of emancipation. This shortcoming, however, is not written on the Union’s face. It requires, pursuant to best psychological traditions, a careful analysis of symptoms. One indication of the absence of emancipation is, indeed, the Union’s rhetorical embrace of empowerment

Federalism and Equal Citizenship: The Constitutional Case for D.C. Statehood

As the question of D.C. statehood commands national attention, the legal discourse remains stilted. The constitutional question we should be debating is not whether statehood is permitted but whether it is required. Commentators have been focusing on the wrong constitutional provisions. The Founding document and the Twenty-Third Amendment do not resolve D.C.’s status. The Reconstruction Amendments — and the principle of federated, equal citizenship they articulate — do. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, as glossed by subsequent amendments, not only establishes birthright national citizenship and decouples it from race and caste but also makes state citizenship a constitutive component of equal national citizenship. Because the Founding architecture of federalism has remained in place as political rights have become integral to U.S. citizenship, national citizenship must be realized in part through the states. All Americans living in the United States, including in the District of Columbia, are constitutionally entitled to claim state citizenship where they reside. Beyond realizing a constitutional obligation, Congress’s admission of D.C. to the Union would serve American federalism. Many of federal-ism’s normative values — from creating spheres of minority rule, to satisfying local preferences, to providing laboratories of experimentation — are not well-realized in practice. But the very features of D.C. that have long impeded its recognition as a self-governing political community introduce new possibilities for achieving these values. As a plurality Black state, D.C. would provide a novel forum for federalism to empower people of color. And as the nation’s first city-state, D.C. would facilitate subsidiarity by merging federalism and localism

What is Constitutional Democracy? A Comparative Analysis Between The United States and The European Union

It is difficult to imagine the concept of constitutionalism without the notion of deliberative democracy. Historically, written constitutions are the capstone of the ages-long struggle to limit arbitrary governmental action. James Madison said, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government.” We live in an era of constitution making. There are close to 200 national constitutions in existence today, and more than half have been written or re-written in the last quarter century. New nations and radically new regimes, seeking the democratic credentials that are often a condition for recognition by other nations and by international political, financial, aid, and trade organizations, make writing a constitution a priority. In 1787, the new United States of America was the originator and model of traditional constitution making by a hand-picked elite group, and of the constitution as marking a settlement of conflict and inaugurating a new regime of powers and rights. Mainstream scholarship has generally presented the American Constitution as the fixed outcome of a period of nation building. Admirers, offering this as an example to others, tend to want to duplicate its perceived virtues: constitution-making as an act of completion, the constitution as a final settlement or social contract in which basic political definitions, principles, and processes are agreed, as is a commitment to abide by them. Europeans have recently adopted a constitution for the European Union that is very different from the U.S. Constitution. The creation of a document which solidifies 25 countries as a political body has enormous ramifications for democracy across all civilizations. On the face of it, the proposed European Union constitution imitates the American federalist form. As I intend to show, its specific provisions move in an entirely different direction. The influences, by which the United States and the European Union have developed their constitutions, and therefore their democracies, are complex, but integral to understanding the political foundations on which these two polities rest. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the differences and similarities between the two political bodies and constitutions, discover what, if any, rights are given to citizens, how identity (or lack thereof) of citizens affects the policies and progression of a political unit, and to better identify the responsibility of politicians within these communities. I will explore the historical examples of successful and unsuccessful governments, what a democratically influenced constitution should look like, and what future steps the European Union and United States should take to cement these ideals into their unions

