Could parliamentary democracy save America

The subtitle of Maxwell L. Stearns’ new book, “Parliamentary America,” is critical: “The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.”

Perhaps the worst single aspect of America’s broken democracy is the fact that it seems virtually impossible to fix, since our system rests on a constitution written 230-odd years ago that is insanely difficult to amend. While the changes Stearns proposes are indeed radical in some respects, they fall well within the international norm for modern democracies, and do not come with strong, obvious disincentives that would lead political actors to reject them out of hand — particularly as other options may arise that appear more threatening. That alone is a remarkable feat.

Stearns, a law professor at the University of Maryland, proposes three constitutional amendments that would, for starters, double the size of the House of Representatives, which would be elected using mixed-member proportional representation, similar to the current system in Germany. Voters would cast ballots for candidates in their local district, as they do now, and then would cast a second ballot by party, in principle allowing smaller parties to flourish. Parties in the House — whether or not any party holds a majority — would then form a governing coalition to elect the president, who could also be removed with a 60-percent “no confidence” vote. 

Stearns begins “Parliamentary America” with a historical survey of how we got here, with separate chapters on our current two-party system and the role of the media. The founding fathers largely opposed party politics, and hoped the constitutional separation of powers — which Stearns likens to a game of rock-paper-scissors — might prevent such parties from emerging or dominating the political landscape. But they guessed wrong: Party politics created stronger loyalties than did institutional rivalry between the branches of government, and as we can all see today, partisan divisions have only gotten worse over time. The solution, Stearns suggests, isn’t to fight party politics, but to learn from democracies around the world how to better manage it, and then adapt those lessons to the existing American system. How we got here, I would argue, is a less urgent concern than how we might escape, so my recent conversation with Stearns focused on the latter question. 

In your introduction, you say that “to the extent the story of our nation is exceptional, it’s in spite of, not because of, our constitutional design,” observing that while democracy has been widely adopted around the world, the American system has not. So why not — and what can we learn from other democratic systems?

We have successfully exported democracy, but not two-party presidentialism. The characteristic features of democracy around the world, when the democracies are successful, include proportional representation and coalition governance. Instead, our two-party presidential system operates on a winner-take-all principle. It turns out that democracies that don’t rest on winner-take-all, that allow different parties to contribute to the formation of the government, better satisfy voters and also are more responsive as governments. 

The reason, in large part, is that to successfully campaign in a coalition-based governmental structure you have to demonstrate a willingness and even desire to work well and play well with others — to actually demonstrate to your constituents that you can coordinate with people who don’t necessarily embrace your views and, likewise, that they will do the same thing. When you have proportional representation in a well-structured parliamentary system, the voters aren’t subject to the every-four-year admonition not to waste their votes on third parties, despite the fact that those third parties might more closely affiliate with their personal views of the world. 

The problem with the two-party system is that when you vote for a third party, you could be a spoiler, throwing support to the candidate that you least prefer. Or you could be voting for a candidate who pulls in both both sides and renders the outcome a roll of the dice — I call that a randomizer. But in a coalition-based system, when you vote for a third party, those third parties are going to demand something in exchange for joining the governing coalition — typically commitments on policy or appointments, which in our case would be Cabinet-level positions, or even the Supreme Court. So voters supporting third parties would actually be rewarded for doing so, rather than punished for doing so. 

The challenge of constitutional reform is threefold: Identifying the root problems that need fixing, and then devising solutions that can be adopted in the existing situation. I want to ask about all three. You just said a lot about the problems. Would you like to add anything more? 

I would. Virtually every American school child learns, in middle school or at the latest high school, that the framers envisioned what I call “the rock-paper-scissors Constitution” — the idea that every branch of government can either be defeated by or can defeat another branch of government. The framers had this intuition that these never-ending rivalries among the three branches of government — Congress, the presidency and the judiciary — coupled with federalism, meaning we also have rivalries between the national government and the sovereign states, would mean we would never experience what they called “the violence of factions,” which is language that comes out of a famous essay, “Federalist No. 10,” written by James Madison. They thought they had devised a system — a game, if you will — that was going to avoid factions, the precursors to what we think of as political parties. 

It turns out that they embedded a fundamental feature in the Constitution that ultimately thwarted that game from the beginning. If you go back to George Washington’s Farewell Address, he lamented the prevalence of partisanship taking over the way we think about governance. We already had a two-party system emerging, and that remains entrenched. 

