Saturday, September 13, 2014

The Scots Weigh Independence from Britain as the British Consider Leaving the E.U.

The debate over whether the Scottish region of Great Britain should secede from the UK extends beyond whatever provincial interests unite and divide the state’s regions; it "is also part of a larger question that extends well beyond Britain, to Texas and Colorado, for example, and elsewhere: What are the benefits and drawbacks of larger, politically diverse countries, compared with smaller, more homogeneous ones?"[1] Yet is Britain a large, heterogeneous country even as it is a state in the European Union? Texas is much larger, and yet it too is a state in a union of relatively homogeneous states.

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.




[1] Katrin Bennhold, "How Scottish Independence Relates to Larger Tax Fights," The New York Times, August 21, 2014.