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> The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US governm

by notJim 3y ago

> The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. Conflicts heighten without compromise or resolution for decades until they reach a breaking point. In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise. Similarly, judicial review seems to be much much weaker in most countries. In the US, the supreme court can strike down a law with immediate effect of nullifying that law. It's been hard for me to find comparisons, but it seems like in other countries, there's some combination of judicial review being only advisory, or not having immediate effect. So in some countries, the judicial branch says a law is un-constitutional, and the legislative branch can ignore it, or has some period of time to defend or revise the law, rather than the law being immediately struck. This is fundamentally undemocratic. That's a good thing some times, but not good other times. In practice, parties tend to govern by attempting to control the supreme court, because there's no possible way to pass their agendas due to our vaunted checks and balances. This does not seem like the hallmark of an effective democracy to me.

returningfory2 3y ago
> In practice, parties tend to govern by attempting to control the supreme court, because there's no possible way to pass their agendas due to our vaunted checks and balances. I agree that the the Supreme Court is more important because of the inability of Congress to pass regular legislation. However I don't think the root cause is "checks and balances". I think the root cause is the (unconstitutional) Senate filibuster. This prevents parties who control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency from passing laws. It is often the case that this happens (2016-18 for Republicans; 2020-22 for Democrats) and in those periods it should be possible to pass many laws and thus diminish the role of the Supreme Court. But the filibuster prevents this.
- baryphonic 3y ago
  How is the filibuster unconstitutional? The Constitution explicitly gives each House the power to select its own rules, and the Senate is never "dissolved" like the House of Representatives is, so its rules carry on.
  - returningfory2 3y ago
    Legal scholars as in [1] can make the point better than me: > When considering the filibuster as a supermajority requirement for regular legislation, it is clearly unconstitutional. As a textual matter, the Constitution appoints the Vice President as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, providing that they “shall have no Vote unless [the Senators] be equally divided.” This provision implies that the Senate must pass regular legislation by a majority vote. In general, the Senate's ability to set its own rules surely cannot be unrestricted. For example, when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate would it have been constitutional for them to create a new rule that all tax decreases require unanimous consent of the Senate? Or for Republicans in the same situation to create a rule that all tax increases require unanimous consent? Both of these changes would seem to be within the rule-making authority of the Senate. However both rules would be profoundly undemocratic because they would generally prevent a majority (or supermajority) of US voters from changing US tax law in the future. [1] https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/tyranny-of-the-minority-the-unconstitutionality-of-the-filibuster/ https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/tyranny-of-the-minority-t...
    - herczegzsolt 3y ago
      > to create a rule that all (...) require unanimous consent? What you describe is pretty much what has happened and still is happening in Hungary. The conclusion here is that even if the majority agrees that these rules are against the spirit of the democracy, there's nothing practical to do against them. So yeah, checks and balances are important to have in practice, not just in spirit. When you're relying on self-imposed limitations, radicals will sooner or later take over and do whatever necessary to stay in power.
    - baryphonic 3y ago
mason55 3y ago
> The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. Conflicts heighten without compromise or resolution for decades until they reach a breaking point. In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise. Yeah, if I understand, the original idea of the checks & balances in the US was that each branch of government would be fighting to become the most powerful and so they all had ways to stop each other. But it wasn't really designed to deal with the idea that political parties would grow in power enough to supersede the branches of government as the top-level entities fighting for power. This idea that you'd be able to form a large enough coalition across Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency that you could get all three branches to work together wasn't really considered back then. With more localized politics that was basically impossible and so the individual branches were fighting for power. Our form of government should be updated to reflect the reality of more powerful political parties.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Precisely. There’s effectively no forcing mechanism which guarantees any factions work with each other. So I see Washington’s farewell address warning against factions less as a drop of quaint wisdom but more of a last ditch attempt to rectify a gaping hole in the constitution they had just written. And keep in mind that the current constitution took effect in 1789, only 8 years after the Articles of Confederation went into effect. So there was far less of a feeling that the fundamentals of the Constitution we have now would last forever.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  The flaw is actually in the use of first past the post voting, which causes more powerful political parties, because the math induces a two party system. Use score voting or approval voting and you'll have more parties that each have less power.