Constitutional Design
Constitutional design 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.
It’s a subject that has become more 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, 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. This discussion will be quite theoretical - the sample size for constitutions is quite small, and I think there’s a lot to be gained via theoretical reasoning - 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.
I have these pieces organized into chapters. I have tried to keep every piece as self-contained as possible, so reading an earlier one isn’t strictly necessary to read a later one, except where I state otherwise. Reading the chapters in order is also optional, this is just my recommendation. I bolded and italicized the pieces which I’m most proud of, although to be honest I’m quite proud of all of them.
Basic theoretical foundations:
Analytical Models And Democracy, discussing the model of politicians and of voters that I’ll have in mind for the rest of the series and how this fits into democracy
Accountability vs. Consensus, discussing the primary tradeoff in all of constitutional design.
Goals, discussing the goals I’ll be aiming for in designing a constitution
Law and Government, discussing the basic image of government and law
Basic structure of government:
Electoral Systems:
Mechanism design:
Direct Democracy, covering petitions, referenda, sortition, etc.
Information:
Speech and Money, covering free speech, campaign finance, corruption and lobbying
Finer details of constitutional design (each of these is pretty short:
Terms, covering term lengths and term limits
Parliamentary Democracy Procedure, covering prime minister selection and snap elections
Legislative Procedure
Optimal Legislature Size
And finally:
Local Constitutional Design, discussing which of the things I talk about apply on a local level
Hope you’ll read on!