Competition within a pollical party
and recognition that a political party is indeed a political party are
essential or at least advantageous to any political party in a democratic
system. Moreover, a republic, even if it contains smaller republics but is not
just them in aggregate, deserves to be recognized as such rather than implicitly
relegated by erroneous nomenclature that is designed to appease skeptics so
they won’t rise up to resist the federal republic itself. “Let the chips fall
where they may” is, I believe, an expression from gambling. Another expression
comes from playing cards: Call a spade a spade. These two expressions evince
truth and power, whereas hiding behind false notions is sheer weakness. Much of
my writing on the European Union is oriented to strengthening it, as well as to
gleam lessons for both the E.U. and U.S. by comparing and contrasting them as
federal empire-scale unions of states.
Rubber-stamping closed-room
decisions is hardly uncommon at conventions of political parties. The E.U.’s
European People’s Party is no exception. At the annual convention in 2025, the
party’s leadership appeared “quite monarchic” in spite of the fact that the
E.U. was “the world’s second largest democracy,” and that President Von der
Leyen had been touting the value being placed on democracy.[1]
At the convention, Manfred Weber was re-elected by 502 of 563 votes “while his
loyal ally Dolors Montserrat was elected unopposed to the position of secretary
general with 91% of the votes cast.”[2]
The lack of intra-party competition could be expected to have an impact
politically on the E.U. itelf, as the “ascendant” EPP included E.U. Commission
President Von der Leyen, 13 commissioners, and 188 representatives in the Parliament.[3]
With the E.U. being a few
years over 30 years old, the EPP in the E.U. could be likened to the Congress
Party in India during the twentieth century. To be sure, the latter party
eventually lost its dominance, and the EPP could be expected to lose its early
foothold too. Beforehand, however, a democracy deficit can exist not only when one
party dominates at the federal level of an empire-scale polity of polities, but
also when such a party is monocratic at the party level.
In other words, a multiplier effect can be in the mix when dominance is salient within a party that in turn is dominate in a government, and an executive branch, a legislative chamber elected by citizens, and a supreme court do indeed constitute a government even if denial has a firm foothold in the public square. In fact, for the media to mislabel a political party’s convention as a congress, which is actually an international meeting of sovereign countries, and a union such as the E.U. as a bloc undermines the credibility of a party and union. Both a democracy-deficit and enervating ideological (i.e., Euroskeptic) misnomers imperil a federal system, especially if the states hold most (but not all!) of the governmental sovereignty.
For the
Commission to be able to enforce even its exclusive competencies (i.e.,
enumerated powers), it is important that that executive branch be representative
rather than oligarchic and known to be something more than of a bloc, which is
a temporary grouping for one purpose. The E.U. was not intended to be temporary
or of just one pillar. Indeed, the third pillar belies any claim that the E.U.
is merely an economic international organization. International organizations
such as NATO and the UN have no governmental sovereignty of their own, and do
not have legislative chambers whose representatives are directly elected by
citizens. International organizations do not even have citizens! A little intellectual honesty can go a long way.
3. Ibid.
