America and the EU Constitution
All throughout Boston there are whispered conversations… in French. In the French Cultural Center, where I take classes, ex-pats gather in little groups, trying to figure out on what street near Copley it is located. It is the French Consulate, and it may seem odd to Americans that all the excitement is over an election, something only 1 in 2 of us Americans seem to bother participating in. What may seem even odder to Americans, given our penchant for musing about the black helicopters at the UN, is that this is not a national election everyone is so excited about, but an international one. On May 29, France will vote on whether to ratify the new European Union constitution. The coverage in the press in the United States continually betrays a sense of profound confusion: why in the world would someone want to give up some sovereignty to a higher body?
Nevertheless, Americans should care, and care deeply, about what happens on May 29. Globalization, the process of increasingly rapid connection between peoples by commerce and information flows, has been much attached from both ends of the political spectrum, but will continue its inevitable march onward over the next 20 years. There are now two main models for how this can proceed. The current U.S.-backed paradigm is one where economic globalization continues apace, while politics remains firmly national. NAFTA is a prime example of the kind of treaty that results from such a worldview; it’s loaded with special provisions for big companies, but workers had little say in the design of the treaty. The current EU process also involves a lot of economic liberalization, some of it with questionable public utility (that’s why it’s in such trouble right now in France, as people rightly question some of its economic effects). In contrast to the U.S. paradigm, however, it also involves considerable political integration. In principle, at least, democracy is globalized as well as economics. If this sounds idealistic and experimental, it’s because it is. The current EU is the greatest political experiment of the last 25 years: an uneasy truce between Beethoven and capitalism.
The important thing for Americans to realize is that economic globalization is coming, one way or another. What is up for debate is its character, its soul. Democracy can either rise to globalization, or it will sink beneath it.