The Constitution of the People: Reflections on Citizens and Civil Society

To be a U.S. citizen is to be a member of a constitutional order that requires political unity but is also committed to social and cultural diversity. How do we solve the riddle of the one and the many? What is, in Tom Paine\u27s words, the constitution of the people ? This is a perennial question that goes to the heart of American society and that increasingly shapes public debates about the health of our body politic. To answer it, Robert Calvert, a political scientist, has collected original essays by six distinguished scholars who are among the most influential interpreters of the American scene today. The essays included in this book are united by the effort to understand America\u27s identity in a way that does justice to the paradoxes and pluralities of its politics. Each seeks to find some middle ground between a government too intrusive and citizens too removed from public life, a balance between particular freedom and common purpose. Vigorously argued, lively, and accessible to the general reader, these essays challenge much of contemporary thought on the meaning of American constitutionalism. Description Robert E. Calvert is professor emeritus of political science at DePauw University. He is the editor of To Restore American Democracy: Political Education and the Modern University. This Kansas Open Books title is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/kansas_open_books/1008/thumbnail.jp

Caught Between History and Imagination: The Arguments for Post-National European Union Citizenship

The concept of EU citizenship holds promise as a revolutionary model of citizenship where residency and political participation substitute for national identity as membership criteria. However, EU citizenship's revolutionary potential is limited by the fact that today, citizenship remains tied to traditional definitions codified by EU member states, excluding millions of permanent residents who are living in Europe as long-term Third Country Nationals (TCNs). A host of individuals, nongovernmental organizations and institutions have pressed for expansion of EU citizenship to include TCNs. Following Vico's theories of imagination and ingenium and Olson and Goodnight's approach to rhetorical criticism of oppositional arguments, this dissertation analyzes the controversy over TCNs and EU citizenship, highlighting the implications of the controversy for the EU, its institutions, its citizens, and particularly its non-citizens

Children of the Great Mexican Family : Anglo-American Immigration to Texas and the Making of the American Empire, 1820-1861

This dissertation examines the thousands of Anglo-Americans who immigrated to Mexican Texas during the years following its independence from Spain. Long assumed to be the forbears of Manifest Destiny, it argues instead that these immigrants demonstrated a sincere desire to become Mexican citizens, that they were attracted to that country as much for its political promise as for its natural resources, and that they in fact shared more with their northern Mexican neighbors than with their compatriots in the northeastern United States. Drawing chiefly from the personal papers, diplomatic correspondence, and newspapers of Anglo settlers and their Mexican allies, this dissertation exposes a political irony at the heart of the United States’ imperial rise - that it had to do with that country’s early political weakness, rather than Mexico’s, and that the people most responsible for it were in fact trying to escape US dominion, not perpetuate it. It argues that Mexico offered a viable and attractive alternative to the US. Rather than seeing Mexico’s commitment to regional sovereignty and local autonomy as its chief failure, this project argues that it was precisely what attracted these immigrants to Mexico and formed the basis of their loyalty. Yet, if Mexico’s weak central government was its strength in the 1820’s, it would be the source of conflict and secession by the 1830’s and 1840’s. But Mexico was not unique in this regard. Indeed, this project recasts the US Civil War as part of a longer and more expansive experiment in extreme federalism by arguing that Texans seceded from Mexico for many of the same reasons that they and the rest of the South would ultimately secede from the United States. Thus, throughout the early part of the nineteenth century, the dominant geopolitical arrangement of the northwestern hemisphere was not primarily national. Rather, the southern United States and northern Mexico formed a semi-autonomous region united by its inhabitants’ shared commitment to regional sovereignty, martial citizenship, forced labor, and free trade; and one that presented the possibility of a geopolitical arrangement very different from that which ultimately emerged

Dialogic Federalism: Constitutional Possibilities for Incorporation of Human Rights Law in the United States

