At the G-8 summit at Camp David in May
2012, E.U. and U.S. leaders met with the leaders of four E.U. states (Italy,
Germany, France and Britain). As this picture illustrates,
the qualitative differences between looking after a union of states and a state
can show up unintentionally in informal seating arrangements. In the context of
the European debt crisis—in particular, whether to give one state (i.e.,
Greece) stimulus cash or just insist on the austerity programs already agreed
to—the governors of the E.U. states have particular agendas (given the
financial interests of the respective states) whereas the federal officials are
oriented to the good of the whole (i.e., the E.U.). President Obama of the U.S.
was by the time of the summit used to taking such a perspective over and above
the interests of particular U.S. states. Such a commonality of federal,
empire-level interests as distinct from the relatively particularized interests
of E.U. (and U.S.) states could be reflected in the seating arrangement in the picture taken by the White
House, wherein Obama, Barroso (sitting next to Obama), and Van Rompuy (in
the sweater) seem to be facing the four governors. The seating arrangement
could just as easily have been a circle. It probably was, originally, and I
suspect that the federal v. states distinction operated unconsciously on the
participants such that the three federal officials came to be as though a line
facing the four governors of E.U. states.
The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.
