I’ll be frank with you: I’ve never done a full party conference. Some fringe activities, yes, but not the whole shebang. Indeed, the nearest I’ve got is the pile of DVDs of an early 2000s UKIP conference, back when I worked more on euroscepticism (and when UKIP sold DVDs of their conference).
This is all a prelude to saying that I also don’t think that party conferences matter as much as some say.
In media terms, they are convenient staging posts in the year, with all the merits of having the key players in one place for long enough that they might let their hair down a bit. In political terms, the gathering also allows for plotting and planning.
But for European policy, conference is almost never the place to look. None of the major interventions in either Brexit or the pre-Cameroonian period came from conference, but from stand-alone speeches and events.
That’s largely because both Conservatives and Labour are split, have been split and (probably) will continue to be split on matters European. And basic party management says you don’t wash your dirty laundry when everyone’s watching.
I write this despite having marked Birmingham as one of the key staging posts to an Article 50 deal (along with Salzburg). On reflection, that was because I thought by Birmingham, Tory Chequers-rebels would have had to have made their move, rather than at the conference proper.
That they didn’t – possibly couldn’t – reflects my long-held view that May is the convenient scapegoat, carrying the UK out next March with whatever’s needed to avoid immediate disaster, only to be cast aside by critics who will point to their grumblings now as evidence of “why this was never the right way to go about it.” Why own the problem when someone else is there to carry the can for you?
It also underlines how wedded to Chequers May has become. Ironically, the range of criticism seems to have made it easier for her to bluster through her conference speech, redirecting fire at second-referendumers and connecting Brexit to a domestic project. Conference season appears to have had no appreciable impact on her policy.
This is Brussels calling
But this is not to say that policy isn’t changing.
The coming week is going to see a lot of work going into Article 50 negotiations, building up to next Wednesday’s release of a draft Political Declaration by the EU.
That work will entail movement by both sides, but also some careful framing of what is happening.
Importantly, the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration aren’t going to embody ‘Chequers’, in the sense that the focus of the former is on the ending of the UK’s EU membership and the focus of the latter is a set of principles guiding the negotiations for a future relationship. Those principles do not necessarily – maybe even necessarily cannot – map out the specific shape of that relationship, given the incompleteness of both sides’ positions.
Thus the Article 50 ‘deal’ potentially could be sold not as ‘Chequers’, but as a stepping stone to what comes next. For all those Tory rebels and opposition parties planning to ‘vote against Chequers‘, this might come either as a nasty surprise or as a means to get themselves out of a hole (given that there’s little enthusiasm for a no-deal alternative).
With rumours of new options on the Irish dimension flying about, it is going to be in Brussels that this next stage of Brexit is going to be determined, rather than Birmingham (or even London).
This was both inevitable and necessary.
Brexit was never just about the UK, but also about the UK’s relationship with the EU. To pretend that as long as the British had worked out what they wanted, that was that, was always a foolish enterprise. Instead, it needs the involvement of both the UK and EU in finding mutually-acceptable solutions.
If that much is now better recognised by British politicians and commentators as a result of the past and coming weeks, then we should count that as an advance in our public understanding of how the EU (and Brexit) works.
Perhaps also it will underline how the contingent issue of Brexit (and it’s a huge contingency) sits within the bigger picture of the UK’s place in the world.
I’ll fall back on that trope of self-help instagram posts – “no man is an island entire of itself” – with its message that connections and context are indispensable.
And then I’ll remind you that this particular stanza finishes with the equally famous line about who the bell is tolling.
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Apart from protection from hostile forces, security also refers to a wide range of other issues, such as the absence of harm, the presence of an essential good, quality or conditions in which equitable and sustainable relationships can develop within political systems, institutions and states.
There are various hazards, faced by the Ukrainian state in the region of Transcarpathia (Zakarpattya), rich in cultures, ethnicities, political preferences and bordering Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. The challenges of insuring constitutional order, prevention of separatism by co-opting and locking-in, surprisingly, could be done by promotion of neopatrimonial ties, clientalism, patronage and policies of controlled corruption and other informal mechanisms.
In the December 1991 referendum 78% of the region´s voters approved a proposal for Transcarpathian autonomy. Rather than employing force, the Ukrainian state exerted other kinds of control on local officials. Regional movements were defused through co-opting and brokeraging mechanisms, in which local politicians were included into the political networks with the center, whereby the voices demanding autonomy were stifled.
Dissatisfaction and high aspirations for separate identity recognition and redistribution of resources and power present obstacles for stability internationally and successful nation-building/consolidation domestically. Various political groups thus tend to vigorously compete for their right to influence the level of societal (in)security. Since 1991 Ukraine demonstrated an easily identifiable polarization along regional and cultural lines. These cleavages attained political dimension through regionally based political parties. This polarization often led the country to the brink of political confrontation. An examination of this regional case shows the importance of the actual control means in the ability to defuse separatist movements.
Regionalism is the constant factor in Ukrainian political life, and is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. The country’s principal regional cleavages are result of a historically separate political development under heavy foreign domination. In this context, unconstitutional establishment of autonomy structures may inflame tensions and raise various hazards, as groups may mobilize different ethnicities around the issue. Furthermore, once an autonomous structure has been established, it can easily serve as an institutional foundation for separatist movements and inflate claims. Region´s elites advancing their own political careers may use autonomy as a vehicle for the mobilization of ethnicity, thus producing violent conflict.
Authoritarian governments often view autonomy claims as a zero-sum game, responding harshly and provoking further resistance. Violent conflict may also be more likely under authoritarian regimes because minority groups often fear that extreme action will be the only way to produce a response from such a government. More democratic regimes, however, are more likely to deal with demands more pragmatically, with a strategy resulting in non-violent compromise. In the state hierarchy, based on the Weberian legacy, the center is stronger than the periphery and commands the local agents, who entertain control on the exercise of power in the region. The exceptions to this model may include the situation, where local actors hold stronger de facto control, often by informal means.
Ukraine´ state leadership successfully exercised informal mechanisms of control in relation to the periphery. It allowed and even encouraged corruption by local elites. But the state also collected information on illicit activities of local elites and carefully stored it. When directives from the center were given to local elites for implementation, the locals had nothing but to comply in order to avoid criminal prosecution. Another means of control was the promise of jobs and positions to individuals who support central policies of elites. These types of patronage control are quite effective and inexpensive, compared to direct coercion.
Hub-and-spoke pattern of a network with little connection between subunits is a more effective way of control, compared with other. This type of structure balanced the power in favour of the center, as regional actors had to go through the center in order to communicate with each other, and “blackmail state” could effectively forbid collusion between regional actors.
The elite that emerged in independent Ukraine came out of the old Soviet-era nomenklatura bred in a neo-patrimonial culture. Thus in Ukraine emerged the system of party of power, characterised by dependence on state, rather formal ideology, barely realized in practice, and strong linkage to specific interest groups, who increasingly took control of political power. The parties were not meant to become autonomous political forces in their own right, but were utilised by the center. They also served the regime in upholding a network of patronage relationships with the major socio-political, economic and administrative actors. At the same time Ukraine has not managed to achieve a level of national consolidation where regional and national identities could be complementary rather than competitive.
Alexander Svetlov
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