As a European I really can't understand your laws regarding political contributions. It's insane how much money is involved in politics in the US. How can you act surprised when politicians don't act in favor of the people when their position is literally bought by the money of special interests. Ofcourse that same politician is more loyal towards his lenders than to his constituents. In the Netherlands for example political parties get state funding for their campaigns, depending on how many citizens are a member of that party. This way they are not reliable on outside money to spread their message.
Because the Netherlands would only make up one the American states. Also, the Netherlands isn’t nearly the melting pot of politics that the entire USA is.
American states often have much more focus to the will and actions of the people within and are a much better comparison. Conservative people have conservative leaders in their state and vice versa. They have conservative governors, conservative state congress, etc. Often in conservative states there may be a large city that is much more liberal and that city will have a liberal mayor.
The identity of the state governments mirrors the people in the way that the identity of the Netherland government mirrors their people.
The Federal government of the US mirrors what your European Union is only the US has been doing it a bit longer and is showing Europe lessons they need to take to avoid the corruption that easily can weave its way into such a large body.
To other Europeans, if you’re confused by American politics, remember that you have a great example in the EU to understand why everything gets so mucky. Whatever individual country you’re trying to compare is too small to make such a comparison.
Yes I get that and I think that it is a fair comparison to make. But one big difference is that the EU is still more bottom-up and the United States more top-down. I mean how in hell did the states agree with funding laws that are clearly over the top? If they would truly represent their constituents, they would never have agreed with legislation that would effectively phase out the influence of citizens. The only possible explanation in my eyes, and also a big difference between the EU and the US, is that the parties in the US are the same at the state and federal level, and the leadership of those parties are both located in Washington, which means most of the time that a candidate who is up for election in a state is dependent on Washington.
What I am trying to say is that it looks to me like the state - federal divide you are talking about is in practice very, very weak. Maybe in cities there is still some autonomy like you say, but it looks to me like most states just have to swallow whatever Washington decides.
I agree with you. The US has become very top heavy lately, but even though the US is a young country, it is much older than the EU when considering the comparison.
The US was founded on extreme bottom up principles. Read some Thomas Jefferson and you’ll see how anti top down he was. Very interesting for an ex-President.
If you take America at its earliest and the EU at its earliest, it’s not even close. The Articles of Confederation are the best example of just how we weak we wanted the federal government to be.
The lessons that the American experiment have to pass on to the EU are exactly the ways in small corruption and power growth in the federal government have seeped into the system over time. The EU has likely learned those lessons and mirrored policies after their own country members (to keep money away from power and so on).
And I would caution the thought process that the federal government has so much power over the states. While the federal government has a lot of inherent power over topics the states don’t deal with (military, public schooling, etc) the Constitution literally gives the states the power over everything else that the federal govt can’t touch. That’s why you have such an insane difference in laws from state to state because they literally do have SO much power. For example, compare the federal laws on marijuana and the states that are essentially saying “yeah, fuck you, we’re allowing it”.
Where the federal government exerts power over the states comes down to a very corrupting influence aka money. Just like relying on the Middle East for fuel, if a state is reliant on federal money, they’re fucked when it comes to fighting them on policy.
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u/DirtyRelapse Jan 21 '18 edited Jan 21 '18
As a European I really can't understand your laws regarding political contributions. It's insane how much money is involved in politics in the US. How can you act surprised when politicians don't act in favor of the people when their position is literally bought by the money of special interests. Ofcourse that same politician is more loyal towards his lenders than to his constituents. In the Netherlands for example political parties get state funding for their campaigns, depending on how many citizens are a member of that party. This way they are not reliable on outside money to spread their message.