The Lisbon Treaty and David Cameron: Ideologies and Interest and What Happened to Portugal

My first exploration of the Lisbon Treaty attempted to give a "what if" view of the future of European integration, in light of what could go wrong and what were possible plots. I briefly argued that one of the reasons for Gordon Brown to stay on as PM had to do with this treaty. I maintain that he must get a hearful from his European counterparts each time they meet him (particularly Sarkozy and Merkel). Probably the actual more immediate reasons lie closer to home. Instead of looking at the interests and behaviour of Gordon Brown, lets do the similar analysis for David Cameron.

Cameron and Klaus, sitting on a tree...

According to this article, Cameron told Klaus that he would hold a referendum if the Lisbon treaty was not yet adopted when he came to power. The question is thus, what is it that providing that information to Klaus means. Logically speaking, Cameron knows (because everyone knows) that Klaus is a Euro-sceptic, who does not like the Lisbon treaty, which he legitimately sees as an encroachment on Czech sovereignty. It is thus legitimate that within some reasonable boundaries of his own perceived long term self-interest, he would like to sink the Lisbon treaty so as to save the nation-state and all that. Taking this into consideration, and assuming that Cameron did too (and wasn't just being candid), his sharing of that information with Vaclav Klaus would have implied that he wanted to sink the Lisbon treaty as well and was effectively saying "hold the boat for another year. I'm coming, we can sink it together and I'll offer my protection and that of the mighty United Kingdom". This all makes sense, and if all agents are rational, without any boundaries or behavioural biases, this is what a politician who wants to sink the Lisbon treaty would have done.

The question however is whether sinking the Lisbon treaty is really in the interest of anyone politician or country specifically, David Cameron and the UK. This issue can have 2 approaches. One focused on the interests, and another focused on the ideologies. My argument is that only when a very specific view of partisanship is taken to outweight other concerns does it make sense to take the approach that I have described Cameron taking.

IDEOLOGIES (PARTISANSHIP)

This issue has to do with clusters of ideas. Ideologies are the personalities of parties. It has to do with how groups of people make sense of the world, in accordance with their interests. Thus rich people who strive under the present status quo support right wing parties which are conservative and normally reactionary. They like the way the world presently works because it made them well off playing under these rules. Poorer people obviously do not support the same party. They do not strive. They do not do well under the present game rules. They want to support a party that stands for change, in the hope that hardly any system will be worst than the present one. Parties represent classes, religious groups, ethnicities, and geographical groups, who are either happy with the present status quo or not.

From this very abstract, stereotyped perspective of the world it becomes fairly evident that new ideas cannot be adopted by reactionary groups. Conservative parties may be able to take new approaches and structure narratives differently, but they will not be able to adopt new ideas that alter the status quo in any way that threatens those who benefit from it. Thus the conservative party is ill fitted to be a natural supporter of European integration. European integration means the erosing of sovereignty by one country to the rest, as all member states pool their resources and coordinate their policies in order to minimise undesired and negative externalities. If the conservative party continues to be anchored in the belief that the UK is better off by selecting bits and pieces of European integration, because it considers it to be an economic project, rather than an all encompassing political and social one as well, it can hardly be an advocate for the project and for a reform of the rules which extends the scope of European integration and facilitates decision making.

If one assumes a utility function (U) based on two variables, taste(P) and output(Y), U=U(P,Y), where satisfying ones political taste has intrinsic value which increases utility through P, then it is possible to explain David Cameron's behaviour and willingness to give a signal to Vaclav Klaus regarding his willingness to support the demise of the lisbon treaty. It's basically his position. However as this article and the other argue, he does not seem to have a lot of security in his choice, which would indicate that the partisan channel is not the root cause. It would seem rather that the explanation should be found in opportunistic, electoral reasonings.

ECONOMIC (SELF) INTEREST

This section deals with Y and it's potential variants. Y may be an expression of the interest of the politician or of the country/economy.

Country

From a purely economic self-interest point of view the Lisbon treaty does more damage to small countries like the Czech republic than to the UK, by decreasing the majorities needed for approving EU directives and other forms of European legislation. The connection here is that the EU is another arena for countries to conquer markets and wield influence to conquer more markets. This in turn would be reflected When a super majority is needed small countries play a bigger role in vetoing. When a smaller majority is needed, smaller countries loose out. Table 1 provides game theoretical measures of power within the different voting procedures of the EU and shows clearly that there is a decrease in the influence of smaller countries as the years have gone by (0 is minimum and 1 is maximum). So the UK's interests are overrepresented in comparison to smaller states (FYI, this is not unfair. The Lisbon treaty deals with one of the issues that was brought up by the German Supreme Court, which has to do with equality of representation. It failed to recognise the European Parliament as a democratic institution because it said that it attributed more influence to some countries (e.g. Luxembourg) than others (e.g. Germany). the UK may be more powerful in terms of relative votes than before. But this should overall make the system fairer).

My point however is that Cameron would be smart to try to get all the help and all the friends inEurope that he can get. Particularly when his partners in France and in Germany are also conservatives giving him an easier time finding overlaps than if the PS and the SPD were in power in France and Germany respectively. If he informs Klaus that he'll veto if Klaus holds it out until 2010, then he'll be held accountable by french, spaniards and germans. The UK is in dire fiscal straights. He can't lower taxes and lowering expenditures in a downturn is not very popular (despite the IMF and the Washington consensus). With limited room at home he can't possibly alienate European partners and if he is intelligent he has realised that the UK does not play in the same league as the US, and would therefore be intelligent to not expect much help from that side of the Atlantic (China seems to be the US's most relevant partner at present. It has a similar scale and holds a lot of US bonds and is responsible for a lot of US trade deficit).If bad luck strikes and the UK needs help (as its situation as a small open economy, on the world market, exposes it to), its good to have more friends than few.

