29 oktober 2019

On 15 October 2019 the French President Macron blocked the start of negotiations with the candidates North-macedonia and Albania that should lead to their admission to the European Union. He was criticized by many, included by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who called it a historic mistake. Overall Macron believes that the Union should first strenghten its institutions before it can expand further. His opponents state that his refusal will drive the Balkan-states into the hands of Russia, Turkey, China and other.

Since 2014 the European Union is negotiating with Serbia its admission to the Union. On 15 February 2016 Bosnia- Herzegovina formally asked to become member of the Union. Beginning 2018 the European Commission stated that Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North-Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo had a “perspective” on membership around 2025. It was clarified that “perspective” did not include a “deadline” and that every country would be assessed on its own merits.

We believe Macron has a point (or many points) :

First, the whole Balkan was a powder keg in the far away past, the recent past and still is a powder keg today. It’s inclusion in the Union will not automatically remove the risks from the region. On the contrary, it would introduce the Balkan instability into the Union. Enemies of the Union must love especially this scenario.

Currently, and based on on going discussions with states like Hungary and Poland, we see that the European Union has difficulties in imposing sanctions on some countries if needed. This kind of governance has to be brought to a higher level. The Union must be able to punish if needed.

Referring to Hungary and Poland we might question if the Union has already sufficiently absorbed the previous flow of entrants into the European union (the generation of 2004 and 2007). It is probably not wise to already add a new load of newcomers to the Union, which would also further shift the overall balance further to the East.

Yes, Russia, Turkey, China, the Saudi and the Qatari will try to strenghten their influence in the Balkan. They are doing that already today and they do not need a Union to proceed. If the Balkan states were members of the Union, there is no reason why external powers would be less energetic in striving for influence in these states. On the contrary, it would be an evident way of obtaining leverage in the Union. The Union should have instruments to deal with unwanted influence in its member states.

16 oktober 2019

Last week Turkey invaded Syria to elimate the threat posed by an autonomous Syrian-Kurdish region and to resettle a certain part of its 3,5 million Syrian (?) refugees. Hereby some key points for consideration and central questions.

1°) Turkey says it looks for a solution for its 3,5 million refugees and wants to create a buffer of 30 km in the North of Syria to resettle a part of these refugees. Europe is in a difficult position to condemn Turkey for trying to find such a buffer-zone; in practice Turkey is for the European Union a gigantic buffer zone to settle (=keep) refugees.

2°) One might of course object that the idea to artificially create a border zone of 30 km and to settle people in that area who did not live there before, is a very bad idea. BUT : ARE THERE BETTER IDEAS ? When will the Syrian refugees who are in Turkey OR Europe go back ? Can they actually go back to the Assad-controlled area without the risk of being persecuted ? Does Assad want his Syrians to return ? Here we arrive at the fundamental point that refugees in need should according to many international treaties obtain protection in receiving countries. But there seems no clear agreement on obligations to enable the return of refugees. Already for generations, Palestinians are not allowed to return to Israel. Will we now see a new gulf of permant refugees ; Syrians who will never go back to Syria ?

3°) Trump mentioned that the Kurds did not fight in Normandy (and by exception this time he was correct). But also the Turks did not fight in Normandy and what is more, they did not fight IS in Syria. There were always suspicions that they sympathized more with IS than with the Kurds in Syria. And now suddenly when the war against IS is finished (again, according to Trump – and now he is probably wrong) the Turks invade Syria (what they did not do when the Yezidi’s were slaughtered). And they bring with them what is called “jihadist” groups and we can only wonder who these jihadist groups might be. Is that the remnant of Al-Nusra, a grouping linked to Al Qaida ?

4°) The international press has insufficiently devoted attention to the situation of the Kurds in Turkey. In that respect we can refer already just to the fate of the Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, head of the HDP party and imprisoned for already more than two years in Turkey.

14 oktober 2019

An important question which is often asked nowadays is whether our times are a copy of the Thirties. The answer I believe is No for 80% and Yes for 20%.

It is a clear and loud “No” because in the Thirties of the previous century Europeans concluded to exterminate a part of their European population and started to do so.

Today, “right-wing” thinking is mainly concerned about (floods of) immigration, be it from related EU-countries or from outside the EU. The motives why people are reluctant are irrelevant. Essential is that there is a big difference between an ideology that aims at eliminating part of its own population (Thirties) and trying to control the inflow of immigrants (Today).

