Re: “Time for a second Constitutional Convention?”
Good thoughts to put out. People need to be thinking about how our 200+ year Constitution needs updating. The Parliamentary approach has a lot of advantages over the current US system. The timing of this article is important because of recent academic research that has shown the democratic legitimacy of the United States is now in question. Many of us who work in trying to improve the country have experienced this reality, but now recent academic work has shown the US is more of a plutocracy that operates under a false veil of democracy. As this is more widely understood it will create a crisis of legitimacy. See Fighting for a Legitimate Democracy, Of, By and For The People. This is the root of all of the multiple crisis the country faces.
One thing I’d put more emphasis on in the Parliamentary system is the advantage of having small parties having a voice in the legislative process throughout the legislative session. The line can be drawn wherever makes sense, e.g. a party that get 5% of the vote gets 5% of the legislators, or the line can be drawn higher at 10% or wherever makes sense. This means that if your views are not in line with the two big parties, your vote for one of the alternatives means your voice will be heard throughout the legislative session; and often one of the large parties will have to ally with smaller parties, even put them in the cabinet, in order to create a ruling majority so more views are represented. This is much more democratic than the winner-take-all system which ends up shutting out minority views once the election is over (and how many times have we seen minority views grow to become majority views — indeed, some of the most important majority views that end up positively transforming the nation).
Other countries are also making it easier to remove representatives who do not represent the views of their constituents. So often there are campaign promises that turn out to be unfulfilled with the politician actually going in the opposite direction once elected. One party in Spain is using the ability to recall as a tool in having representatives who are required to represent their constituents. With the Internet making communication so easy, it allows for elected representatives to involve their constituents in helping to decide critical votes. A new constitution needs to leave open the possibilities of more democratic participation beyond election day.
Related to increasing democracy is the virtue of including direct democracy in the system. We have seen repeatedly how voter initiatives have broken through the dysfunction of the status quo and the parties that represent current interests. The people are often ahead of elected leaders and they need a greater voice than merely having representatives acting for them. I like the state-level initiative process because it allows for experimentation at the state level as the country tries to solve vexing problems or end failed policies that obviously do not work. We would never have made as much progress on drug policy reform if it had not been for local and then statewide voter initiatives. There is also a case to be made for national initiatives and that should be included in the mix of a new constitution.
One other matter on democracy that needs to be considered is participatory decision making, where the public actually makes decisions on budget priorities. This is now being tried on the local level, it began in one ward in Chicago four years ago (it actually began in Latin America many years ago and has moved to Europe, as usual the US is behind) and is now being used in multiple cities. Participatory budgeting allows for people to decide how money is spent. It is usually limited to capital spending for infrastructure and not for hiring personnel. This is still in the early stages but it could easily expand. It would be so interesting to see what people would recommend for a budget, e.g. when people file their tax forms they could designate how their dollars should be spent, i.e. 10% for education, 20% for healthcare, 15% for infrastructure etc. I bet it would be a very different budget than we currently see. I know when participatory budgeting has been used at the local level the people have made different decisions than when the alderman decided on his own. The pie chart changed from a few large pieces of pie to 15 or more smaller pieces. And, people got very involved in making the decisions — and seemed to make very smart decisions. It seems like a remarkably successful process.
We just had a very interesting conference we organized in Baltimore about economic democracy, i.e. giving people greater control over economic decisions at their workplace, in their community and in the city. See Enthusiasm High for New Economy In Baltimore. People really want more democracy — more say in their futures. It is very exciting. The conflict between a small group ruling vs real democracy has been a conflict since the founding. The founders actually stopped the more democratic instincts that were showing before the American Revolution and put in place a much more plutocratic constitution tht focused more on property rights than human rights and blocked real democracy. Only 6% were allowed to vote in the election for George Washington. Gradually, we have expanded the right to vote but now because of various factors elections have become well managed to prevent real choices. See Lifting the Veil of Mirage Democracy in the United States. But, it is evident that government is completely out of step with the people on every major issue of the day, see The People Are With Us and We Stand With The Majority. The people would rule better than the elites.
There are some very big issues that are not addressed in your essay but are the root of the rot of US democracy and that is the rule of money and corporate power. The issues [are] of corporations being human, money being speech and the inability of the Congress and executive branch to control how elections are funded. A series of Supreme Court decisions (you mention Citizen’s United, but that is just one) have made it impossible to control money in politics without a constitutional amendment or the Supreme Court reversing a long line of cases. We really have become a government ruled by money (where bribery, done the right way, is legal) and not a government ruled by the people. See Move To Amend.
Regarding Citizen’s United, the thing that bothers me about it is not only the open floodgates, but that it results not in funding candidates or parties but creating independent electoral vehicles. As a result, a big-funded independent group can run negative attack ads that are not even based in the truth but the candidate they are supporting has no ability to stop them. In fact, the candidate and the independent super-PAC are not supposed to coordinate. This results in campaigns where irresponsible statements are made but the voters cannot hold the candidate responsible. It moves campaigns from being controlled by candidates and parties — who are responsible for what is said — to anonymously funded super-PACs where no one is responsible. Citizen’s United did not open the floodgates to campaign contributions, but rather opened the floodgates to independent campaign spending.
Finally, whenever I have thought through a constitutional convention I get stuck on who comes to the convention — who participates in the drafting of the new constitution. With the rule of money still dominating elections, I suspect we’d have a bunch of plutocrats or people who are indebted to plutocrats drafting the new constitution so I would not expect a big improvement. We need to figure out a better way. One model that was tried in Iceland which I found exciting was a crowd-sourced constitution, where people would participate through wiki-technology in drafting the constitution. They wrote a very smart constitution, unfortunately in their process the legislature was the first level of approval and they refused to allow it to go forward. See Iceland Crowd-Sources Its Next Constitution, Post-Mortem on Icelandic Constitution.
It might be interesting to try to do a crowd-sourced constitution using wiki technology rather than a mock constitutional convention. This would be an opportunity to really get people involved in a more widespread way than a mock constitutional convention. Looking at polls of where Americans actually stand on issues, I suspect the people would come up with something very progressive that would be a helpful starting point for wherever the constitutional process went.
Obviously, these are issues that I spend a lot of time on, so I hope these comments are helpful to your already solid first draft.
KZ (Kevin Zeese)
