Both the U.S. and E.U. mandate that their respective states be republics (i.e., representative democracies), and thus assuming an autocratic government is prohibited. When the governor of the state of Hungary restricted freedom of the press and judicial independence, the E.U. pushed back until Viktor Orbán lost reelection in 2026. Later that year, when the AfD (far right) group won in a region of the state of Germany, the state’s chancellor publicly voiced concern regarding the group’s attitude toward democracy. Viewing the governor as the bastion of constraint on such a trend ignores the E.U. entirely and treats Germany as still fully sovereign rather than being a state in the federal Union, which also has authority to protect democracy even if that authority was shown to be too weak with regard to Orbán’s rule in Hungary.
In early September, 2026, the “anti-immigration AfD group won the election in the Saxony-Anhalt region of the state of Germany “by a landslide, taking 43.8% of the vote. The CDU came in a distant second with 17.2%.”[1] Compared with the region’s election in 2021 “the AfD more than doubled its vote share, while the CDU saw its share halved.”[2] Merkel’s decision to open the state to immigrants from vastly different cultures than that of the E.U. had come home to roust, electorally; she could have predicted such a counter-reaction, given the cultural conservativism that has been so very salient in that E.U. state, as well as in Austria, another socially conservative state.
In the regional election, “60% of voters had chosen parties that call democracy into question.”[3] Merz, the state’s governor, said at the time that his state “needs fundamental reforms,” and yet he had hardly been a charismatic leader for substantial change.[4] Indeed, he lamented “the government’s failure to communicate policies in a sufficiently emotive and compelling way.”[5] Such policies hardly constituted “fundamental reforms” even though he “saw a society ‘longing for disruption’ and ‘fundamental change.’”[6] The victory of the AfD group doubtlessly had something to do with the built-up pressure from the dissatisfaction. Looking to the state government as a check against excesses in the AfD group can thus be regarded as problematic. Fortunately, Germany is an E.U. state. That a state in a federal system can itself have a federal system is perfectly consistent with historical federal theory, as discussed theoretically by Althusius, interestingly a German jurisprud, in his treatise, Political Digest (1603). Just because a state has a federal system does not mean that it cannot itself be a state in a federal system. Large U.S. states that are internally diverse in their respective regions could benefit by this point, as such states could benefit from adopting federal systems. Texas, New York, Illinois, and most obviously California could benefit greatly.
In analyzing the victory of the AfD group, I am deliberately taking a federal perspective from the vantage point of the E.U., which like its states is semi-sovereign politically, and thus constitutes a “political union” (of the same genus as the United States). Both unions represent “empire-scale” federal republics of republics—wheels within a wheel, to borrow from Kenneth Wheare’s text, Federal Government. To be viable, all of the wheels must be democratic rather than autocratic; otherwise, states without political freedom would tend to unilaterally nullify federal law from being valid within such states.
Once federal law is ignored, a federal union of state is in real trouble because the practice could easily spread to become a norm. This is doubtless why U.S. President Jackson sent troops to South Carolina in 1831 after its government enacted a law nullifying any federal law contrary to the state’s political or economic interests. The issue then was an agricultural tariff that had recently been enacted by the federal government. Jackson got both the tariff and the Nullification Act revoked, and thus safeguarded the system of federalism.
The E.U. too has sought to counter efforts by states to ignore federal law, and to eclipse democracy and freedom of the press and judiciary as well. Although Merz emphasized after the regional election that the AfD group would “have to follow the line set” by the state government, he omitted the fact that the group would also have to follow the line set by the European Union. This is a significant omission, especially given the governor’s political weakness at the state level. Just as the Commission withheld federal funds from the state of Hungary during Orbán’s autocratic rule, such funds would be held back from a state governed by the AfD were that group to eviscerate rule of law, freedom of the press, and judicial independence there. To be sure, the (excessive) involvement of the state governments at the federal level via the European Council and the Council of Ministers and the state veto itself enervate the enforcement by the Commission, but this is not to say that the state governments are the only ones capable of safeguarding democracy. State officials ignore the E.U. at their own peril; such a stance, which in American parlance has been referred to as “state rights” and in European terms is commonly known as the “Euroskeptic” ideology, needlessly opens Europe up to dictatorship once again. We need only look back less than a century to see examples of fascist dictatorship in what would become the European Union. Even in the twenty-first century, Europeans can hardly afford to ignore the E.U.’s safeguards even though they are needlessly weak in enforcement due to the state veto mechanism (i.e., a conflict of interest) at the federal level.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