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. The problem in the US is actually the opposite -- the checks and balances were intended to be stronger but have been substantially weakened, in a way that creates instability. In the original constitutional framework the federal government was meant to be extremely limited. Senators were appointed by state legislators so that they would limit expansion of federal power at the expense of state power, but that was changed and deprived the states of their primary representation in the federal government. Which not coincidentally was immediately followed by a massive expansion of federal control. Which was itself meant to be much more limited. The original intention of the interstate commerce clause was for the federal government to handle things like mail fraud, where you have a perpetrator and a victim in different states and the victims have no representation in the perpetrator's jurisdiction. It has since been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate essentially anything, infamously including non-commerce that occurs solely within a single state. In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level, doing things at the federal level was disfavored in general, and that was fine because anything outside the scope of federal power or without widespread consensus could be handled by the states. Laboratories of democracy. But then we made it too easy to do things at the federal level, and of course power-hungry sociopaths are attracted to centralized power. So instead of the federal government being weak and uninteresting because strong checks and balances limited it from being abused, it became the battleground for winner-take-all popularity contests.
- EMIRELADERO 3y ago
  > In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level If gridlock was intended, what's the purpose of the formal simple majority requirement to pass laws? If gridlock was always to be the main state when disagreement existed, the "Nay" vote seems superfluous, which is an absurd result IMO.
ethbr1 3y ago
I'd argue that the US biparty system tends to have fewer checks and balances than a parliamentary system. In many ways, it's winner take all. President + 50%+1 in the lower legislature + 50%+1 in the upper legislature = a huge amount of power. Historically, I think it's been exceedingly rare to have as finely balanced government as recent times have featured. And to me, the Supreme Court is less about the people currently sitting on it, and more about the fact that they have all dedicated their lives to the legal profession. They may rule one way or another on hot issues, for personal reasons. But you're checking with people who all hold the rule of law (as a concept) much higher than the legislature or executive. Which is a valuable check to have. In that way, they're more like the UK's Speaker of the House of Commons.
- jackcosgrove 3y ago
  In recent times the Supreme Court has also been staffed by graduates of only a handful of law schools. I think that, more than a dedication to the rule of law, is what sets them apart from the rest of the country. Given the complexities of harmonizing a large body of law that's centuries old, I'm not sure there's a better way. But I think we should always remember that the Supreme Court is by far the least representative and least democratic branch of government.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    It's also the only branch of government that, at least as designed, cannot originate policy.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  You need 60% in the senate to get anything passed. There have been many cases where one party controlled all three but couldnt accomplish much due to the filibuster. Famously Obama's first couple years.
  - the_gastropod 3y ago
    Which, in practice, means senators representing an extreme minority of US citizens can block hugely popular legislation. California itself has a larger population than the least populous 21 states combined, yet gets the same 2 senate votes as each of those other states. The Senate is a hot mess as far as political game theory goes.
NoboruWataya 3y ago
Other democracies do generally have their own checks and balances. They might not be the same set of checks and balances as the US, but it's difficult to say as a whole that they are weaker. It's true that often the division of the executive and legislative branches is rather weak. But on the other hand there is often a stronger division between the judicial and other branches as judges are appointed independently. There are plenty of countries out there with very strong constitutional courts as well. I'm also not sure I agree that the US system is necessarily less sustainable than those other systems. A lot of European democracies are younger than the US, and some of them are more frequently deadlocked. I think effectiveness and sustainability are orthogonal concepts here (some would say they are diametrically opposed...)
Adverblessly 3y ago
> In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise. Alternatively, you get brinkmanship where you have a coalition of 53.33% where every party in the coalition that has >=4% of the votes (a.k.a. all of them) will threaten to bring down the entire coalition unless they get their most extreme demand. Incidentally, they are still trying to bring down the supreme court. Personally, I'd gladly welcome some political deadlock over here.
parineum 3y ago
This seems like a very presentism viewpoint. I don't think your points hold historically nor do they acknowledge that "strong checks and balances" and the adversarialness of congress is the same thing and considered a feature, not a bug.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> in the US is that the government tends to deadlock This is a feature. In a unitary state, it would be suicide. But in a federation, national disagreement prompts gridlock which automatically devolves the question.
- int_19h 3y ago
  It doesn't, though. It just means that whatever current arrangement exists on federal level (which is not necessarily devolution!) remains in force.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    This was one of the biggest defects in the original constitutional framework. They made it hard to pass laws, which was by design, but then used the same procedure to repeal them. If the goal is for federal laws to reflect general consensus, they should be easier to repeal than to pass.
    - anticensor 3y ago
      Easy: make all statutes temporary, not just budgeting acts. Then inaction means repeal.

