Wednesday 8 August 2012
The Harrogate Agenda: the sovereignty question
This short video (via Autonomous Mind comments) is actually quite helpful as a basic primer on the Swiss system of direct democracy. Some of the principles have been adopted for our Harrogate Agenda provisional list.
What the Swiss do not do for us, however, is help settle the vexed question of sovereignty, about which there has been much discussion on the forum, particularly in relation to demands numbered one and six on our list.
The fascinating thing about the Swiss Constitution - and why it is less than helpful to our cause – is that it appears to share sovereignty between Almighty God, the Swiss People and the Cantons. There is no unequivocal opening statement such as "We the people", as found in the US constitution.
Further, I am somewhat diffident in asserting that the People and Almighty God share the sovereignty, because Article 3 of the constitution states that: "The Cantons are sovereign".
This takes us into territory where I don't want to go – the deep interstices of constitutional theory. But, by further reading of the Swiss constitution - which runs to 76 pages - it would be possible to assert that this is a composite document that comprises only in part a constitution. Mainly, it is a Bill of Rights.
Arguably though – and I do so argue – a constitution should be directed primarily at governments and state agencies, limited to defining the extent of their powers and the manner in which they shall be exercised. It can read alongside a Bill of Rights, and individual rights can be enshrined in a constitution, but I would prefer to give them a separate identity.
In my scenario, it follows that those who frame a constitution – or those they represent – are the sovereign entity. The very fact that they lay down the rules under which governments must operate isde facto recognition of that sovereignty.
That, of course, is why sovereignty should not be granted, and certainly not in any constitution. What can be given can be taken away. Thus, sovereignty must be assumed to be innate, as it always was with our hereditary monarchs, who assumed sovereignty as a matter of divine right.
Over time, the power afforded has been controlled by parliament but, progressively, assumed by the executive, leaving the monarch largely as a powerless figurehead.
As power has ebbed and flowed, no one body gave sovereignty to another. Sovereignty is assumed. And, in our Harrogate Agenda, that is what I would have us do – assume that sovereignty is ours, as in "we the people", reflecting the collective will.
Unlike the Swiss constitution, I would then – once a few details have been settled - have the people commission a new constitution. But before the collective can presume to set the constitutional process going, we must be sovereign.
Thus it is first on our list that I would have us demand that our sovereignty be recognised. We do not ask for it, and nor do we require a constitution to grant it. It is ours, as an inherent property, from which our own power to frame or approve a constitution stems.
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Richard North 08/08/2012
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
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