EU has done really well on passing big laws such as GDPR in the recent years, while the US can’t even seem to decide whether to fund their own government. Why do you think Europe is doing better than the US? One would think that since EU is more diverse it would be harder to find common ground. And there were examples of that during the Greece debt crisis. But not anymore, it seems.
Something like GDPR and Digital Markets Act is easier to pass in Europe because it hurts big US tech companies most. In more controversial areas the EU is much less effective.
Radical conservatives who are not interested in a compromise gained a lot of power in the USA. Because as long as enough people are interested in finding a compromise, you can always find one.
They are fascists. They don’t want to work within the system, they want to destroy it, so they can get absolute power in a dictatorship. Fascism. First step is to blockade it so people lose trust in the democratic system of law and are more open to them, because they propose easy solutions to complex problems.
Climate change? Shoot all foreigners.
Low wages? Also shoot all foreigners.
Crime? Shoot all… wait for it… people who look like foreigners.
Anything else? It’s the foreigners!
*insert favourite racist term for “foreigner” to make this country specific. Mexican or blacks for USA, gipsy for Romania, Turks or muslims for Germany, and so on.
This is an extremely complex topic with lots of factors. You could write books about it and not enconpass everything.
Just one point among lots others:
Because Europe (with exceptions) in general works with a proportional system, not a majority system.
The parties that get into parliament are proportional to the votes, not the one who got the most votes gets to decide.
This results in European lawmakers being forced to work together with their opponents to do shit, which creates a culture of cooperation and civility. For example, you can’t accuse your opponent of being a baby eating communist reptile during campaign because then they won’t work with you afterwards.
To add to that last point, due to the multiparty system, there isn’t one monolithic opponent, so it barely makes any sense to accuse all of them as being baby slurping commies. This also reduces the opportunity for the crazy polarization that’s seen in the US
They didn’t have a civil war, welcome the attackers back without punishment, then have them form an opposition party dedicated to rotting the system from the inside so they can retroactively win the war they lost.
Instead Europe had a more recent and a more devastating Great War, and then another so called “World War”. The former belligerents went on to form the nucleus of the later European Union, and are still the most powerful parties. Except for the UK, sadly.
I would also say, if a war from 150 years ago explains why your current day politics fail, there are most likely bigger flaws with that system than that war.
It helps if you look at scale. The whole of the European Union has 448.4 million people living in it. The USA has 331.9 million people living in it. You’d think that this would make them similar given that the EU is made up of a confederation of sorts of 27 different countries and that could be compared to the US being a confederation of 50 states.
The problem with comparing them this way is that, for the most part each Country in the EU is still a sovereign nation. They have their own armies, their own GDP, their own trade deals, their own governing bodies. Their strength in being a union comes from the fact that they are sovereign nations who have banded together.
The states aren’t sovereign nations. They’d like to pretend they are. But all their laws, all their provisions for public health, public safety, home land security, border control etc are beholden to the federal government and its two party system. Meaning their laws can be struck down as unconstitutional. They get funding from the federal government. Aid from the federal government. Social programs from the federal government. The federal government has a say in education, housing, the environment, natural disaster relief.
The EU isn’t really set up with way. When Switzerland wants to pass a law, they’re free and clear to do that no harm no foul. When the EU sets a goal (like GDPR) it’s up to the countries involved to decide how to implement laws and policies that would allow for that goal to become reality. In the US it happens the opposite way. The federal government makes a law. Then the states create legislation within the bounds of it.
And the main answer is that it’s harder to buy a bunch of different countries than it is a couple of senators.
We’re talking about Economic Committee vs a whole Federal Government.
We don’t have our own trade deals. The EU makes all the trade deals for everyone to the outside and on the inside it’s completely free trade. That was one of the points the UK wanted from the Brexit. To “great” success.
Switzerland can pass any law they are happy with. The are not part of the Union. They are only part of the trade federation and allow free travel.
But they are not part of Schengen either.(I remembered that wrong.) It’s complicated.The rest is spot on.
I’m not saying you’re wrong but you’re under some inaccurate assumptions about the EU.
As Trump had to learn, individual EU countries don’t make their own trade deals (that would collide with the single market).
Our laws too can be struck down as not in line with EU law, as seen with Germany’s attempt at highway tolls for example.