by notJim 3y ago

returningfory2 3y ago

> In practice, parties tend to govern by attempting to control the supreme court, because there's no possible way to pass their agendas due to our vaunted checks and balances. I agree that the the Supreme Court is more important because of the inability of Congress to pass regular legislation. However I don't think the root cause is "checks and balances". I think the root cause is the (unconstitutional) Senate filibuster. This prevents parties who control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency from passing laws. It is often the case that this happens (2016-18 for Republicans; 2020-22 for Democrats) and in those periods it should be possible to pass many laws and thus diminish the role of the Supreme Court. But the filibuster prevents this.

baryphonic 3y ago
How is the filibuster unconstitutional? The Constitution explicitly gives each House the power to select its own rules, and the Senate is never "dissolved" like the House of Representatives is, so its rules carry on.
- returningfory2 3y ago
  Legal scholars as in [1] can make the point better than me: > When considering the filibuster as a supermajority requirement for regular legislation, it is clearly unconstitutional. As a textual matter, the Constitution appoints the Vice President as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, providing that they “shall have no Vote unless [the Senators] be equally divided.” This provision implies that the Senate must pass regular legislation by a majority vote. In general, the Senate's ability to set its own rules surely cannot be unrestricted. For example, when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate would it have been constitutional for them to create a new rule that all tax decreases require unanimous consent of the Senate? Or for Republicans in the same situation to create a rule that all tax increases require unanimous consent? Both of these changes would seem to be within the rule-making authority of the Senate. However both rules would be profoundly undemocratic because they would generally prevent a majority (or supermajority) of US voters from changing US tax law in the future. [1] https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/tyranny-of-the-minority-the-unconstitutionality-of-the-filibuster/ https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/tyranny-of-the-minority-t...
  - herczegzsolt 3y ago
    > to create a rule that all (...) require unanimous consent? What you describe is pretty much what has happened and still is happening in Hungary. The conclusion here is that even if the majority agrees that these rules are against the spirit of the democracy, there's nothing practical to do against them. So yeah, checks and balances are important to have in practice, not just in spirit. When you're relying on self-imposed limitations, radicals will sooner or later take over and do whatever necessary to stay in power.
  - baryphonic 3y ago

mason55 3y ago

janalsncm 3y ago
Precisely. There’s effectively no forcing mechanism which guarantees any factions work with each other. So I see Washington’s farewell address warning against factions less as a drop of quaint wisdom but more of a last ditch attempt to rectify a gaping hole in the constitution they had just written. And keep in mind that the current constitution took effect in 1789, only 8 years after the Articles of Confederation went into effect. So there was far less of a feeling that the fundamentals of the Constitution we have now would last forever.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
The flaw is actually in the use of first past the post voting, which causes more powerful political parties, because the math induces a two party system. Use score voting or approval voting and you'll have more parties that each have less power.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. The problem in the US is actually the opposite -- the checks and balances were intended to be stronger but have been substantially weakened, in a way that creates instability. In the original constitutional framework the federal government was meant to be extremely limited. Senators were appointed by state legislators so that they would limit expansion of federal power at the expense of state power, but that was changed and deprived the states of their primary representation in the federal government. Which not coincidentally was immediately followed by a massive expansion of federal control. Which was itself meant to be much more limited. The original intention of the interstate commerce clause was for the federal government to handle things like mail fraud, where you have a perpetrator and a victim in different states and the victims have no representation in the perpetrator's jurisdiction. It has since been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate essentially anything, infamously including non-commerce that occurs solely within a single state. In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level, doing things at the federal level was disfavored in general, and that was fine because anything outside the scope of federal power or without widespread consensus could be handled by the states. Laboratories of democracy. But then we made it too easy to do things at the federal level, and of course power-hungry sociopaths are attracted to centralized power. So instead of the federal government being weak and uninteresting because strong checks and balances limited it from being abused, it became the battleground for winner-take-all popularity contests.

