The E.U. and U.S.: Equal Partners

In 2026, even though the U.S. had 50 member-states and the E.U. had only 27 states, both unions were large enough to constitute what in historical terms, with the European early-modern rather than (the smaller) medieval kingdoms in mind, empire-scale republics. As long as elected representatives hold office at the federal level in both political unions, both unions can be said to be republics (as well as containing republics—or, as Ken Wheare wrote in Federal Government, “wheels within a larger wheel”). Were either union to have only five or so states, the empire definition would not be satisfied. Also, that definition includes the requirement of cultural heterogeneity between (as distinct from within) the states. Being on the same (empire) scale is just one of several ways in which the two unions belong to the same political type. It was in this respect rather than based on the sheer number of states that Sophie Wilmes, vice-president of the European Parliament, said that the U.S. should not regard the E.U. as a little sister (i.e., a junior partner). I contend that she was correct.

The full essay is at "The E.U. and U.S."

E.U. States and US Economies Compared Economically

Even in reporting and analyzing seemingly-objective economic data for comparative purposes, political ideology can creep in if that instinctual urge is powerful enough. Even in comparisons of political entities that are on the same level (e.g., city, region/province, kingdom, empire), “word-games” can be used to suggest that the republics being compared are on different political levels. The use of linguistic subterfuge is, I submit, underhanded and based on a stubborn refusal to admit to oneself that the two or more political entities being compared are indeed on the same level, rather than one being higher than the other. In the case of comparing GDP and GDP per capita between E.U. and U.S. states, the very fact that the states are being compared to each other, rather than a state in one union to another union (as if a state in one political union were equivalent to another union of states—a category mistake to be sure!), means that the respective states are in fact equivalent even though different labels are used according to whether a given state is in one union or another. In arguing these points, I shall juxtaposition the respective labels to highlight the absurdity of using different labels for ideological purposes.

The full essay is at "E.U. States and U.S. Economies Compared Economically."

Columbia: The United States of South America?

On March 8, 2026, The Associated Press reported on the voting in Columbia that took place that day “for a new Congress and to select candidates . . . in a primary-style contest ahead of a presidential election in May.”[1] This description could hardly be more “American,” in the sense of referring to the United States. I contend that this allusion to the U.S. is overdrawn. Were Columbia to apply for membership in the U.S., the accession would pertain to becoming a state, rather than to Columbia as a United States of South America merging with the other United States. Put another way, even though Columbia appropriated from the federal level of the U.S. in creating a presidency, a Congress that in turn consists of “The Senate” and “The House of Representatives,” and a presidential election process that includes something akin to primaries, Columbia corresponds to the American states (only without being members of a union as they are) rather than to the United States. Columbia’s accession into the U.S. as a state would not instantiate an empire within an empire.

The full essay is at "Columbia."

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1. Astrid Suarez, “Colombians Are Electing a New Congress and Choosing Presidential Candidates,” The Associated Press, March 8, 2026.

On the Ideological Illogic of European Federalism

Europe may have contributed immensely to philosophy but logic seems to have been in short supply at times, as Europe ties itself in ideological knots in service of nationalism itself, as if that ideology had not given rise to two world wars in the twentieth century. I am not referring to the incendiary, irrational fear of the word, federalism, being applied to the European Union, but, rather, to the role of nationalist ideology in distorting the application of comparative institutional politics by journalists.

The full essay is at "On the Ideological Illogic of European Federalism."

Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.

It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.

The full essay is at "Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S."

Democracy Breached: Georgia Unfit for E.U. Statehood

On December 14, 2024, Mikheil Kavelashvili became the president of Georgia, further cementing the Georgian Dream Party’s grip on power at the expense of the sovereign state’s accession as a semi-sovereign E.U. state. From the standpoint of representative democracy, what a contrast with the U.S. state of Georgia. The Georgian Dream Party implicitly conflated the qualitative difference between the U.S. and state-scale polities by misappropriating the term, Electoral College, which elects the U.S. President. There is a reason why that College does not apply at the state level, yet in its haste to consolidate power in 2017, the Georgian Dream Party replaced direct presidential elections with an Electoral College, which the party could control. Sure enough, Kavelashvili was the only candidate in 2024, and he got the votes of 224 of the 225 electors who were present for the vote.

The full essay is at "Democracy Breached."