Overall I believe that the average European would support the following statements :

1°) People who need political asylum should obtain that.

2°) If economic migrants fill needs in our job market, then they are welcome.

3°) Other migrants (than 1 and 2) are not welcome and should be expelled (by force if needed).

4°) Migrants should integrate. This means that they should at least learn the local language.

5°) Migrants should obtain access to the social security systems in a gradual way, linked to the contributions they’ve made to the society in which they are received.

I would not call the sum of these statements right-wing. I believe they are reasonable and fair, even if some of them might even go against certain principles of the European Union when applied to migrants from within the European Union.

But there remains a Yes of 20%. I’m afraid that because leftists quite (too) easily argue that people who are concerned about immigration are fascists or racists, these people might indeed start to search for inspiration in the Thirties.

11 oktober 2019

Op 18 mei 2018 schreef De Tijd dat (toenmalig) Minister van Financien Johan Van Overtveldt aan de NBB gevraagd had om de economisch impact van migratie te berekenen. Zou iemand daar nog iets over gehoord hebben ? Zou de NBB nog aan het rekenen zijn ?

11 oktober 2019

On 11 October 2019 the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the Nobel Prize for peace to Abiy Ahmed, who is Prime Minister of Ethiopia since April 2018. He received the prize because in his short period as Prime Minister he succeeded in making peace with Eritrea, thereby ending a war that lasted 20 years, and because he initiated liberal reforms in Ethiopia itself.

The case of Abiy Ahmed and of Ethiopia is of great interest to us because now already the comment is made in the press that the liberal democratizing reforms seem to unleash etnical strife which was suppressed under the dictatorship of the military. Oromo and Amhara and other names of tribes might become familiar in the coming months and years.

Ethiopia might become the most recent proof that “plural societies” which democratise, fall apart in many pieces, which was the main proposition of my book “liberal quicksand”. My hart hopes that I’m wrong ; My brain already knows I’m right.

9 oktober 2019

Arend Lijphart is a political scientist. Central in his work is the distinction between majoritarian democracy (MD) and consociational democracy (CD). To be clear : in both kinds of democracy a majority is required but in a CD the ambition is to have more than a majority; The ambition is to have all important “segments” of society included in the government. According to Lijphart “elite cooperation is the primary distinguishing feature of consociational democracy” (Democracy in Plural Societies ; 1977 ; page 1). In his 1977 book Lijphart starts by referring to what he calls a well established proposition in political science, namely “that it is difficult to achieve and maintain stable democratic government in a plural society” before making his key point that the application of CD makes it “not at all impossible to achieve and maintain stable democratic government in a plural society.” In a well functioning CD “the cooperative attitudes and behaviour of the leaders of the different segments of the population” counteract the “centrifugal tendencies inherent in a plural society”.

In his 1984/1999 book “Patterns of Democracy” Lijphart details further the political structure of 21 countries (in 1977) and 36 countries (in 1984) in terms of consociational versus majoritarian. Further he investigates the “efficiency” of the two regimes and concludes that (1) majoritarian democracies are clearly not superior to consensus democracies in providing good governance, managing the economy, and maintaining civil peace; (2) Consensus democracies “have a better performance record than majoritarian democracies, especially when performance is measured by the five Worldwide Governance Indicators and the ICRG domestic conflict risk assessment and also with regard to inflation.” (p. 273)

Lijphart’s work is of interest to us because

(1) his core theme is the difficulty of the plural society ;

(2) the solution he sees in Consensus Democracy (which I would consider under certain circumstances as an overruling of democracy);

(3) he wrote his books over a long range of time (1977 – 1984 – 1999) and it is interesting to see how the political contexts have changed over that period ;

(4) it is further interesting to see how the viewpoints of Lijphart changed as a consequence of the changes of the facts on the ground over that long period of time.

As mentioned before, in his 1999 book Lijphart analyses 36 different democracies. He splits them in three different groups : plural societies, semiplural societies and nonplural societies. Evidently, it might be an inspiration for an interesting debate how such a taxonomy was achieved. This is how Lijphart distributes the countries over the three groups :

Plural Societies : India, Spain, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel, Trinidad, Mauritius.

Semiplural Societies : United States, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Luxembourg.

Nonplural Societies : Japan, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Costa Rica, Ireland, New Zealand, Uruguay, Jamaica, Botswana, Malta, Bahamas, Iceland, Barbados.