In my view, nation states are largely the product of the whims of history. Nobody could look at a map of Europe in 1 CE and predict where all the borders will run in 2025 CE. In other timelines, Austria is part of Germany because the Habsburg never became as dominant.
You are correct that technically, the smaller the sovereign state, the more voters can affect their own affairs. If you are living alone on a sovereign island, your vote really counts! However, there are tradeoffs to consider. Coordination is difficult, and larger states often have a smaller overhead fraction, because maintaining a criminal code for 100M citizens is about as much work as maintaining it for 20M citizens.
And of course you can have layered federalism. If you are a citizen living in Frankfurt, you get to vote in municipal elections, state-wide elections, German federal elections and European elections. On each level, your vote is diluted more, and people from further away who speak strange dialects or weird languages have an influence in the matter, just like you have some influence in their matters. However, few people argue that Hesse or Frankfurt should secede from Germany.
I agree that the EU has a deficit of democracy, in that the rules are made by the governments of member states for the most part, and there is no direct democratic influence. But this is the doing of the nationalist faction. I also agree that some policy proposals put forward by the EU are horrible.
“Nobody could look at a map of Europe in 1 CE and predict where all the borders will run in 2025 CE. ” The Roman European provinces of 1 CE (and the national boundaries at the time) have pretty similar borders to the major states of 2025 CE.
Even with the Hapsburgs ruling Austria for 700 years, afterward it still chose to became part of the German state in 1918-9, and it willingly did became part of the state from 1938-45. If the Soviets had decided to merge East Austria with East Germany, there’s every chance the same would have happened in the west. (Britain wanted Austria to merge with Bavaria). And then if not for the EU, the Austrian state of our timeline may well have joined Germany after the fall of the wall.
In my view, nation states are largely the product of the whims of history. Nobody could look at a map of Europe in 1 CE and predict where all the borders will run in 2025 CE. In other timelines, Austria is part of Germany because the Habsburg never became as dominant.
You are correct that technically, the smaller the sovereign state, the more voters can affect their own affairs. If you are living alone on a sovereign island, your vote really counts! However, there are tradeoffs to consider. Coordination is difficult, and larger states often have a smaller overhead fraction, because maintaining a criminal code for 100M citizens is about as much work as maintaining it for 20M citizens.
And of course you can have layered federalism. If you are a citizen living in Frankfurt, you get to vote in municipal elections, state-wide elections, German federal elections and European elections. On each level, your vote is diluted more, and people from further away who speak strange dialects or weird languages have an influence in the matter, just like you have some influence in their matters. However, few people argue that Hesse or Frankfurt should secede from Germany.
I agree that the EU has a deficit of democracy, in that the rules are made by the governments of member states for the most part, and there is no direct democratic influence. But this is the doing of the nationalist faction. I also agree that some policy proposals put forward by the EU are horrible.
“Nobody could look at a map of Europe in 1 CE and predict where all the borders will run in 2025 CE. ” The Roman European provinces of 1 CE (and the national boundaries at the time) have pretty similar borders to the major states of 2025 CE.
Even with the Hapsburgs ruling Austria for 700 years, afterward it still chose to became part of the German state in 1918-9, and it willingly did became part of the state from 1938-45. If the Soviets had decided to merge East Austria with East Germany, there’s every chance the same would have happened in the west. (Britain wanted Austria to merge with Bavaria). And then if not for the EU, the Austrian state of our timeline may well have joined Germany after the fall of the wall.