Friday 20 June 2008

Continental vision vs liberum veto

The Philadelphia Convention had continental vision and it acted accordingly.

The European powers have been able to patch together a European Union of sorts, but as yet they have effectively restricted its potential for international action and internal reform by imitating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Here is an excerpt of what the Wikipedia article Liberum veto tells us about the effects of the unanimity rule:

“In the first half of the 18th century, it became increasingly common for Sejm sessions to be broken up by liberum veto, as the Commonwealth's neighbours — chiefly Russia and Prussia — found this a useful tool to frustrate attempts at reforming and strengthening the Commonwealth. The latter deteriorated from a European power into a state of anarchy.”

The Wikipedia article is available at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_Veto

Is this the way we want it to be? Is this how we should want it to be?


Ralf Grahn

No comments:

Post a Comment

Due deluge of spam comments no more comments are accepted.

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.