SaltyJoe wrote:Democracies tend to be not to effective when encompassing a wide spectrum of different opinions. (Funny you should mention India. From what i heard the government is notoriously slow in that country mad of countries.)
Oh! This is so true.
Maybe little "provinces" of ten million or so people could be easily handled by one layer, and then a Europe-wide parliament (with fewer total seats, presumably) would be another layer? Maybe being slower has its benefits, but yes, bureaucracy is a constant source of ... amusement, hehe.
I thought the idea proposed dividing Europe into more nation states than there are already, and having these microstates be governed by a central hub in a democratic method.
Ah, I think I see what you mean. If you forgive me for for being elaborate for a moment, a "nation-state" is literally one nation (ethno-cultural group) within one state (a territory completely controlled by one party through the monopoly of violence). For example, there were millions of German-speaking people in Europe who shared the same ethnic, cultural, and religious background (a nation), yet were divided amongst several fuedal kingdoms and duchies and principalities (proto-states). It was only briefly circa AD 1000 and AD 1940 that Germany was a single nation within a single state (although now the Austrians have more of a unique identity).
Thus, a hypothetical United States of Europe would be a "supranational" state, that is, beyond the nation. This wouldn't make more nation-states, but fewer, dulling nationalism. It was long a fear in Europe that the German nation would be united under one flag, as much in the days of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as Adolf Hitler. (France, comparatively, started off as several linguistic groups, meaning Paris had to teach the French kingdom how to speak "French". Germany had a natural advantage, thus France wanted it disunited). But if all nations of Europe are united under one flag, it cannot be called a nation-state. It would be something larger, you could say. I guess you could call it a multinational state, as well.
This would also entail that none of the newly formed regions could be completely self sufficient (economically), to make them reliant on each other?
Yaya, pretty much.
It's sort of like love~ It was the reason people suggested France and Germany form an economic union in the 1920s. If the two countries had no trade barriers, things would move around naturally instead of being constrained by "national" interests. Thus, France and Germany would need each other too much to start fighting again, as they had done constantly since the fall of Rome. #_# Isn't it a tricky plan? That's one of the more constructive uses of "capitalism", and a reason I grew (somewhat) out of my "far-left" phase.