On March 8, 2026, The
Associated Press reported on the voting in Columbia that took place that day “for
a new Congress and to select candidates . . . in a primary-style contest ahead
of a presidential election in May.”[1]
This description could hardly be more “American,” in the sense of referring to
the United States. I contend that this allusion to the U.S. is overdrawn. Were
Columbia to apply for membership in the U.S., the accession would pertain to
becoming a state, rather than to Columbia as a United States of South America
merging with the other United States. Put another way, even though Columbia
appropriated from the federal level of the U.S. in creating a presidency, a Congress
that in turn consists of “The Senate” and “The House of Representatives,” and a
presidential election process that includes something akin to primaries,
Columbia corresponds to the American states (only without being members of a
union as they are) rather than to the United States. Columbia’s accession into
the U.S. as a state would not instantiate an empire within an empire.
One way of distinguishing Columbian
politics from politics at the national level in the U.S. is to point out that
the timespan for presidential campaigning in Columbia in 2026 between the “primaries”
and the presidential general election was just months. Whereas that is plenty
of time to campaign across Columbia, much more time is needed for U.S.
presidential candidates to campaign in 50 states. Accordingly, the U.S.
presidential campaign “season” is much longer—with the primaries themselves
taking place over about 6 months. This is a great way to grasp the qualitative
leap (i.e., rather than being a matter of degree) that separates and
distinguishes a state from a union that is composed of many such states. Although
only a few months are between the nominating political conventions and the
general presidential election in the U.S., and only a few months are between
the Columbian “primaries” and that presidential election, the American presidential
campaign “season” is significantly front-loaded in part because the U.S. is an
empire-scale federal system wherein the states play a role in the election of
the federal president and thus should at least theoretically be campaigned in. It
is not enough to campaign in an area the size of Columbia, for example.
Shifting from process to
institutional analysis, Columbia’s system of government as unitary can be
distinguished from the U.S.’s federal system. Although imitation has been said to
be the highest form of flattery, referring to Columbia’s upper and lower
legislative chambers as together being a Congress is misleading. In the United
Colonies, which predates the United States, the Continental Congress was so
named because it was viewed as international meetings rather than as a domestic
legislature. So too, the Congress during the Articles of Confederation was understood
to be an international body because the states were then sovereign countries. Although
this changed in 1789 when the three branches of the federal government went
into effect, the U.S. Senate was understood to be founded on principles of
international law. Although the states were then only semi-sovereign (some
governmental sovereignty having been delegated to the federal government), that
polities rather than individuals would the members of the Senate and that the
member-polities all would have the same number of votes meant that the U.S.
Senate is an international chamber (i.e., founded on such principles, rather
than national principles). The latter principles apply to the U.S. House of Representatives,
so with the Senate, the Congress can be construed as a hybrid national-international
institution. In utter contrast, Columbia’s Congress is solely domestic in
nature—not a thread of international fiber being mixed in. This is so, too, of
the legislatures of the U.S.’s member-states. So, in this way too, Columbia can
be seen to correspond to a state in the U.S. rather than to the U.S. itself.
Indeed, one reason why
federalism fits so well for the U.S. is because of its empire-scale and the related
interstate cultural heterogeneity. Massachusetts is very different than Oklahoma,
culturally speaking, and Texas is very different than Hawaii. The claim that
the regions of Columbia differ culturally to such an extent is based in part on
the category mistake of treating a state-scale polity as being commensurate with,
or equivalent to, a union of such states.
One implication of seeing
Columbia in this light is that it and its neighbors could form a United States
of South America, whose Congress would be hybrid-based on international and
national principles of government. The Senate of such a Congress would
represent Columbia and the other states rather than individual citizens (the direct
election of U.S. senators by citizens of the respective states may thus be
problematic). Were such a United States of South America in existence, a federal
check on power-abuses at the state level would be possible (though not
guaranteed). The need for and lack of such a check when the Columbians went to
vote in March, 2026 is clear from the assertion made at the time by Columbian
Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez “that a group of at least 2,400 people ‘allegedly
heading to vote’ were detected trying to enter Columbia at an illegal border
crossing with Venezuela in Norte de Santander, despite announced border
closures during the election process.”[2]
Sixty buses were waiting to take the people to voting stations. Columbia’s
simple rather than federal polity did not include such safeguards as would surely
come from the U.S. federal government were citizens of one state sent into another
state as campaign volunteers to attempt to vote there. In the words of Sánchez,
an “avalanche of illegal voting” happened in Columbia on March 8, 2026.[3]
Whereas claims of widespread electoral fraud in some of the U.S. states in the
2020 presidential election were met with investigations by Congress and the
U.S. Justice Department, which crucially are distinct from any of the state
governments, the Columbian government had only itself to investigate why busloads
of foreigners allegedly voted for candidates for president even though that
government may have been blameworthy. It is not as if Columbia constituted a
United States of South America. Of course, political corruption can occur at virtually
any scale; the U.S. Federal Government is hardly immune, and neither is the
government of the tiny polity of Rhode Island, for instance.
My point is merely that even though Columbia’s legislature is called a Congress and includes a chamber called a senate, Columbia does not have the checks and balances that are built into an empire-scale federal polity such as the United States. Even if some of the U.S. states had federal systems, those states would not thereby be equivalent to the U.S., or, more generally, to an empire-scale and international-national hybrid federal government.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
