Chaos theory made its way into modern popular culture with the title of Edward Lorenz's paper delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas? The great meteorologist was drawing attention to the possibility that the course of great events may be altered by apparently insignificant factors. A tiny disturbance in the air over Rio might set off forces that would toss George Bush's garden furniture from Austin to Dallas.
We ourselves may now be involved in a political version of chaos theory. Lorenz's question might be rephrased to ask whether a few Irish people getting into a flap over the Nice Treaty might set off storms that would rip through the delicate architecture of European politics. If the question seems absurd, it is because there is a degree of absurdity in next week's referendum.
Though many people rightly complain about the European Union's democratic deficit, the real problem with the Nice referendum is that it is an exercise in what can only be called hyper-democracy. From the point of view of the Irish Constitution, it makes perfect sense that we should have a vote on the changes the treaty entails.
In the larger perspective of historic realignments on the European continent, it makes no sense at all that perhaps no more than a million Irish voters, many of whom have only the vaguest notion of what the treaty is about, can make decisions with profound implications for the peoples of central Europe. Hands up all those who feel entitled to tell the Czechs, Poles or Latvians what's good for them?
One of the weirder aspects of the No campaign, indeed, is that the Eurosceptics who are philosophically committed to the nation state and national sovereignty have been quite happy to tell us that they know what's good for the people of the applicant states better than their own governments do. If, as opponents of the treaty would maintain, it is bad for the big EU states to tell the smaller ones what to do, why is it good for a very small EU state (Ireland) to tell far bigger ones such as Poland that their governments have got it wrong and that we know better?
MANY of the arguments about the specific changes that Nice proposes are equally unconvincing. To talk about the diminishing power of Ireland in EU votes after 2005, for example, is to engage in a mathematical fiction. At present we have three votes out of 83 on the Council of Ministers. In an EU of 27 members, we will have seven votes out of 345. In percentage terms, therefore, our votes fall from 3 per cent of the total to 2 per cent.
Does anybody seriously believe that having three votes out of 83 makes you more powerful than having seven out of 345? Either way, with a tiny proportion of the EU population, our representatives will be able to influence events not by voting strength but by lobbying, making deals, forging alliances. That's what happens now and what will happen in the future.
Nor do I find it easy to get worked up about the extension of qualified majority voting (already a big part of EU governance since the Single European Act) to areas like the appointment of the EU Commission. The National Platform, in its campaign for a No vote, points out that governments and prime ministers will lose their guarantee that their preferred national nominee to the Commission will get the job.
This, surely, is a very good thing. One of the millstones around the EU's neck has been the tendency of national governments to use the Commission as a dumping ground for incompetent hacks, truculent rivals or embarrassing allies. Having at least the theoretical possibility that the EU might reject a particular national nominee and ask for another one is a welcome safeguard.
SUPPOSE, for example, that the new Italian prime minister decided to rid himself of his embarrassing ally, Umberto Bossi, by foisting him on the Commission. Might it not be legitimate for the other EU states to say that a man given to xenophobic rants is not an ideal choice to represent the interests of all Europeans?
The underlying weakness of these arguments is such that opponents of the treaty are now trying to appeal to a much more basic instinct. Since we have been fortunate enough to get into the rich man's club, we should pull up the ladder after us.
The National Platform, for example, is openly saying that Nice is bad because we will get no money from it and will end up having to contribute to the process whereby poorer countries will get the help we got in the 1980s and 1990s: "There is no money in it. We reduce our voting weight just at the time when we become net contributors to, rather than beneficiaries from, the EU Structural Funds. In three or four years' time Ireland will be paying more to Brussels than we get back, with reduced voting power, and big new demands from the poor east European countries." This, at least, has the virtue of honesty.
The one aspect of Nice that does demand serious debate is its effect on Ireland's military neutrality, to which I will return next week.
fotoole@irish-times.ie