(via Parapundit) One of my all-time favorite, modern political Philosophers, Francis Fukuyama wrote this article for WaPo with his analysis of the US/European rift.  The article mostly rehashes some of the issues I've mentioned before (for ex,. here and here) but I think Fukuyama is just such an all around stud (End of History being a favorite book of mine) that his stuff is worth a blog entry.    ;-)

At the core, he argues, is a difference of opinion about where a governing body gains its legitimacy from.   Fukuyama writes:

...To put it rather schematically, Americans tend not to see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than the nation-state. To the extent that international organizations have legitimacy, it is because duly constituted democratic majorities have handed that legitimacy up to them in a negotiated, contractual process, which they can take back at any time. Europeans, by contrast, tend to believe that democratic legitimacy flows from the will of an international community much larger than any individual nation-state.

For the US, you're legit if the people you govern elect you.   For Europeans, you're legit if the other countries of the world like you.  Much of this stems from a fundamental European faith in the technocratic elite (note, this isn't directly a conclusion that Fukuyama draws, I'm slicing and dicing his article a bit) --

...But the European idea that legitimacy is handed downward from a disembodied international community rather than handed upward from existing democratic institutions reflecting the public will on a nation-state level invites abuse on the part of elites, who are then free to interpret the will of the international community to suit their own preferences.

Brink Lindsey's Against the Dead Hand has a very applicable quote from the book defines the central notions of a technocracy [p 100]:

...it was assumed that economic advancement turns on the faithful application of an existing body of technical knowledge.   All that is needed to usher in a golden age of growth and prosperity is to grant the elite that poseses the necessary knowledge the plenary power to apply it--or, in other words to force the rest of us to do as we're told.

And, in fact, Fukuyama provides us with some evidence that such Technocratic imposition of will may already be happening:

.. recent poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the German Marshall Fund suggests that Europeans and Americans are not as far apart on many issues, including Iraq, as their political leaders are.

Arguably, what we're witnessing is a struggle by the technocrats to establish themselves by demonstrating their power against the US.

Fukuyama does fault the US to a degree as well:

...the final reason has to do with America's unique national experience and the sense of exceptionalism that has arisen from it. Americans believe in the special legitimacy of their democratic institutions and indeed believe that they are the embodiment of universal values that have a significance for all of mankind. This leads to an idealistic involvement in world affairs, but also to a tendency for Americans to confuse their national interests with universal ones.

Curiously, here, he comes out somewhat opposed to Universalism whereas End of History is often described as a bible for Universalists.

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