A really interesting article on European federalism

In an article that appears in the electronic edition of The New Republic, Niall Ferguson argues that the no votes against the proposed constitution are based more on a relatively sophisticated understanding of federalist principles - i.e. a constitution where the individual parts are pretty different in size and economic power needs to have the kinds of mitigations between (or more properly among) the sizes to be able to work. The unique balance in the US model which used the big state/small state model - might be a more appropriate model. That is really clear thinking.