The problem is that the way the framers set up the election for the president was that you have to get a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Whenever you have a geographically determined election and it’s a single district — in this case, the country as a whole is the single district — you’re going to see the electorate join on two competing teams, because each side comes to realize that the winning strategy is to divide the opposition, but keep yourself intact. Because both sides have that same set of incentives, we end up with a dominant two-party system which thwarts what the framers of the Constitution thought they were creating, which is a system that would actually eviscerate parties. 

So it’s important for people to realize that a lot of the stories that we’re told in school don’t really explain the way our system works and it’s important for them to actually understand how a system works, because the first step is figuring out the root problem, as I call it, the pathology. If you get the pathology wrong, the entire course of treatment is likely to fail. The pathology rests in a two-party system, and although we muddled along with that system for a very long time, there are reasons why, especially in the information age, it became increasingly vulnerable to the kinds of threats to democracy we’re experiencing today. 

The solutions you propose are informed by an examination of other democratic systems around the world. You show that there’s a two-dimensional typology we can use to understand how different democracies work, one with electoral systems, the other with what you call “executive accountability.” You also stress that there are always trade-offs involved in their design. What can we learn by thinking about democracies in this framework?

A lot of half-measures or proposals for reform that seem as though they’re more politically viable may end up being less politically viable. There’s a common intuition that if we can just avoid amending [the Constitution] we can solve our problems, but that turns out not to be true. It also turns out to be true that fixing just one dimension, one aspect of this, isn’t going to solve the problem. I’ve just described the threat two-party presidentialism imposes to our democracy. It’s also true that multiparty systems in which the parties are too fractured — there are too many of them — are also a threat to democracy. 

We have to achieve a sweet spot. We have to have more parties than we have, but not so many more parties that we end up inviting the threat on the opposite end of the spectrum. The way to avoid that threat has to do with the powers we give to those parties, which implicates the other part of the reform. The way you give third parties power is by ending winner-take-all politics and giving third parties the potential to play a meaningful role in our politics. That allows voters to support those third parties, and it motivates third parties to negotiate on behalf of their constituents. In that context, voters who support third or fourth or fifth parties aren’t wasting their votes. They’re actually getting something meaningful in exchange. And the leaders of those parties have to campaign on a platform that includes playing well with others. That’s the difference between the way campaigns will be won in a coalition government versus what we’re experiencing now, which is each side basically running a campaign of denigration. 

Looking at structures of government around the world, one dimension is about the electoral systems. There are actually three options, not just district-based, like we have, and proportional representation, but also a hybrid option. Could you talk about what those options are and what they mean?

You’re absolutely right in your description. England, for example, has geographically-defined units of representation. When you have pure district representation, as I previously said, you end up dividing the constituency into two competing teams. The opposite end of the spectrum is not to have any districts at all, and there are countries that actually do this. They have pure proportional representation, so the only thing voters are voting on is which parties they prefer. You use the aggregate votes by party to figure out the percentage of seats in the legislature that each party gets.  

But it turns out that both of those systems are deeply problematic. When you have two parties, you’re subject to the kind of intense winner-take-all politics that can produce governmental dysfunction, which is what we’re experiencing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, with too many parties and a pure proportionality system, you can have the problem of one party not getting a majority, but getting more seats than any other party and then rolling over the other parties. If that party is authoritarian, that’s the alternative threat to democracy. 

So the extremes are equally dangerous. One of the points of my book is that extremes are the greatest threat to democracy, whether it’s ideological extremes or structural-system extremes, and we want to achieve the Goldilocks principle. That’s the middle one, when you blend the systems of representation. And it turns out that the system that was designed for post-World War II Germany, which is called mixed-member proportionality, is widely regarded as the very best system of electoral representation by blending those two systems. 

So how would you do that in America?

You have one set of elected members who are elected by district, which is going to favor two parties, and then a second ballot by party.  We would take the party ballots by state and use that to achieve proportional representation for each state’s delegation to the House of Representatives. So we double the size of the House. The benefit of that system is that the district elections make two parties more dominant than the others, but proportionality prevents any single party, typically, from capturing a majority of seats. When you put those together, you end up achieving that sweet spot which political scientists believe to be somewhere from four to eight parties in a legislative body. Not too few, not too many. You give voters much greater input into the shape and direction of the government by allowing those parties to negotiate on our behalf.

