When Machiavelli reflected on the crises of his time—including conflicts among major European powers, discontent with officials, and the collapsing legitimacy of the Catholic Church—he turned to the Roman Republic for inspiration. When there is skepticism about values, he wrote, history is our only remaining guide. The secret of Roman freedom, he explained in the 'Discourses on Livy', was neither his luck nor his military might. Instead, it lay in the Romans' ability to mediate the conflict between wealthy elites and the vast majority of the people – or as he put it: “i grandi” (the great) and “il popolo” (the people ).
While the inherent tendency of the great, Machiavelli argued, is to amass wealth and power to rule the rest, the inherent desire of the people is to avoid being at the mercy of the elites. The clash between the groups generally pulled the polity in opposite directions. Yet the Roman Republic had institutions, such as the tribunate of the plebs, that sought to empower the people and keep the elites in check. Only by channeling rather than suppressing this conflict, Machiavelli said, could civil liberty be preserved.
Europe has not followed his advice. For all its democratic rhetoric, the European Union is closer to an oligarchic institution. The bloc is overseen by an unelected group of technocrats in the European Commission and does not allow plebiscite on policy, let alone participation. Fiscal rules, which set strict limits on member states' budgets, protect the rich while imposing austerity on the poor. From top to bottom, Europe is dominated by the interests of the rich, which restrict the freedom of many.
His situation is of course not unique. Corporations, financial institutions, credit rating agencies and powerful interest groups rule everywhere, severely limiting the power of politicians. The European Union is far from the worst offender. Yet in nation states, the appearance of democratic participation can be maintained by remaining faithful to a shared constitution. In the European Union, whose fundamental myth is the free market, this is much more difficult to argue.
It is often assumed that the transnational nature of the bloc is the cause of the distaste for Europeans. Still that one those who oppose the current European Union do not do so because it is too cosmopolitan. Quite simply, and not unreasonably, they oppose it because it does not represent them. The Parliament for which Europeans will vote next month, to take a striking example of the bloc's lack of democracy, has little legislative power of its own: it tends only to approve the committee's decisions. It is this representational void that the radical right fills, turning the problem into simple binaries: you or them, the state or Europe, the white worker or the migrant.