Individual

Whoever is to blame for the demise of the Lisbon treaty is not going to make friends anywhere in Lisbon. Now that's ok for Klaus and Kaczynski. They are at the zenith of their careers and can't possibly conceive of doing much more of relevant in the upcoming years. They have well established cronies who'll support them (either for fear of friendship, but certainly with respect). Stopping the Lisbon treaty should not be a big problem for them. Without ignoring internal political bickering, they can claim to be of a line of politicians who actually believe that the Lisbon treaty is a step too far. They don't like the idea of moving from one sphere of influence (USSR) to another (EU), and have made it clear that that's the way they see it. Cameron on the other hand is not that kind of politician. He is not in power, though him and everyone else rightly assume that he will soon enough be. More importantly he has never been in power and has a very limited number of cronies who need him. He has friendships but is rather inexperienced (this article actually gives the idea that particularly regarding Europe, the Conservative party seems to have several important players) . He probably has all the money that he is allowed to have and has done a good job at keeping friends close and enemies at bay. However he lacks the political ability of Peter Mandelson and the historical political stance of Margaret Thatcher. He will suffer the same shortcoming that Tony Blair had when he came to power, without many of his skills (Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown, New labour etc). He does not propose a revolution (despite many efforts, labels and rebranding of the conservative party) like Tony Blair's New Labour. He is not going to win because he has new ideas. He is going to win because the other guys will have been at it for 13 year, which has given then enough room for mistakes (Iraq, Financial Crisis). However he is not even able to fully benefit from these blunders, given that they were really caused by a refocus of Labour around the centre and even to the right which was successful by its ability to appeal to and steal conservative votes. Quite simply, Cameron for all his youth and charisma is inexperienced, poorly connected internationally, ideologically dull and the upcoming leader of a big European country but small international player, in the middle of a severe economic crisis, lucky enough to oppose 12 years of political leadership from his political adversaries. And this is not an insult: luck and charisma may be more empty of content but probably go a longer way to win an election than does substance and experience. So he is not Klaus (old ideas, a lot of experience) and he is not Blair (new ideas, but little experience ) either.

Regarding Europe it seems that he has no ideas except those of his party. Not ever having experienced it, he really doesn't seem to care enough to stand up for what he believes (stand up against his party's dominant euro-sceptic fringe, or with his party against the EU). He is torn between William Hague, Liam Fox and Mark Francois' Euro-scepticism, and Malcom Rifkind and Ed Llewellyn Europhilia.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mr Cameron is in a bit of a pickle. If he helps sinking the Lisbon treaty his and his country's interests will be pushed far to the back of European discussions, thus marginalising British interests among its most important partners. If he seems to be anything less than indignant with the Lisbon treaty, he'll loose support from his party. Thus Mr Cameron's utility function does not so much depend on P as his P seems to be equal to zero (he couldn't really care less). However, his Y seems to be informed by other people's P as well as by the Y of the UK. U=U(P,Y)=U(Pc,Yuk), where Pc is the dominant partisan position of the conservative party that the Lisbon treaty is evil, and "Yuk" is the economic benefits of the UK from not crushing the treaty, which should be a reflection of good governance by Mr Cameron and hopefully ensure his dominance in British politics for a while, thus ensuring his own income.

Of course there's the ideological issue brought up previously, but that only precludes David Cameron from staying quiet, if he feels like Klaus. If he is personally indifferent to Europe which I actually think he is (if for no other reason that he would have otherwise made a lot more fuss about the 2nd Irish referendum, and about the treaty itself), then it would be smart for him to not put his words into action. If as I think, he is only playing the field, trying get the support of Euro-sceptics which are abundant in the UK, but who do not prioritise the EU very much, then its better to seem against the Lisbon treaty but to not stand in the way, than to strategise about how to bring it down. Badmouth the treaty and the European bureaucracy all you want, but don't start signalling other players something which you don't seriously want to happen.

The UK, with all its opt-outs and its European size has a lot to gain from this treaty and David Cameron has a lot to win from being perceived as reluctantly having to accept the Lisbon treaty as a fait accompli resulting from the bad policies of his predecessors. He gains very little from being the guy who destroyed 10 years of European integration efforts.

I would like to finish with a colourful warning. I am Portuguese and can base myself in my country's experience. Portugal was a great Empire, once upon a time. We gave the Western world Africa. We uncovered Japan, the Americas and found new paths to India a to a rich commercial route when Europe's path was blocked by other geopolitical entities (Ottoman Empire of Suleiman). We made a lot of money, failed to invest it properly and progressively became a footnote on the westernmost edge of Europe. We were stuck in a locked political system with dominant reactionary views of the world and entrenched in our past glory. We watched the cue pass by. Our greatest ally (UK) robbed us of our colonies (1890: the pink map). We lost. That is what will happen to England if it does not understand its place in the world and the fact that its interdependencies lie with Europe. It is not an empire. In a global economy no one is isolated and no one is an island. It is a major player in an internationally integrated economy and solidly represents the interests of 10% of Europeans. That's less than 0.1% of the world.