> Politicians are not focused on crushing poverty, judges are not working to end corruption, police is not busy catching terrorists.
Smaller states have fewer levels of hierarchy and are usually more efficient at what they're doing and less corrupt.
Also, people have it easier to exert pressure on their representatives, be it by throwing stones in their windows, not serving the prime minister at the local bakery or just voting with their feet.
Take that chart with a grain of salt. Notice the text above it:
> In some cases the autonomous community may have exclusive responsibility for the administration of a policy area but may only have executive (i.e.,carries out) powers as far as the policy itself is concerned, meaning it must enforce policy and laws decided at the national level.
There is no indication of which competences are only executive and which are legislative, whereas there's a huge difference between those in practice. Also, Spain can enact laws "overriding" the transferred competences at their will...
Norway and Sweden was once in a union, and my home country Norway certainly had a lot of autonomy, yet independence brough a lot of advantages. I don't think anybody in Norway today would think staying with Sweden would have been a good idea. Nordic countries have all been together at some point, but I think we are much happier as independent countries. We do lots of cooperation anyway and have very open borders towards each other.
I don't get why it is so dam important for many people to retain huge political unions. What is so great about being big?
This idea that we will be so much happier, peaceful and friendlier if we are all just one country is easily proven wrong by the good relationship all nordic countries have with each other.
People try to perpetuate the idea that WWI and WWII started because people were too much into nation states. Quite the contrary, neither war would have started had not Germany and Italy been forged into bigger political units in the first place.
Ultimately all these wars is a result of the poisoned thinking that big is always better. It is the expansionist mindset which is at fault here, not a desire to be independent.
>I don't get why it is so dam important for many people to retain huge political unions. What is so great about being big?
Well the political leaders want to have more resources to play with, and financial elites want bigger unified markets. As to the populace they don't tend to be very pro integration. At least not until they've been bribed or convinced with beautiful visions of a prosperous future.
As an observation, a fairly standard predator/military/combat tactic is to separate your prey/target from its protective group. eg isolate it so it's easier to overcome
Catalonia doesn't seem to be directly bordered (by land) to any hostile countries though, so that's probably not a worry.
I think in fact there is always a synergy effect to centralization and an efficiency effect to decentralization.
The synergy is quite obvious and explains why big companies and nations are able to survive in spite of the lack of efficiency.
The efficiency probably stems from a smaller (communication) distance between organization members.
The efficiency effect is IMO less well-known hence the comment but you're totally right. From that perspective the above-mentioned tactic amounts to a removal of synergy. If you look at it locally (and this point doesn't really apply to armies and companies but to, e.g., herds of animals), you also cut off the communication to the other herd members so it's a win-win from the predator side.
Well put. Was thinking over this in a similar way earlier today, but didn't have a word for the strength-in-numbers effect. "Synergy" is a decent word for it. :)
With the bit about it not really applying to armies... not sure why it wouldn't. If you cut the communication lines/avenues between units in an army, they'd generally be less effective at co-ordinating (less synergy). eg less able to mount effective defensive or attacks.
Smaller states have fewer levels of hierarchy and are usually more efficient at what they're doing and less corrupt.
Also, people have it easier to exert pressure on their representatives, be it by throwing stones in their windows, not serving the prime minister at the local bakery or just voting with their feet.
Decentralization is often an improvement.