Series IV

The Dissociated Union

Nine papers on dissociation at the supranational scale

The same pattern, at the scale of the European Union.

Series I to III describe dissociation within the Dutch state. Is the pattern then peculiarly Dutch? Series IV shows that at European level it is, if anything, better documented. That also explains something: the Netherlands increasingly implements policy made in Brussels without knowing how it came about there.

Two mechanisms run through the series. The first is network corruption, a concept from Willeke Slingerland: acts that are each legally in order add up to an outcome that harms the public interest. The second is proxy-substitution: a measurable figure displaces the chain it comes from, a chain that cannot itself be measured. The network supplies the figure, and the figure makes the network invisible.

The series appears in instalments. The Dutch edition is the source and holds the full nine-part architecture; English versions appear for selected papers. The first to appear was Nº 06, The Ungauged Chain.

§ 04Series IV

The Dissociated Union

One methodological opener, one meta-paper introducing the two mechanisms, six case papers across the regulatory axis (EMA, EFSA, ECHA), the spending axis (EU funds), the industrial-strategic axis (raw materials) and the control axis (audit cascade), and a closing synthesis. The papers available in English are listed below; the complete series is published in Dutch at /reeks-iv/.

06 / CaseIndustrial-strategic axis

The Ungauged Chain

Raw Materials, the CO2 Proxy and the Absence of Industrial Policy

Series IV Nº 06. Europe's climate architecture reckons in CO2 as its only workable unit of measure; the material chain from which every avoided tonne arises, lithium, cobalt, rare earths, magnets, falls outside the administrative discourse. Two dissociations work together, one instrumental and one intrinsic. The Critical Raw Materials Act codifies the dependency rather than breaking it, defence doubles the claim on the same chain, and the Netherlands spreads the file across six ministries without ownership.

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2 June 2026NL EN