Political legitimacy does not come mimicking the methods by which leaders are selected.
Some of the strongest sources of political legitimacy are:
* Continuity with past institutions. For example ,the 98th Congress was legitimate because it succeeded the 97th Congress.
* Shared values and norms. For example, NATO suffered a huge loss of legitimacy due to the second Iraq war.
* Ability to identify public threat actors, and the ability to legitimately use violence (like incarceration) against them. For example, states with strong elements of organized crime usually suffer from low political legitimacy. However when organized crime becomes part of the state, legitimacy can increase (Hezbollah, the Chicago Outfit, and the Yakuza are examples).
* Self constraint by clearly defined norms. Some things just “aren’t done.” In America it would be scandal if a judge was elected because of the persons ability to fundraise. But that’s very common for ambassadors. For judges it’s just “not done.”
If a foreign power invaded and held elections, it’s unlikely the elections would be seen as legitimate, even if they were free and fair.
This is why both the US and Soviet Union were unable to hold legitimate elections in thier respective zones in Germany until the occupation ended.
Elections are really good example of how simulating an institution does not confer legitimacy.
The EU was formed in 1993, with precursor organisations going back to 1948, and the European Parliament has been elected in continuity since 1979. On the European continent, there can be basically almost no continuity going back farther than after WW2 because of how the war completely reshaped the continent. In that sense, the EU has more continuity than many Eastern European nations.
> Shared values and norms.
This sounds very vague. Every political entity of a nontrivial size has massive diversity of thought, that's true of small Switzerland just as much as of the EU or the US. That said, I do think that on average, Europe tend to value certain things (e.g. walkable cities) more than some other areas in the world.
Idk about indifference. Argentina is a recent example but you have to consider the trade off between being able to control monetary policy and not being able to shoot yourself in foot by being able to control monetary policy.
If you keep doing this, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and properly stop, that would be good.
Also, I can only vote for the EP on candidates from my own country, who actively campaign under their own national party but they are part of a European party (regularly together with another party from my own country with which they pretend to disagree on national politics).
If the EP was anywhere near democratic, I would be able to vote for any European candidate, and they would at least campaign for the European party they will be a part of, once elected.
None of the countries I'm familiar with allows you to vote for arbitrary candidates even on local elections. You can only vote for candidates that are running for your local area. At least on Italy the major national parties definitely are not members of the same EU party. I'm pretty sure that's the case in UK as well.
I can only vote for candidates standing in my region, both in UK and Germany.. I'll grant the UK could be more democratic too, but the EU is as democratic as at least some of it's member states.
There are no "European Parties" at least not how one generally understands the term in national politics. Candidates for the EU parliamentary election are elected on the ticket of national parties. Those parties are free to form alliances (on a national basis) but most don't.
Once a candidate is elected and joins the parliament, they usually join a faction of like-minded MPs from across the EU, i.e. conservatives, liberals, social democrats, greens. Those are NOT parties but function similar to i.e. the faction structure in German parliament which may also contain members from multiple parties. Politicians from different national parties may end up in the same faction in EU parliament but that is rare.
This is more or less the same how it works for national elections in many countries, it is called "representative democracy", simply adapted to make sure that the EU parliament is roughly representative of the EU electorate.
Voting in NL is possible on all candidates, nationwide. As it should be.
Wether it is a faction or a party, two Dutch parties who claim to be different when campaigning for Dutch elections, sit and vote happily together in the EP.
It is all representative democracy, they gave us a direct vote in a referendum, two or three times. The outcome was not as desired, apparently, so it was either done again, or ignored.
The sales pitch is that we should all be Europeans, voting for European governance... So let me vote on Europeans, not just dutchies. May be different in other countries but that makes no sense to me. A lot of countries allow voting on anyone who is an eligible candidate for the thing being voted for. Unless, e.g. like for the us Senate, where, iiuc there is an equal representation of two senators per state.
There is no „as it should be“ in voting systems. The exact same system can be a good fit for one situation/country/institution and be a catastrophe for another. You are annoyed by Dutch politics, not European politics, so kindly sort out your personal Problem but don’t try to speak for the rest of us in these pointless and non factual sweeping terms.
There definitely is a way it should be, and like I mentioned, in some situations it should be different.
Not sure why you seem to think how I am annoyed by Dutch but not European politics, or how I am speaking for "the rest of you". Have you agreed to that with that rest? For the record, I am not annoyed by but rather disgusted with the actual political and governmental systems and practices. And I am very much not alone in this, second largest party in our recent elections is built on this very topic. So are many throughout Europe. Mostly framed as "right wing" which is exactly what people are tired of, me included.