Territorial Economic Inequality: On the Impact of Ideological Category-Mistakes

Why do some countries have more inequality in terms of wealth or economic development, whether between big cities and urban areas, or just from region to region, than do other countries? I contend that in comparing the internals of one state/country to those of another, as much “all else equal” should be satisfied as possible. This can be accomplished to a large extent by resisting the error, or temptation, to make category mistakes, such as in comparing Singapore with China—a city-state to an empire-scale country—or in likening an E.U. state to the entire U.S. European scholars of comparative politics tend to make this category mistake, and non-European scholars are so used to the ideological aggrandizement that they do not typically even recognize the category mistake of treating an early-modern(rather than Medieval) kingdom-scale state of an empire-scale federal union as equivalent to another such union, as if a state in one such union, or a comparable sovereign state, were itself an empire-scale union. Resisting the ideologically-driven urge to begin with a category mistake would do wonders in studying comparative politics and political economy and providing more accurate and beneficial conclusions and recommendations.

The full essay is at "Economic Inequality."

E.U. and U.S. Counterparts Met: A Basis for Comparison

President Barak Obama of the U.S., and Herman Van Rompuy and José Barroso of the E.U. held a news conference following the EU-US Summit at Lisbon in 2010. Even though the E.U. and U.S. are both empire-scale federal unions of states, and thus are equivalent in terms of political type or genre, they differ in terms of how their respective federal offices are arranged and constituted. This does not, however, nullify the basis of comparison.

The full essay is "The EU and US."

Raising Retirement Ages in the E.U.: The Case of Spain

The New York Times reported in 2012, “Spain has a stubbornly high budget deficit, its banks require tens of billions of euros in rescue loans and the government may soon have little choice but to request bailout funds” from the E.U.’s “TARP” program. Nevertheless, the state government’s “budget would actually increase pension payouts 1 percent [in 2013]. The money includes not only pensions for former public employees, but also the social security payments that go to all retired [residents].”[1] Pension expenditures represented nearly 40 percent of the state's budget and 9 percent of the state’s economic output, so one would think that line-item would have been first up on the chopping block. To be sure, cutting sustenance programs such as pensions could actually exacerbate a government's debt because if a resulting decline in demand adds to unemployment. In this case, the politics in the state seems to have gone along with the economics. I submit that Spain could have gone further economically were it not for entitlement politics interlarding the retirement-age issue.

The full essay is at "Raising Retirement Ages in the E.U."

1. Landon Thomas, “Pension Dilemma in Europe’s Debt Crisis,” The New York Times, September 30, 2012.

The Right in European and American Politics: Disentangling Right from Right

The far-right in Europe has been quite different than the right-wing in American politics. Putting aside the usual caricature of “people in pointy hoods and the Ku Klux Klan,” Marine Le Pen said she still believed “the American right [was] much more to the right than the National Front.” She may have agreed with those who wanted to manage American frontiers more effectively and prevent massive illegal immigration, but she was also a big believer in the state’s ability and obligation to help its people. “We feel the state should have the means to intervene,” she said. “We are very attached to public services à la française as a way to limit the inequalities among regions and among the French,” including “access for all to the same level of health care.”[1] This statement implies that survival is a human right--something the American right has tended to eschew in favor of a survival-of-the-fittest mantra that conflates the state of nature with the interdependency in a developed economy. 

The full essay is at "Disentangling Right from Right."

1. Tracy McNicoll and Christoper Dickey, "What a Tea Party Looks Like in Europe,”  Newsweek, September 6, 2010.

Canada Takes On the United States: A Case of Two Empires?

Two centuries after the War of 1812, the Canadian government sought to commemorate the “fact” that Canada had thwarted the invasion of troops of the American republics to the south.  “Two hundred years ago, the United States invaded our territory,” a narrator says over dark images and ominous music in the government’s ad. “But we defended our land; we stood side by side and won the fight for Canada.” However, the New York Times points out that “because Canada did not become a nation until 1867, the War of 1812 was actually a battle between the young United States and Britain.” The fight was not for Canada because the British troops were fighting for the British empire rather than for colonies in what is now Canada.

                                         The British are coming! A British hero in "Upper Canada."         rpsc.org

The real question is why the young American empire sought to take on the British empire--an empire within taking on the seat of the larger empire (as if an empire, the United Colonies,being in an empire makes sense and is durable).

The full essay is at "Empires vs. Kingdoms"

See also, British Colonies Forge an American Empire, by Skip Worden. 

East Asia and Latin America: Economy & State

In the fall of 2011, the economic troubles in the developed countries were starting to hit fast-growing developing economies like China, Brazil and Indonesia. The governments of the developing countries were “girding themselves,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “to offset any economic and financial damage.” China’s government, for example, increased the investment of its sovereign wealth fund in Chinese banks. In September, China’s exports to the E.U. grew at 10 percent, compared with 22% in August. China’s increase in imports was also weaker, which did not bode well for emerging markets in Latin America and elsewhere that supply commodities for China’s construction industry.  Yet IMF projections depicted an interesting distinction between the projected increase of real GNP in Latin America and the developing Asian economies. The projections for 2011 were 4.7% and 7.9 percent, respectively. For 2012, the projections were 4.0% and 7.7 percent, again respectively. What can explain this pattern wherein Asian newly industrialized economies (NICs) were expected to fare better?