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We tell them, in effect, this is the party that’s probably going ton lead the coalition — that’s the first ballot. This is the direction I want the coalition to go — that’s the second ballot. We can actually send much more defined information about what it is we want the government to do, what the coalition’s going to look like and what policies we would like it to embrace. That middle sweet spot, when we combine it with coalition governance, generally produces greater citizen satisfaction, greater electoral outcomes and greater government responsiveness.

So the other dimension that you look at you call “executive accountability,” which also presents three options. Explain those options and what they tell us.

The options there are, first of all, what we’re presently faced with, the presidential system. We directly elect the president and we have a separate legislative body with separation of powers and checks and balances, despite the fact that, generally speaking, politicians think in terms of parties more than in terms of rivalries between institutions. 

There is also a system called “semi-presidential.” A lot of people associate that with France. This is a hybrid system, with a balance of power split between the parliament, on one side, and the president on the other, who is directly elected, but in a multiparty system. In France, you end up with a pretty high number of parties. It turns out that the separate election of the president, even in a semi-presidential system, runs up against some of the same dangers that we see in a presidential system. We’ve seen that in the two most recent election cycles in France, which were subject to a significant threat that those elections could have turned out the other way, with a deeply problematic candidate winning. Thankfully, those elections didn’t turn out in the most problematic way, but the threat was real. It turns out that when you separate the choice of the head of government from the coalition structures in the legislature, you create some serious governance problems. 

Then the last form is parliamentary, where it really is the coalitions within the legislative body that are choosing the head of the government. What I argue in the book is that it really does matter, the power that you give to these third parties, and you want those parties to be involved in forming the government. The question is, how you do it right. Then we have to get to the Goldilocks principle again: We have to avoid the twin dangers of a two-party system which invites the threat of an authoritarian leader, or too many parties, which can also invite the threat of an authoritarian leader. The system created for post-World War II Germany — mixed-member proportionality, blending these two systems of districts and proportionality, marrying those two features — lets us get to that sweet spot, the right number of parties, and gives those parties a genuine role in government, so we end this winner-take-all death match between the two parties every four years. 

Before I ask more specifically about the different amendments this would require, how does that translate to the U.S., given that Germany has a far different history? 

We’re on different historical paths. Given path dependency. I’m proposing a very U.S.-specific adaptation. The title of the book is “Parliamentary America,” and I put emphasis both on “parliamentary” and “America.” 

There’s a very interesting difference between where Germany began and where we began. The tragedy of Nazi Germany was in significant part the product of a hyper-fractionalized legislative body that was exploited by Adolf Hitler, who rolled over other parties and rolled over the very systems that brought him to power. We are at the opposite end of the spectrum. We’re a two-party system, subject to the serious threat of an authoritarian taking over one party and then threatening to take over the government as a whole. 

So although it’s true that on one side the original starting point was too many parties, on the other side it was too few, and those come together in terms of the threat they pose for democracy. It turns out that mixed-member proportionality — which will require adaptations to make it ours — ends up being able to solve the problem. We can adapt mixed-member proportionality so nicely to our system, and we can retain so many vital features of our constitutional scheme. 

You talked a bit about your first amendment, which would double the size of the House. How would that work, both for voters and parties?

Let’s start with the individual voter. Every two years, you will go in and cast two ballots for the House of Representatives. One is going to be the district election, just like we have now but the other one is for a party. So let’s say that you are a progressive Democrat. You might end up having a choice between what you would call a centrist Democrat, versus, say, a centrist Republican in your district. You choose, most likely, one of those two candidates, because that’s the choice in the district election. But you’re a progressive Democrat. So you’ll vote for the Democrat, if that’s the more appealing of the two main options in your district. But you want to signal that you want the Democrats to form a coalition with the progressives, so you’re going to vote for the Progressive Party in the second ballot.

By contrast, let’s say that you’re a more centrist Democrat. You might then cast your ballot for the Democrat, but then cast your party ballot for the Democrats, not for the Progressives, signaling that you don’t want to go as far afield. So you’re able to send surgical signals about what you want the coalition to look like, and the policy commitments you want the coalition government to undertake. 

So that’s what it looks like from the voter’s perspective. What happens next?

