Regarding public advocacy: given that we interact mostly with international civil servants, there arenât any voting constituencies to mobilize.
Wouldnât Members of European Parliament also be in a position to support/âblock longtermism-relevant policy changes? And wouldnât that mean the voting constituencies for MEPs are relevant?
Caveats:
Obviously this is just for the EU, not other bodies like the UN.
I know very little about how the EU actually works, so maybe the answer to either/âboth of those questions is âNo.â
And my impression is that a large portion of British people at least didnât know that MEPs existed or that they could vote for them, so maybe most of the public in other EU countries will also in practice pay very little attention?
Also, even for e.g. delegates at the UN, it seems like theyâre influenced by the governments of their countries, who are in turn influenced by voters. Obviously this indirectness (and theâprobably relatedâfact that most voters pay very little attention to the UN) reduces how important votersâ views are to UN decisions, but it still seems like voters can matter?
(As one example, I think Iâve heard of cases where votersâ views seemed to make a difference to countriesâ stances on international nuclear weapons treaties, which seems like a related thing. But currently my understanding of these areas is limited, so I may be mixing things together in a naive way.)
Thanks, that all sounds reasonable to me.
Wouldnât Members of European Parliament also be in a position to support/âblock longtermism-relevant policy changes? And wouldnât that mean the voting constituencies for MEPs are relevant?
Caveats:
Obviously this is just for the EU, not other bodies like the UN.
I know very little about how the EU actually works, so maybe the answer to either/âboth of those questions is âNo.â
And my impression is that a large portion of British people at least didnât know that MEPs existed or that they could vote for them, so maybe most of the public in other EU countries will also in practice pay very little attention?
Also, even for e.g. delegates at the UN, it seems like theyâre influenced by the governments of their countries, who are in turn influenced by voters. Obviously this indirectness (and theâprobably relatedâfact that most voters pay very little attention to the UN) reduces how important votersâ views are to UN decisions, but it still seems like voters can matter?
(As one example, I think Iâve heard of cases where votersâ views seemed to make a difference to countriesâ stances on international nuclear weapons treaties, which seems like a related thing. But currently my understanding of these areas is limited, so I may be mixing things together in a naive way.)