Discussions about the allocation of authority between federal and subfederal systems in the implementation of international human rights law typically proceed by staking out one of two initial positions. At one end of the spectrum, a traditional constitutional theory takes a restrictive view of state and local authority, envisioning hierarchical imposition of federally implemented international law norms through the federal treaty power and determination of customary international law by federal courts. At the other end of the spectrum, a revisionist theory assumes greater fragmentation and authority reserved to the states based on federalism and separation of powers limits on federal authority. “These divergent images capture different moments of political promise and despair, at times focused on the immense power of the national project, and other times appreciating the vitality and durability of forms of governance that, without...great resources, continue to have social and political force.” Under both models, one system--either federal or sub-federal--has a predominant voice in deciding when and how international human rights law is implemented. Such either/or approaches seek to avoid the conflict and indeterminacy created when the distribution of constitutional authority is uncertain. At the traditional/hierarchical end of the spectrum, the conflict is interference with the ability of the nation to speak with “one voice” in foreign affairs, posed by “divergent and perhaps parochial state interpretations” of international law. At the revisionist/fragmentation end, the conflict, at its core, is interference with states’ rights by federal courts (without authorization to do so by the federal political branches) and by the political branches (particularly Congress, when it exercises the treaty power to legislate in areas beyond those specifically conferred in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8). While the two paradigms described here are idealized and oversimplify the subtlety and hybridity within these paradigms, in fact much of the scholarship on federalism and human rights law in the United States loosely tracks one or the other of these two models, if not always in its purest form. This article argues for a third approach, premised on dialogue and intergovernmental relations as a way to negotiate, rather than avoid, conflict and indeterminacy. This approach links national and subnational governments in a dialogue about rights by “creat[ing] areas of overlap in which neither system can claim total sovereignty.” The dialogue emerges in these areas of overlap, particularly where differences arise in the extent to which national and subnational governments incorporate human rights obligations. Conflict and indeterminacy are desired conditions, so long as mechanisms exist to channel and resolve these differences and ambiguities, as a means of clarifying and articulating international human rights domestically. By contrast, where one system has sovereignty to act without the consensus and support of the other, the reach of international human rights law lacks both depth and breadth. Incorporating human rights norms into local law, state and local initiatives--particularly those that are legally binding--may increase the viscosity of human rights law in the United States. In performing these two important functions, state and local initiatives incorporating human rights standards may facilitate legally enforceable commitments at the national level. Far from adopting the revisionist perspective that states should displace the federal government in implementing, interpreting and enforcing international law, however, this article argues that the federal government should play a strong leadership role in coordinating information regarding state and local efforts to publicize best practices, to distill lessons learned, and to extract workable norms for possible adoption at the national level. Moreover, this article stops short of endorsing more ambitious proposals to involve state and local governments directly in the treaty-making process. While recognizing that subnational government units have participated on a limited basis in the World Trade Organization (WTO), in trade negotiations, and in various international environmental conferences, examination of state and local government involvement in such external international arenas is beyond the scope of this article. As for internal domestic incorporation of human rights law, however, a stronger coordination role by the national government is needed because “the Constitution created the institutions of the federal government precisely to avoid such balkanization of foreign policy and international affairs.” An Inter-Agency Working Group (along the lines of theme established under Executive Order 13,107) could play such a coordination role. Ultimately, it is in the federal government’s national interest to become more involved in monitoring and nurturing these local efforts. Under international law, the federal government is responsible for treaty violations of subnational governments and their officials. Even assuming international law eventually establishes liability for subnational governments, national governments will likely continue to be on the hook so long as these governments continue to assert control over their constituent units

Evolving Conceptions of Sovereignty as Applied to Membership in International Organizations

In the current international climate, both nations and individuals increasingly question both the validity and necessity of international organizations. This paper seeks to answer some of those questions, and to determine why countries choose to surrender significant portions of the national power that they are afforded under traditional perceptions of “Westphalian sovereignty”. This question is answered through an analysis of historical political thought on the concept of Sovereignty, then is applied to two case studies: the United Nations and the European Union, in which the benefits and downsides of surrendering sovereignty are discussed. Ultimately, this thesis concludes that the concept of Westphalian sovereignty is weakening in the modern world, as the international system gradually adopts new ideas about what national power allows, and reapplies old concepts that had long fallen out of use. Additionally, many of the problems faced by humanity in the present day are too large and complicated to be solved by singular nations, and require concerted international action. Together, these evolving conceptions of sovereignty and increasingly complex global problems have greatly contributed to the growth and empowerment of international organizations