Supranational Bodies

Supranational bodies are the rare experiments in pooled sovereignty—entities where members accept binding decisions they didn't individually approve. The European Union is the clearest example: qualified majority voting means countries can be outvoted and still bound by the result. This is evolutionary innovation in governance. The biological parallel is the transition from single-celled to multicellular life. Individual cells (nation-states) surrender reproductive autonomy to become specialized organs in a larger body. The trade-off: losing the ability to defect gains the benefits of coordination at scale. But unlike biology, supranational integration is reversible—as Brexit demonstrated. The 'multicellular organism' can lose cells and continue functioning. Supranational bodies occupy unstable middle ground. They have more enforcement capacity than international organisations but less than nation-states. They can make binding rules in defined domains while member states retain sovereignty elsewhere. This partial pooling creates constant tension: every crisis asks 'should we integrate further?' and every failure asks 'should we take powers back?' The business parallel is the holding company or corporate federation. Think Berkshire Hathaway or Alphabet: operating companies retain significant autonomy while strategic decisions are centralized. Like supranational bodies, these structures work when the benefits of coordination clearly exceed the costs of autonomy loss—and fail when that calculation reverses. When exploring supranational bodies in this section, look for: partial pooling (which powers are shared, which retained?), integration pressure (what pushes toward more coordination?), and exit costs (what keeps members from leaving when overruled?).