How can the opportunity that is opened up for Europe, both intellectually and politically, be seized before the historical moment has passed? How can the competitive federalism that is surely Europe's potential avenue toward twenty-first century greatness be constitutionally emplaced? As the premature project for a single currency and a monolithic central bank fails, perhaps Europe's political leaders will shift their attention to the specific constitutional structure recommended by Frank Vibert.
As analysts-philosophers, we must stick to our lasts. We dare not enter the political lists directly, but we must hold onto the faith that, somehow, ideas do have consequences, and that good ideas must triumph over bad ones. James Buchanan (1996) "Europe as social reality" 255.
The quoted paragraphs are the final of a short article that is accompanied by the following note: "This essay is stimulated by Frank Vibert (1995) Europe: A Constitution for the Millennium. I take my title from John Searle (1995) The Construction of Social Reality." Buchanan (who won a Nobel 1986) is the kind of economist that did not disguise he read and engaged with philosophers (especially Rawls) throughout his life.
Speaking as an economist, Buchanan predicts the failure of the single currency and the ECB. This is remarkable because he starts the essay with a firm nod to Shackle's arguments about an "unknowable future." (254)* While few would call the EURO a great success after the past decade of near permanent crisis, it is worth noting that the Eurozone has held together despite considerable cost (to, say, the population of Greece). And it is undeniable that the political influence and role of ECB has been strengthened in virtue of the crisis.
And while it is not impossible, of course, that the Euro and ECB will collapse under the weight of crises, one may say that from Buchanan's perspective (ca 1996) the crisis moment was wasted. No effective path toward a European constitution, let alone greatness, was pursued during the crisis. To put the point a bit as a serious joke, from Buchanan's perspective the Constitutional Treaty (and subsequent Treaty of Lisbon) were also pursued prematurely (because it was attempted ahead of schedule in good times). Buchanan, who disliked technocratic and permanent elites, was at times open-minded about (at least the strategic use of) a popular referendum, would not have been surprised by the referendums that rejected the Constitutional Treaty.
So, Buchanan clearly thought crises presented opportunities for significant constitutional change. It is important to emphasize here -- because Buchanan's name has been linked to the development of disaster capitalism -- that in context Buchanan is proposing the possibility of peaceful statecraft. And, in fact, the path that Buchanan advocates in his essay is not here some major policy change (austerity or what have you not), but the discussion of a framework that can guide, without stipulating an endpoint (254), the development of a constitution that can turn a European "confederation" (253) into something more federal. I don't mean to deny that Buchanan's favored "competitive federalism" rules out other kinds of European models. But it is compatible with Buchanan's thought that European leaders opt for a path that does not advance greatness.
Now, there is a lot more to be said about how Buchanan conceives of this reflexive process. Buchanan has his sights on the "potential feedbacks between predicted patterns of outcomes" and the rules that help shape those patterns. That's the bit of the essay that is clear critical dialogue with Searle's project.
But I got distracted by the presence of "greatness" in the first quoted paragraph above.** For it suggests that Buchanan recognizes that not all politicians will always be motivated by narrow conceptions of self-interest or rent-seeking.+ Here Buchanan is appealing explicitly to what we may call the vanity of the elite (!) politician no less than Machiavelli does at the end of the Prince (or, more consciously in Buchanan's mind, Smith at the end of Wealth of Nations and his plan for an Atlantic parliament [recall] or Kant's project of Perpetual Peace [recall also the connection between Buchanan and Kant]).
That is to say, the final paragraph of the article (which I have quoted, too) may make one believe that Buchanan is committed ("faith") to a kind of magical, efficient market in ideas (modeled on Say's law): where the supply of good ideas will somehow produce the demand for them, given sufficient time and, simultaneously, that the market for ideas will reward the better ones in competition with the normatively undesirable ("bad") ones. But that's not so. Buchanan understands better than anybody (google rent-seeking; public choice) that good normative ideas are not automatically implemented (recall this post on the challenges to a liberal theory of politics).
For, Buchanan explicitly recognizes that good ideas do not rely on faith alone. We may say, then, that Buchanan addresses here obliquely the problem of how ideas that may have powerful constituencies arraigned against them can still shape their own uptake when their vehicles for implementation are properly identified and addressed. To what degree this strategy is compatible with broadly liberal sensitivities about the nature of public discussion, I leave for another occasion.
*He studiously avoids mentioning his teacher Frank Knight here.
**Some other time I will reflect on the nature of generosity of an "outsider" toward a foreign constituency. (253)
+That's no news (or an objection) because it has been long recognized that his veil of uncertainty and the constitutional moment he envisions (recall) is not a narrow utility maximizer.
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