The ones who seem to be speaking for others are the politicians with a feeble mandate :)
MEPs are elected, Council consists of member states' elected leaders. Only the commissioners aren't elected and they weren't drawing up the legislation.
Because the EU's overall attempt to disempower US tech giants is something SV simply doesn't like at all. A significant share of the users here are heavily invested in those companies - financially and otherwise - so obviously they won't ever encourage a future where tech companies are a part of society like every other one, without particular power.
And the more angry rants we get from SV-folks, the better we know that we're on the right track.
Not really, the US is still a bigger market, but even leaving that aside, I see more handwringing from actual EU citizens as to how this will impact their local markets and jobs, than from anyone actually in the US [0][1]. It's more like those in the US are simply pointing and laughing at the EU consistently shooting themselves in the foot rather than any actual disdain from them. It actually reminds me of those who make fun of cryptocurrency while those who've "invested" in cryptocurrency think we're just "mad" that we didn't make "gainz." No, mate, we're just laughing at people who fall for such misfortune.
HN is not typical of the general population of Europe, not even within the IT community. It self-selects for certain kinds of people. There are other IT communities, such as the CCC, that do not at all share the libertarian bent that HN tends to have.
I'm from the EU, and I'm not afraid that AI regulation is going to make my job disappear. There are other EU laws / rulings that I'm much more worried about (e.g. chat control, or for a mundane example, mandatory time tracking).
Meanwhile, if people from the US are "laughing at the EU consistently shooting themselves in the foot", I kindly suggest taking a close look at your own country before judging others.
As a former EU citizen: Because it's true? The EU has failed to enable big tech competitors to grow on it's countries. And instead of fixing the political, socio-economical issues, it continues to bully a) the US (which delivers actual solutions/products) and b) its very own citizens with things like dismantling end-to-end decryption / mandatory full access to chats (mind you not for the EU politicians themselves, of course, see Biontech deals that von der Leyen "lost").
And where is the EU citizens' election regarding said chat control? Where is the election regarding commission president? Would you think von der Leyen were actually elected president, had the population been given the chance to vote?
> Would you think von der Leyen were actually elected president, had the population been given the chance to vote?
Who knows. Do you think Mike Johnson would have been elected speaker of the US House of Representatives if the population had been given a chance to vote? "The people vote on everything" is not how any modern democracy works - no, not even Switzerland's (where it's parliament who votes for the government and not regular people).
There are regular elections to the European parliament. The reason why the EU can push things like chat control (which I agree is terrible) is because frankly, many people don't care about privacy or IT in general. Just take a look at the UK, it's not part of the union anymore, but it still hasn't stopped proposing horrible IT regulation. This has nothing to do with the EU and everything with the fact that scare tactics like "terrorism" and "child abuse" work for a lot of people.
The president of the entity that presumes to be politically representative in negations with or against the US and China should absolutely be voted for. Mike Johnson or any other speaker of the US House of Representatives doesn't have a fraction of the power that von der Leyen currently holds.
I can't think of any presidential government where the president is not also voted for by the people (at least none, that "the west" considers a democracy).
Would you think US citizens would accept not being able to vote on the matter of who becomes president?
Then why is it ok for EU citizens not to vote on that issue?
Neither the Swiss nor the German executive government is voted for by the people. I guess those aren't presidents, but why does it matter? Oh, by the way, the German president (who is only a figurehead) is also not elected by the people.
Technically, not even the US president is elected directly by the people (but by the electoral council). This is why someone can become president without receiving the popular vote.
You're trying really hard to misunderstand my point.
The Swiss executive is bound by the referendums, and the German president is of course not the equivalent to the US president in terms of power or political role. But you knew that already, so let's agree that we disagree on what a democracy should look like, shall we?
In Italy or Germany you don’t vote directly for the Prime Minister either. You vote for the party or coalition that expresses that candidate, but the elected parties usually form a coalition and part of the deal is who’s getting the PM chair.
France and the US have what’s called “presidentialism” and they’re mostly outliers in Western democracies.
I do understand that they're common and that they strike a nerve, so they're not flagged - but it makes for very poor discussion, it's just angry venting that doesn't satisfy "intellectual curiosity", so it's really not in the interest of the stated goals of the website to let these discussions derail so badly.
(Of course, humans are humans, and HN users are just as much prone to group think as everyone else. I just think it's funny that HN users keep claiming that they're somehow above that.)