Also, there are different classes of EU legislation, most importantly directives and regulations. The former set a goal that the countries must achieve, but how they implement it is up to them. The latter do become law as soon as the EU passes them, there is no need for individual Parliaments to ratify them or “copy” them over to their national law. They often still do to avoid collisions, but it wouldn’t be a requirement for the regulation to become effective.
And last but not least, Switzerland sadly is not a member.
Yup, no war here sir
I might be totally wrong, but I suspect that it’s linked to Napoleon spreading civil law over (continental) Europe. To my understanding (IANAL) the key innovation in the concept of civil law is something like Everything which isn’t forbidden by the law is allowed which created a culture of precise and detailed laws While, still to my understanding US style common law let more room to the judge to interpret laws and make decision even if there isn’t a law yet (which is why their judges are elected officials and that in the US abortion law comes from the Supreme court not from lawmakers)
The fact that we expect detailed and precised law is also why lawmaker will spend time to write them.
That said, I wouldn’t mock too much the political mess in the US, most of Europe isn’t doing that well. Belgium stays 1-2 years without government after every election, Spain has a region which unilaterally tried to secede, Hungary/Poland have serious authoritarians tendencies, the European council still decides who leads the commission rather than the European Parliament, and let’s not speak about the Brexit fiasco, these are definitely symptoms that our system(s) don’t work that well.
To be fair the Brexit fiasco is mostly the UK system being totally broken and dysfunctional (also common law), not the EU systems.
USA government is just a puppet of lobbying groups IE: private companies. Thankfully Europe doesn’t reach that level yet
“yet”.
I feel like we’re just one or two decades behind on … everything bad in the US.
EU is to ununified to be governed by lobbyists, also our courts work…
I think it is exactly the other way around. Companies are well-organized on the global level and can influence Brussels and national EU governments. See the latest Qatar scandal or the often cited cucumber regulations. However, in Europe, the social market orientation results in majorities favoring more government control. In contrast, the US often rejects such policies as “communism”.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that Lobbying isn’t that big in Europe and several states have laws actively against the practice. Sure, corrupt politicians still exists, but they are more easily exposed under anti-corruption laws. Unlike in the USA where it’s practically legalized bribery.
Why are there 25k lobbyists in Brussels then?
The word you are looking for is corruption. It always gets mixed up with lobbying. Lobbying is not inherently bad. It is good practice to ask the people a law applies to, if the law is feasible. It helps to avoid passing laws, that are completely impracticable and destroy a whole sector of economy in the worst case.
I’d agree if there was a level playing field, but there isn’t, those with the most money get the most influence. It is a form of corruption.
It’s known as caviar diplomacy
Between 2012 and 2014, the Azerbaijan regime allegedly channeled billions of dollars through offshore companies to launder money and pay for bribes. That strategy was since dubbed “caviar diplomacy” after a report in which a senior Azerbaijani policymaker said: “There are a lot of deputies in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly whose first greeting, after ‘Hello,’ is ‘Where is the caviar?’
No, that’s just corruption, not lobbyism.
Aside from the multi party systems, i’d say another important reason is that EU countries tend to have a political spectrum.
The US has a far right party with LGBT rights and weed and a reactionary fascist party. But actually progressive or even a lot of conservative positions are not represented in politics at all. Even Obama was against general health insurance, which is a system most conservatives in the EU value.
So the space of political positions even on the table is much smaller and there is no need to compromise, as for instance neither US party opposes total surveillance of the citizens and the idea that doing any form of business with a company does not grant it the total ownership of that persons privacy just doesnt exist in the political debate.
With an actual, working multi party system there is less polarisation, and most parties don’t actively hate each other to the point of opposing anything the other supports.
Also the political system behind the passing of law is different, although I don’t know enough to explain it.
I would agree. To the extend that OP’s thesis is true (which I don’t think is fully true, but also not fully wrong either), I also find that the readiness to compromise both at the EU level and in most member-state parliaments that eventually need to transpose the directives into national laws, is a difference that stands out.
A multi-party system helps too, because there can be situational alliances that do not divide the parties internally. E.g. in one topic the Social Democrats, the Moderate Right and the Liberals can be on the same side and pass something (probably a free-trade deal) and on another topic the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Left can pass something else (probably an environmental regulation). When there are only two parties in the legislature, such alliances break party lines, so it’s a higher hurdle to overcome.
