Crooked Timber has a terrific essay by Henry Farrell -- hat tip A Few Euros More -- proposing that the strain in the European Union is actually a symptom of something good.

The French are looking decidedly wobbly on the new European constitution, which they vote on next Sunday. The Dutch, who will be voting soon after, appear to be strongly opposed. This all sounds dreadful for pro-Europeans. However, I’m going to make two predictions. First, the unexceptionable one – I don’t think that the constitution has much chance at all of being ratified. If it somehow gets over the French hurdle, it’s going to come a cropper at the British one. Then the risky one – I reckon that the European Union may be on the verge of acquiring real political legitimacy for the first time, exactly and precisely because of the vociferous debates which are starting to get going.

Professor Farrell notes that, up to now, ignorance has been bliss.

Political elites have bought into the European project from early on, on the basis that it means peace on the European mainland, and more trade and higher economic growth for everyone. But there’s been a radical disconnect between the EU’s rather vague, lofty aims of “ever closer union” on the one hand, and the actual day to day business of European politics on the other. Neither of these inspire much popular support or interest – while most European mass publics have vaguely been in favour of further European integration, it’s been because their leaders have told them that it’s a good thing. This has given these leaders a lot of leeway to do what they want at the EU level without the general public knowing what’s happening. It’s also allowed these leaders to blame ‘Brussels bureaucrats’ for choices that they have made themselves, but which they know will be unpopular with voters. In short, the EU is a political project dressed up in technocratic clothing – it’s succeeded in part because its day-to-day activities sounds so boring to outsiders.

The problem with this, of course, is that over time, the European Union has begun to leach legitimacy, as it has become ever more powerful and less accountable...

Thus, we have a set of institutions (the European Union) which are increasingly politically powerful, but which don’t have much democratic legitimacy.

That, according to Farrell, is about to change forever, and out the ashes of the movement to form an EU constitution will come a discussion that really matters:

Thus, a new debate is beginning to emerge over what kind of European Union we should have – a Europe that’s more aligned with the social-democratic model, or a Europe that’s closer to the classical liberal approach; protection versus free markets...

Underlying merits aside, the fundamental point is that these arguments are less obstacles to European integration than the birth pangs of a European Union in which voters actually begin to pay attention to what’s happening at the European level. The European Union is becoming a political space, in a way that it hasn’t been in the past... We’re arguably on the cusp of the opposite switchover in the EU - people are beginning to articulate their grievances with the EU as it is, and to propose alternative ways of doing things. Domestic political parties are beginning to align themselves with different models of what Europe should be. This wasn’t possible as long as Europe was a vague set of aspirations that political elites from left and right could agree on, but that the public didn’t care about. And it arguably lays the foundations for a much more robust European Union than has existed in the past.

A great read.

ASIDE: It's a bit off topic for this blog, but Crooked Timber is also hosting a Steven Levitt seminar -- essentially a collection of essays on Levitt's and Stephen Dubner's Freakonomics, along with responses from Levitt himself.  (Henry Farrell and Tyler Cowen are among the contributors.)  I add it to my must read list.