EMIRELADERO 3y ago
> In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level If gridlock was intended, what's the purpose of the formal simple majority requirement to pass laws? If gridlock was always to be the main state when disagreement existed, the "Nay" vote seems superfluous, which is an absurd result IMO.

ethbr1 3y ago

I'd argue that the US biparty system tends to have fewer checks and balances than a parliamentary system. In many ways, it's winner take all. President + 50%+1 in the lower legislature + 50%+1 in the upper legislature = a huge amount of power. Historically, I think it's been exceedingly rare to have as finely balanced government as recent times have featured. And to me, the Supreme Court is less about the people currently sitting on it, and more about the fact that they have all dedicated their lives to the legal profession. They may rule one way or another on hot issues, for personal reasons. But you're checking with people who all hold the rule of law (as a concept) much higher than the legislature or executive. Which is a valuable check to have. In that way, they're more like the UK's Speaker of the House of Commons.

jackcosgrove 3y ago
In recent times the Supreme Court has also been staffed by graduates of only a handful of law schools. I think that, more than a dedication to the rule of law, is what sets them apart from the rest of the country. Given the complexities of harmonizing a large body of law that's centuries old, I'm not sure there's a better way. But I think we should always remember that the Supreme Court is by far the least representative and least democratic branch of government.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  It's also the only branch of government that, at least as designed, cannot originate policy.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
You need 60% in the senate to get anything passed. There have been many cases where one party controlled all three but couldnt accomplish much due to the filibuster. Famously Obama's first couple years.
- the_gastropod 3y ago
  Which, in practice, means senators representing an extreme minority of US citizens can block hugely popular legislation. California itself has a larger population than the least populous 21 states combined, yet gets the same 2 senate votes as each of those other states. The Senate is a hot mess as far as political game theory goes.

NoboruWataya 3y ago

Other democracies do generally have their own checks and balances. They might not be the same set of checks and balances as the US, but it's difficult to say as a whole that they are weaker. It's true that often the division of the executive and legislative branches is rather weak. But on the other hand there is often a stronger division between the judicial and other branches as judges are appointed independently. There are plenty of countries out there with very strong constitutional courts as well. I'm also not sure I agree that the US system is necessarily less sustainable than those other systems. A lot of European democracies are younger than the US, and some of them are more frequently deadlocked. I think effectiveness and sustainability are orthogonal concepts here (some would say they are diametrically opposed...)

Adverblessly 3y ago

> In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise. Alternatively, you get brinkmanship where you have a coalition of 53.33% where every party in the coalition that has >=4% of the votes (a.k.a. all of them) will threaten to bring down the entire coalition unless they get their most extreme demand. Incidentally, they are still trying to bring down the supreme court. Personally, I'd gladly welcome some political deadlock over here.

parineum 3y ago

This seems like a very presentism viewpoint. I don't think your points hold historically nor do they acknowledge that "strong checks and balances" and the adversarialness of congress is the same thing and considered a feature, not a bug.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> in the US is that the government tends to deadlock This is a feature. In a unitary state, it would be suicide. But in a federation, national disagreement prompts gridlock which automatically devolves the question.

int_19h 3y ago
It doesn't, though. It just means that whatever current arrangement exists on federal level (which is not necessarily devolution!) remains in force.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  This was one of the biggest defects in the original constitutional framework. They made it hard to pass laws, which was by design, but then used the same procedure to repeal them. If the goal is for federal laws to reflect general consensus, they should be easier to repeal than to pass.
  - anticensor 3y ago
    Easy: make all statutes temporary, not just budgeting acts. Then inaction means repeal.