Democracy in Progress

Democracy in Progress

    Today is the day many members of the UK and some of their related countries will head to the polls to vote of staying in or leaving the European Union (in Britain those wanting out are being termed Brexiters).  And with me not being from that part of the world, it would be presumptuous to even pretend that I understood the issues there.  But here's how The London Review of Books and author Francis Fitzgibbon tried to give their own brief summary of what was involved and how the UK's role plays into the EU: The law of the European Union has left few areas of life in the UK wholly untouched even though the EU can only legislate in areas for which it derives what are known as ‘competences’ from the treaties member states have ratified.  The EU alone can legislate on areas in which the treaties have conferred on it ‘exclusive competence’.  The Lisbon Treaty defined under this rubric competition rules for the single market, customs unions, commercial policy, and monetary policy in states that adopted the euro: the core business of the EU.  ‘Shared competences’ – the EU and member states can both regulate on these matters, but the EU takes precedence – include the regulation of the internal market, transport, energy, environment and defined areas of social policy.  Civil protection, health, education and sport are classed as ‘supporting competences’, and do not require the harmonisation of laws by member states.  In other words, a web of EU law is superimposed on the law of member states, with some strands reaching further than others.  In areas where the EU makes regulations, they have ‘direct effect’ in UK law without the need for any domestic legislation.  By contrast, directives (such as the Working Time Directive) have to be transposed into the law of member states by statute or statutory instrument, allowing countries to decide how to legislate in order to achieve a particular goal.  EU law is part of the ‘acquis communautaire’, which is made up of all the EU’s treaties and laws, declarations and resolutions, international agreements and judgments of the Court of Justice.  It also covers joint action by member states in the field of justice and security and under the Common Foreign and Security Policy.  New members are required to adopt all of this...The laws governing the internal single market are vital to the working of the European Union, which has always operated as a ‘common market’.  Such laws include those governing workers’ rights, including the right to work anywhere within the EU – which appears to be central to the Brexiters’ enmity to the EU – as well as competition law, environmental protection, consumer law, health and safety, and aspects of criminal law. The Brexiters tend to ignore the fact that legislation in these areas isn’t imposed by the EU; these are areas of ‘shared competence’.  The concepts of proportionality and subsidiarity are written into EU law: the former limits EU intervention to what is necessary to attain the objectives of the treaties all member states have signed and the latter provides that the EU may act only if an individual member state cannot otherwise achieve what it wants in areas outside the EU’s exclusive competence...As part of the Lisbon Treaty negotiations the UK got an opt-out from most of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.  The charter reproduces the rights included in the European Convention on Human Rights, which isn’t an EU treaty, but was adopted by the Council of Europe, with additions including rights for workers, rights to housing, rights for old people, rights for children and a right to linguistic diversity.  The opt-out stops the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg from ruling that UK laws and administrative actions are inconsistent with the charter in certain spheres, and the additional workers’ and social rights cannot be used in litigation in the UK unless they are specifically provided for in domestic law...So while the EU has legal supremacy it is not the case that member countries are always bound to submit to its legislative will but rather that national courts have to ensure that their decisions are consistent with European law.  Only the Court of Justice in Luxembourg can strike down a piece of EU legislation as invalid.  In cases of conflict national courts interpret domestic legislation purposively – in other words, they take into account the intention of the EU legislation that the domestic law is supposed to implement – thus allowing for a degree of flexibility.  As a last resort, national courts can declare local law to be incompatible with EU law.  In some cases, they can seek clarification by referring questions of EU law to Luxembourg for a preliminary ruling.

    Blah, blah, blah...that summary (and indeed, that is only part of it) gives an idea of how complicated rules for democracy can be.  Even in our state, cries are made to break away and "take back our lands and control," but only if the federal dollars keep coming.  That's colloquially called here (borrowing from Marie Antoinette) Have Your Cake and Eat It Too.  But for those of you watching the antics happening here in the U.S., this election actually pales compared to ones earlier.  Does this sound familiar: 11,900 police, 7500 Army troops, 7500 members of the National Guard, and 1000 FBI agents?  This year's upcoming Republican convention?  The year was actually 1968 in Chicago at the Democratic convention.  What about this?  One campaign for presidential candidate James G. Blaine, known for his corruption, had the opponents yelling "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine. The continental liar from the state of Maine."  While his opponent, Grover Cleveland, already having fostered a child from his well-publicized affair, had opponents chanting, "Ma, ma, where's my pa?  He's gone to the White House, ha, ha,, ha!"  The public voting was one of the highest on record that year (78%) and the results were actually neck and neck. 

    Or take this example.  A candidate wins the majority of primaries and yet doesn't receive the party's nomination (as is being tossed around in the case of Donald Trump).  It's happened before, when William Howard Taft lost every Republican primary to Theodore Roosevelt but still the party leaders controlled the delegates enough to give Taft the nomination (Roosevelt broke ranks and ran as a member of the Progressive Party...in the final election, Taft received only 23% of the votes).  Closed primaries, caucuses, delegates and superdelegates (each of whom are "pledged" to vote for a candidate but can change their mind and "vote their conscience" later, usually without repercussions) all override the popular vote in the U.S., as does the Electoral College...still.

    In countries fairly new to democracy --Brazil (30 years in), Indonesia, even Mexico-- one can read the headlines (two weeks ago in the NY Times: "Firebombs and Accusations Fly in 'Ruthless' Election Campaigns in Mexico" -- and "Jakarta Governor Out to Upend Party Politics -- Independent Run Defies Indonesia Elite").  At times, monarchies and dictatorships such as many of those in the Middle East and some countries in Africa, might seem rather tame.  But the point of it all is this...hang in there.  Democracy is complicated (which was why I showed just some of the judicial rules of the UK's relationship with the EU) and as you can see even in the U.S, is a work still in progress.  Name calling, ignoring the people, bad decisions, corruption, it all happens no matter the country.  But much good comes from democracy as well.  It all takes time to figure out, and one hopes that eventually, the good will (goodwill) indeed overrides the bad, a cornerstone of democracy.  To exit or not, one will see the results in due time and recognize whether that decision was a good one or a bad one...but such an effort and vote could only have come in a democracy, and for the UK, as with the U.S., is a relatively new form of government.

Next:  The promised finish to The Inside Passage (sorry but the Brexit vote was today so I wanted to quickly dash this out).   Thanks again for your patience...