Comment by SllX
1 day ago
> Maybe a better answer would be for US states to adopt the parliamentary system?
Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think it would change outcomes as much as people would think, but to scope limit this back to California again because electoral law discussions just fucking spiral anytime there’s no geographic constraint, the root of California’s lawmaking problems is that the legislature is both poorly structured and poorly balanced against the direct democratic approach we have taken for so much of our lawmaking. I don’t think that’s inherent to the non-parliamentary system we have in place, but a result of incremental rule changes stemming from decades of ballot propositions that are supposed to solve a problem, but don’t and tend to have negative knock-on effects that fly under the radar.
Or put another way: the legislature is for legislating. It doesn’t need a competing power structure, and it doesn’t need to be balanced by anything other than a good functional Executive power and a good functional independent Judiciary. If you have that as your starting point, then maybe there’s room to discuss if there are any real advantages of a Parliamentary system instead.
A very widespread belief among political scientists is that parliamentary systems are superior to presidential systems in terms of stability and quality of governance. In fact, even the US State Department's own "nation-building" advisors tell other countries not to copy the US system (or at least they did prior to Trump, I'm honestly not sure if the Trump admin is sustaining that line or not)
Presidential systems have had a terrible run if you look at Latin America. The US seemed to be an exception to the rule, but maybe recent events have shown that the US got away with a substandard political system for so long because they had so many other advantages to make up for that, now their other advantages are weakening and the US is slowly converging with Latin America
I’m aware of the history, but my point is that as a specific reform to pursue, it’s noise.
If California moves to a Parliamentary system but maintains the popular ballot initiative that has undermined legislative power and allowed legislators to disclaim & dodge responsibility, or maintain the system of term limits I originally called out, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s our current bicameral legislature plus 5 Constitutional officers in the Executive branch or a full on Westminster Parliamentary system or anything in-between: you’ll still run into a lot of the same issues because there are no silver bullets.
So I’m not saying it should never be up for consideration, but as a list of changes to make go? It’s too far down the list of serious considerations for me to view it as anything other than noise right now.
I guess the reality is, all proposed solutions have low odds of success, and their relative probability ranking is debatable.
At least something like "adopt the Australia/Canada model" is easier for people to understand, because while a radical change, they can point to somewhere else that has been doing it successfully for decades. Incremental tinkering with the current rules can make unengaged people mentally switch off by comparison; radical changes can be easier to understand because they can be simpler to explain.
I think one problem with the Australia/Canada model, is even though constitutional monarchy isn't essential to it – both countries could arguably function just as well if they were federal parliamentary republics – many Americans mentally conflate the parliamentary and constitutional monarchy aspects. If eventually either or both countries became republics, that would probably make it easier to sell the idea to Americans.
Germany is a living example of a federal parliamentary republic – but the language barrier limits its accessibility as a model for Anglophone emulation.
One backdoor way it might happen – although no doubt quite unlikely – would be if Alberta seceded from Canada, got admitted as a US state, but kept something close to its current parliamentary system.
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