However diversity is not a fatal obstacle to nation States

The political crisis that currently crosses the Belgium is emblematic of a deep European malaise. Three months after the last legislative elections, won by the Flemish independence party, the country still has no Government. Some policies Walloon, first serene, now considering the possibility of disintegration of a country quarterly between Walloon and Flemish communities that everything seems to object. However, diversity is not a fatal obstacle to nation States. The Spain and the United Kingdom, despite important separatist tensions, eventually combining regionalism and national unity. The United States, temple of communitarianism, do not threaten to explode.

In fact, the diversity undermines national integrity when it is accompanied by strong communal transfers. That the Flemish criticized the Walloons, is not to speak French, but benefit from a generous social welfare funded by their tax dollars. The Northern Italians are not hostile to the phlegmatic lifestyle of their compatriots in the South, but they do not want to subsidize them.

This conflict between openness to others and financial generosity may seem paradoxical, but it is not unique to Europe. If the Americans have no reluctance to coexist in their territory of radically different lifestyles, they are not ready to extend their solidarity and their efforts beyond a circle of close proximity, their "community". The deficit of social capital, interest for the common good, translates concretely in their daily lives. Alberto Alesina, Professor at Harvard, for example found that American cities with high diversity (cultural, social) are also those where public services are of lower quality. Garbage is are found less often, smaller municipal libraries, inadequate sewerage, less developed social assistance programs. Consideration of diversity, the absence of collective solidarity sometimes has a political Prize: the more heterogeneous countries have more unstable Governments, when they are not more authoritarian.

Diversity, which is the vast wealth of the European continent, could also be the gravedigger of the federalist ambition. The sad case of the Romanian Roma, from this point of view, is a new illustration of this principle of arbitration between diversity and solidarity. No State of the Union, even the Romania, does the nomadic people as part of its own community. Each State expels, without really trying to solve their problem. Roma is the problem of person they become that of the European Commission, which, as it emanates from too different communities (European States in their diversity), does not have the means to protect beyond the sanctimonious postures.

Although rarely elaborate as such, the dilemma between generosity and tolerance pervades also domestic policy issues. During the pre-campaign, it appears watermark in much of the discussion. Parties seek to differentiate on axis solidarity-diversity, but they dare not make the existence of an arbitration. The ambiguity of the speech sentence to hide serious internal conflicts. The right, in its liberal, shows in some respects an ability to embrace more cultural diversity, but with as counterpart inevitable (and shameful to a part of its electorate) the evolution towards a communitarian model with a brake to the redistribution of wealth. The left, with historical reference equality of the conditions, shoot implicitly for cultural homogeneity (this is the meaning of republicanism) without daring to confess. His recurrent invocations to the Scandinavian model are the admission of this misunderstanding: it may not have a level of redistribution to the Swedish and American diversity.