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Statsveteri

En europeisk supermakt?

När samtiden förändras i en rasande takt kan det hjälpa att se till historien för att få perspektiv. Jag läste en intressant – och daterad – essä av Brendan Simms under den slående samtidsaktuella titeln Towards a mighty union: How to create a democratic European superpower.

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Blandat

Dags för enhetsvalsedlar

I dag skriver företrädare för tolv svenska valkanslier i DN och uppmanar kommittén för översyn av valsedelssystemet att lämna förslag om att införa någon form av enhetsvalsedel. Jag kan bara instämma.

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Blandat

Läsvärt, lyssningsvärt

  • Sophia Besch, Jeremy Shapiro: The New American Imperialism: How Europe Can Deal With Trump’s Threat to Greenland:
    • “Denmark and the European Union as a whole desperately need a new script for Trump 2.0. They should take a page from (supposed) Russian nuclear doctrine and escalate to de-escalate. Trump, after all, is a classic bully: quick to assert his power and threaten force, but quite afraid of strength and violence. The key to dealing with bullies is to stand up to them and respond with pressure of your own.”
  • Ivan Krastev and Timothy Snyder: Making Sense of an Unsettling World (video, podcast).

Categories
Statsveteri

Arendt om partisystem och totalitarism

Knappt hade jag skrivit om proportionella val som en maktbegränsande mekanism försummad i republikansk säkerhetsteori, så blev jag påmind om att Hannah Arendt argumenterar för motsatsen: De kontinentala flerpartisystemen innebar en större risk för ett totalitärt maktövertagande än de anglo-saxiska tvåpartisystemen.

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Categories
Blandat Politik

Läsvärt

  • Cory Doctorow: “Ideas lying around”
    • “This is our oil crisis, in other words: a moment in which a belligerent superpower’s ill-considered monkeying with the underpinnings of global production will cause chaos, the crisis in which “ideas can move from the periphery to the center” in an eyeblink. […]

      Or rather, it’s our opportunity to seize – or lose. Governments are defaulting to retaliatory tariffs as the best response to Trump’s tariffs. This is political poison: making everything your country imports from the USA more expensive is a very weird way to punish America for its trade war. […]

      There’s a much better alternative, one that strikes at the very roots of American oligarchy, whose extreme wealth and corrosive political influence comes from its holdings in rent-extracting monopolies, especially Big Tech monopolies.”
  • All that is solid: “Cuddling the Russian Bear”
    • “Why the break from this and the spurning of traditional allies? Why does Trump want to cuddle the Russian bear? The theatrics of the last month are overkill if it was all a crafty move to get European governments to cough up more on military spending. Ditto if it’s just for domestic consumption too. Some Trump voters will be amused, the majority bemused, and for nearly all of them they’re secondary considerations to the cost of living crisis – a key reason why they put him back in the White House. Nor are the intelligence reports that compromises Trump in all sorts of ways. As head of the most powerful military and intelligence capability the world has ever seen, in a sharply divided America front page splashes about Russian money and grim-sounding sex tapes would make little difference where Trump’s support is concerned.

      The more compelling answer lies in divisions within the American establishment about the strategic orientation their state should have in the 21st century. The shifting economic centre of gravity towards East Asia coupled with the long-term demographic decline of Europe’s wealthy markets provides a compelling case for orienting away from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”
  • Jonathan Rauch: “One Word Describes Trump”
    • “To understand the source of Trump’s hold on power, and its main weakness, one needs to understand what patrimonialism is not. It is not the same as classic authoritarianism. And it is not necessarily antidemocratic. Patrimonialism’s antithesis is not democracy; it is bureaucracy, or, more precisely, bureaucratic proceduralism. […] patrimonialism is suspicious of bureaucracies; after all, to exactly whom are they loyal? They might acquire powers of their own, and their rules and processes might prove obstructive. People with expertise, experience, and distinguished résumés are likewise suspect because they bring independent standing and authority. So patrimonialism stocks the government with nonentities and hacks, or, when possible, it bypasses bureaucratic procedures altogether.”