Constitutional Design, Chapter 1: Theoretical Foundations and Basic Structure
This is the first chapter in a series of posts on constitutional design. This is a subject that has always fascinated me - I think there are a lot of really interesting things to discuss and not much written about it right now.
Constitutional design has become really important recently as norms have weakened and polarization has increased. When norms are strong and polarization is low, norms are used as substitution for poor constitutional design, and the big swings in elections ensure that the exact mechanisms for translating the popular view into government action isn’t too important. As norms have weakened, increasingly all that’s keeping countries afloat is their constitutional process. From my perspective, and as something I hope to convince you of throughout this sequence, differing constitutional design accounts for much of the difference in experience between democratic countries right now. The far right is on the rise worldwide, but how exactly it has impacted a country is in large part a function of its constitutional mechanisms.
In this series, I’ll be covering what I see as the major choices and principles one should keep in mind when designing a democratic constitution. I’ll be coming at it mostly from a consequentialist perspective. Most of this discussion will be fairly theoretical - the sample size for constitutions is quite small and the language barrier makes getting information tough - but I hope to ground it in realism and examples. When talking about design choices, I’m usually going to give my opinion on which is best, but my goal is more to discuss the tradeoffs than to prescribe specific answers.
This first chapter is about the most basic theoretical foundations of constitutional design and the basic structure of government. It is organized as follows:
Analytical Models, discussing the model of politicians and of voters that I’ll have in mind for the rest of the series
Consensus vs. Accountability, discussing the primary tradeoff in all of constitutional design. This is probably the most important piece in the entire series.
Goals, discussing the goals I’ll be aiming for in designing a constitution
Law and Government, discussing the basic image of government and law
Why Legislature?, discustsing the case for the legislature as the primary unit of governance
The Executive and The Leader, discussing, well, it’s in the name
Non-Partisan Entities, discussing, again, in the name
Hope you’ll read on!