EU has done really well on passing big laws such as GDPR in the recent years, while the US can’t even seem to decide whether to fund their own government. Why do you think Europe is doing better than the US? One would think that since EU is more diverse it would be harder to find common ground. And there were examples of that during the Greece debt crisis. But not anymore, it seems.
USA government is just a puppet of lobbying groups IE: private companies. Thankfully Europe doesn’t reach that level yet
“yet”.
I feel like we’re just one or two decades behind on … everything bad in the US.
I think it is much harder to lobby the EU due to it’s structure. The EU is composed of many countries with distinct culture and objectives. The only way for everyone to agree on policies is compromise. This makes it much harder to successfully lobby…
If you lobby one political party in the EU successfully, you will only have about 2% of the votes Whereas in the US you have about 50% of the votes and of course you would focus on the party best placed to make the change.
Europe does still have issues with lobbies. In many of the individual countries the effectiveness of lobbying is comparable, and in some cases worse.
The best solution are anti-lobbying regulation, increased political engagement of the electorate, better journalism and proportionate representarion.
I think it is exactly the other way around. Companies are well-organized on the global level and can influence Brussels and national EU governments. See the latest Qatar scandal or the often cited cucumber regulations. However, in Europe, the social market orientation results in majorities favoring more government control. In contrast, the US often rejects such policies as “communism”.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that Lobbying isn’t that big in Europe and several states have laws actively against the practice. Sure, corrupt politicians still exists, but they are more easily exposed under anti-corruption laws. Unlike in the USA where it’s practically legalized bribery.
Why are there 25k lobbyists in Brussels then?
Because they have multi-party elections, this is probably the single biggest root cause that impacts all levels of government activity and accountability.
Yeah, they don’t really have any sense of collaboration/compromise with people of other political opinions. To get something passed at the federal level, you need to have the president, senate, and house all on board, and if any of those are not politically aligned, any motion will fail. The periods in recent history where these have all been in alignment are simply a very small fraction of the time. And considering how long it takes to get something to pass, you end up with very little getting done during these precious few periods in time.
And on top of that, it is far more common that you see American politicians breaking from their own party to torpedo a large bill than it is to work with another party to get it passed.
It wasn’t always this way by the way - a lot of people attribute this to extreme right-wing figures during the 90s like Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, etc. who promoted hyper-polarisation and a total demonisation of anything that didn’t align with their anti-progress counter-culture. And this phenomenon has continued to evolve over the past 30-40 years both in far-right media and political representation that you see today.
With an actual, working multi party system there is less polarisation, and most parties don’t actively hate each other to the point of opposing anything the other supports.
Also the political system behind the passing of law is different, although I don’t know enough to explain it.
I would agree. To the extend that OP’s thesis is true (which I don’t think is fully true, but also not fully wrong either), I also find that the readiness to compromise both at the EU level and in most member-state parliaments that eventually need to transpose the directives into national laws, is a difference that stands out.
A multi-party system helps too, because there can be situational alliances that do not divide the parties internally. E.g. in one topic the Social Democrats, the Moderate Right and the Liberals can be on the same side and pass something (probably a free-trade deal) and on another topic the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Left can pass something else (probably an environmental regulation). When there are only two parties in the legislature, such alliances break party lines, so it’s a higher hurdle to overcome.
This is an extremely complex topic with lots of factors. You could write books about it and not enconpass everything.
Just one point among lots others:
Because Europe (with exceptions) in general works with a proportional system, not a majority system.
The parties that get into parliament are proportional to the votes, not the one who got the most votes gets to decide.
This results in European lawmakers being forced to work together with their opponents to do shit, which creates a culture of cooperation and civility. For example, you can’t accuse your opponent of being a baby eating communist reptile during campaign because then they won’t work with you afterwards.
There are a lot of reasons for that. Most of them start with FPTP voting, which ultimately leads to less parties being present in a parliament and less democratic representation ofthe actual will of the people, which in turn leads to radicalisation, which in turn leads to the inability to compromise because this would look “weak” for the more radicalized people in the party.
Another problem is the disparity between population and representation in US politics This is based on the founding fathers’ dislike of people living in cities due to their experience with London back in the time. They got it wrong for the wrong reasons, but US politics still considers even the most outdated notions of the founding fathers as gospel and won’t fix the most glaring issues that plague US politics.