After all those ballots are accounted for in the state, we take the percentage that each party gets from the second ballot, and use that to assess proportionality for the entire chamber. So if you have too many seats already given to the Democrats through the districts, they’re not going to get additional seats. If the Progressives got too few, they’ll pick up those seats to make it proportional. Same thing with the Republicans and conservative parties, of course. You’re not going to get perfect proportionality, but good enough proportionality to break the two-party stranglehold, and to make it so that whoever is leading the coalition almost inevitably has to form a coalition with other parties, which changes the nature of our politics. 

And I’ll come back to the point about gerrymandering. In this system, although each member of the House keeps her or his district — even if it was the product of gerrymandering — any future gains from gerrymandering are taken away by the proportionality principle. Proportionality is the enemy of gerrymandering. Suddenly, those incentives to engage in hyper-partisan gerrymandering are gone. It changes the nature of campaigning. Through party lists, it allows people to run for office without having to go through the grueling process, every two years, of fundraising and denigrating the other side. Through party lists, you might be an outstanding member of your state assembly, a leader of a particular party, and you might get high on the list to get to Congress that way. 

So it empowers legislators at the state assembly level, it empowers members of the House through coalitions — since they get to choose the president — and it empowers voters, who are giving up the ability to vote directly for president, which was a terrible choice anyway, because you got stuck with two options you don’t like. Real democracy is about defining the choices, not being forced to choose between two options you don’t want. So you end up with much greater democratic input, with a much more powerful signal as to what you want the government to accomplish and what the coalition should look like. 

So when you put all the state coalitions together in the House of Representatives, you get seated as a party if you meet a certain qualification threshold. Then the parties that get the most seats, up to five parties, can negotiate a governing coalition until a majority coalition forms, and there’s a bit of backstop to make sure it doesn’t go on indefinitely like some parliamentary systems. 

Again, it is a very American system. We have to have a predictable timetable for government. We have to be able to make binding commitments with other nations. We have to have lines of succession which remain intact. So it’s a very American system, but an American system that is no longer a victim of the threat to our democracy of two-party presidentialism. 

That explains the parliament and the presidency — which is actually your second amendment. What about your third amendment, the one for removing the president from office for maladministration? How does that work, and why is that necessary?

This goes back to the difference between what the framers thought they were doing what they actually did. Imagine going back to the time of the framing, going into the Constitutional Convention and saying, “Hey folks, do you think that if this country survives for 240 years they will never elect a president who deserves to be removed from office?” It’s fair to say the framers would laugh at that notion. They were pretty sophisticated people. And yet in 240 years we have never removed somebody. We’ve had multiple impeachments but never removal, and the reason is that partisan politics has overtaken the game of separation of powers. 

So what I suggest is that if you have a coalition-based government, we need to have some assurance that the person who is leading the coalition is actually doing the work that the coalition has committed itself to on behalf of its constituents. So I come up with a method of accountability, a mechanism to vote “no confidence,” based on maladministration, to hold that person accountable, to make sure that they really delivering on the commitments of the coalition. The goal is not to remove people based on maladministration. The goal is to motivate the head of government to deliver meaningfully for their constituency, and to diminish the cult of personality by suggesting that somebody else will be available to fill that role if you really are a problematic president. 

I have a 60-percent threshold, so a simple disagreement isn’t going to be enough. It’s going to require a real demonstration of maladministration. I give examples, historically, of past presidents and I talk about whether what they’ve done may or may not rise to the level of maladministration. I give examples without defining it, because I think it’s experiential. It’s typically going to be associated with an inability to work well with government officials at home or abroad, egregious misrepresentations to the public or Cabinet officials or other political leaders, or something else that is of sufficient magnitude that we no longer have confidence in the capacity of the person who’s holding the highest office in the land to actually perform the vital functions of the president of the United States.

Finally, what’s the most important question I didn’t ask? And what’s the answer? 

I think it’s the achievability point. A lot of people, including reformers, seem to think that the most significant thing is avoiding amending the Constitution. But if you look at the vast majority of proposals to get us out of the crisis we’re facing, they generally translate into unemployment acts for members of Congress — multi-member districts, ranked choice voting and so on. The point is to displace sitting members with more moderate counterparts. It is conceivable we get reform from a constitutional convention, but unlikely. Most likely reform is going to come from Congress itself. So although it requires amending the Constitution, my proposal actually gets buy-in by allowing sitting members of both houses to keep their seats. I’m convinced that when we get that inflection point of change, having the buy-in of members of Congress is to be one of the most important features when it comes to which proposals actually have a shot at implementation.