Some of the constitutional issues that deeply challenged America’s founding fathers back in 1787 are proving vexing to the countries trying today to adopt their own blueprints for governing the future.
Afghanistan is working on a constitution. Iraq soon will be. Meanwhile, the nations of Europe failed last weekend to negotiate a constitution that would give the continent its first president and more heft on the world geopolitical stage as a counterbalance to the U.S.
At the heart of the thorny negotiations in all these efforts are fundamental questions about power, religion and protection. How do you balance power between big states and small? How powerful should the president be? How much power should reside in the central government? How can the rights of the minority be protected from the will of the majority? Should religion be explicitly mentioned in the constitution?
It’s not surprising that such questions would prove vexing to the nation-builders in Iraq and Afghanistan. But these questions were most starkly on display in Brussels where the 15 present and 10 future members of the European Union split bitterly over the question of how to balance power between big and small nations. That these are all proud sovereign nations with illustrious histories going back centuries, including numerous bloody wars against each other, made the task all the more difficult.
Germany and France, among the most populous nations in the EU, pushed for a voting system based on population. Spain and Poland led the faction that wanted to retain the EU’s weighted voting system, which gives smaller nations more influence.
That’s the issue: What constitutes a “qualified majority”? The proposed constitution states that it would be reached when half the EU’s members representing 60 percent of the population agreed on a matter. But the backdrop is more complicated. The smaller countries, particularly some “New Europe” entrants such as Poland, don’t much trust France and Germany to respect their rights and wishes in a more integrated Europe.
There already seems to be a double standard. France and Germany have blithely broken the EU’s rules prohibiting member nations from running substantial budget deficits, which everyone else is expected to abide by. Le Monde has referred to that as “the arrogance of the big.”
The tensions raised by the divide over the U.S.-led Iraq war also can’t be ignored. France and Germany aggressively opposed the war; “Old” Europe’s Britain, Spain and Italy were joined by “New” Europe’s Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in backing the war. This tempest was exacerbated in the run-up to invasion when French President Jacques Chirac basically told the newcomers to shut up–or else.
What the bickering Europeans need is the kind of breakthrough the founding fathers needed 216 years ago at America’s constitutional convention. They need a Connecticut Compromise. Without Connecticut lawyer Roger Sherman’s famous initiative providing for a bicameral legislature, with proportional representation in the House of Representatives and equal state representation in the Senate, our own efforts at drawing a constitution might have failed too. Even with the compromise, the Constitution passed by the thinnest of margins–5-4–with Massachusetts deadlocked on the question.
With all the focus on whether Iraq and Afghanistan have the mettle to craft constitutions, it says something that even the well-established nations of Europe are frustrated by the effort.
Even a Connecticut Compromise might not heal the rifts and overriding sense of mistrust that plagues the European negotiations. While the primary purpose of further integrating Europe is to protect the nations from the overwhelming economic and political power of the U.S., they seem preoccupied with how to protect themselves from each other.