The full essay is at "East Asia and Latin America."

Source:

Alex Frangos and Patrick McGroarty, “Troubles of West Take Toll on Emerging Economies,” The Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2011. 

Is Democracy Inimical to Prudent Government Budgeting: The U.S. and India Contrasted

At a time when the U.S. Government sported an accumulated debt of roughly $20 trillion, with continued deficits expected to add about $10 trillion more over the next ten years, the most populous democracy in the world, India, laid out a prudent budget proposal—one that had been “extremely well thought-out,” according to Deepak Parekh of the Housing Development Finance Corporation in India.[1]

The full essay is at "Prudent Government Budgeting."

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1. Getta Anand, “Arun Jaitley, India’s Finance Chief, Aims to Spur Economy Hit by Cash Shortage,” The New York Times, February 1, 2017.

Is the E.U. System Enabling Russian Expansionism?

The visuals alone in the closing news conference of the EU-US “summit” held in Brussels, which President Barroso denoted as “the capital of Europe,” on March 26, 2014, must have struck Europeans and Americans alike as novel, if not rather bizarre; we are not yet accustomed to seeing the EU and US presidents on the same stage, for we are mired in the paradigm of another epoch. The failure to "catch up" may tacitly enable the expansion of another empire-level federation.

The full essay is at "E.U. Federalism Enabling Russian Expansionism"

Comparing the E.U. and U.S. in a Different Way

 The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

Videos on YouTube: http://youtu.be/xinF5zjHV0Q and http://youtu.be/qqemCjiWZSM

My related very brief talk: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thewordenreport/2013/07/08/the-eu-and-us

Mexico’s Name-Change: A United States No Longer?

Shortly before leaving office, Mexican President Felipe Canderón sent to the Mexican legislature a proposal to amend the state’s constitution by renaming the country “Mexico,” from the “United Mexican States.” His rationale was that Mexico didn’t need “a name that emulates another country and which none of us Mexicans uses on a day-to-day basis.” Indeed, the emulation evinces a category mistake in that it treats what was province in an empire, that of New Spain, as an empire.

                                   Mexico's head of state, Felipe Calderon, who proposed the name-change.  

The full essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

Anti-Federalist Britain: South Carolina on Steroids

If Douglas Carswell, a member of the House of Commons, had his way, Britain would secede from the E.U. before Prince Charles could say, “hip hip!” Carswell's Private Member's Bill, submitted for debate in late October 2012, would repeal the European Communities Act (1972), by which Britain became a state in the former European Economic Community in 1973 (after France had vetoed Britain’s first request). Although Private Member’s Bills rarely become law in Britain, merely having a debate on whether to have a referendum on the question of whether the Kingdom should secede from the empire-level union would stir the pot. The Prime Minister, who was on record in support of not pulling out of the union, but for only economic reasons as his state had been benefitting from the large common market. So even if Carswell’s effort is ultimately unsuccessful, even such a revolt by Tory back-benchers could undercut David Cameron’s power in the midst of a languid economy in the state.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

PM David Cameron of Britain at the European Council. Is he onboard?     AFP/Getty

A "Bronx Upbringing" Out-of-State: Tolerance in a Federal Empire

Typically, the American empire is assumed to refer to the hegemony of the U.S. in the world. “Imperialism,” in other words, is thought to refer to a major power imposing on lesser ones around the world—the influence being directed externally. I contend that the United States of America is itself an empire, even apart from its external influence, as the Union is composed of republics having distinctive cultures and on the scale of early-modern European kingdoms (e.g., United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands—which had been “international” in medieval times).

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon. 

The United States as Religious and Secular Societies

E pluribus unum, or “Out of many, one,” is a motto for the United States—the American States that are united. The many can refer, I suppose, to the sheer number of inhabitants stretching across a continent and beyond. The word could also refer to the diversity of people living even in a large American city. Finally, the word could refer to the Union consists of many different socio-political societies, or republics—again possibly referring to the number of states or the fact that they differ so from one another.  It is the last interpretation that I want to explore here, for it alone gets at the fact that the U.S., like the E.U. and China, are at the empire-level (or scale) in twentieth-century (rather than medieval) terms (i.e., scaling).

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon. 

Federalizing Fiscally: E.U. looks to Early U.S.

I suspect many Europeans would bristle at the suggestion that Europe could learn a thing or two from American history. If the E.U. corresponds to the U.S. and has a federal balance-of-power roughly the same as that which existed in the U.S. at, say, 1820, then the Europeans could do worse than look at American history for lessons both in what to emulate and what not to do.

The complete essay is at "Essays on Two Federal Empires."