Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy

by Maxwell L. Stearns

Can a parliamentary democracy end America's constitutional crisis? Americans face increasingly stark choices each presidential election and a growing sense that our government can't solve the nation's most urgent challenges. Our eighteenth-century system is ill suited to our twenty-first-century world. Information-age technology has undermined our capacity to face common problems together and turned our democracy upside down, with gerrymanders letting representatives choose voters rather than voters choosing them. In Parliamentary America , Maxwell L. Stearns argues that the solution to these complex problems is a parliamentary democracy. Stearns considers such leading alternatives as ranked choice voting, the national popular vote, and congressional term limits, showing why these can't solve our constitutional crisis. Instead, three amendments―expanding the House of Representatives, having House party coalitions choose the president, and letting the House end a failing presidency based on no confidence―will produce a robust multiparty democracy. These amendments hold an essential advantage over other by leaving every member of the House and Senate as incumbents in their districts or states, the amendments provide a pressure-release valve against reforms threatening that status. Stearns takes readers on a world tour―England, France, Germany, Israel, Taiwan, Brazil, and Venezuela―showing what works in government, what doesn't, and how to make the best features our own. Genuine party competition and governing coalitions, commonplace across the globe, may seem like a fantasy in the United States. But we can make them a reality. This rare book offers an optimistic vision, explaining in accessible terms how to transform our troubled democracy into a thriving parliamentary America.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

384 pages, Hardcover

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To save our democracy, we need an educated citizenry capable of seeing, with clear eyes, the serious challenges we face.”

Thank you to Professor Stearns for this e-copy! I was really happy to receive it. It's very different from the typical books I read, but I am honored to have been given this.

Professor Stearns has a very optimist view of our impending constitutional crisis. It was one that I was extremely hesitant to believe, especially considering the way we've seen things progress in our country. But after finishing this book, I can't help but agree with his view.

Yes, America is in crisis. Yes, it's because our political system is ancient (an understatement, to say the least). But there is hope. I agree with Professor Stearns that a parliamentary democracy can save us - or, at the very least, help us rise up out of the hole we've dug ourselves into.

The World Tour in this book was well-written and supports everything Professor Stearns purports. I learned a lot reading about various countries' systems and it gave me hope that we aren't about to collapse... yet. Regardless of your views on each country, Professor Stearns makes a very compelling point that there is something to be learned from everyone.

[Tricia Bunderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been very frustrated by our current political moment-- the polarization, extremism, and rising authoritarianism. The more I've thought and studied, the more I see how our systems are feeding into this doom loop and rewarding the extremes. We need systematic change. Envisioning a parliamentary America was a step further than I'd previously considered, but the author grounded his arguments well and gave me some good food for thought. I knocked off a star for accessibility to the average reader. Even for someone like me who is very civic-minded, I felt it was fairly easy to get lost with unfamiliar definitions and government structures. Maybe the hard copy would be better than audio if charts and other explainers are included.

[Jeffrey Grover · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty quick, and easy, read. I don't often enjoy reading other than fiction, but I was inspired to pick this up after seeing Jon Stewart's interview with the author.

While the ideas might seem radical, they actually would put this country closer to most functioning democracies. However, I seriously doubt that handing over presidential selection to the House would be a popular move at this point in time. Regardless of how much sense it makes under hypothetical coalition government. Congressional popularity is at an all-time low, and this would be viewed as taking power away from voters. Likewise, the House has a reputation as even more partisan than our undemocratic and dysfunctional Senate. Giving the House more power by selecting the president probably would be wildly unpopular, even if the power of individual members is diluted by increasing its size. Increasing the size of the House would probably be viewed as increasing its power as well, by the public even though it doesn't do that.

I'm not a political scientist, but I do believe proposals like this are an essential part of starting a very necessary movement to reform our electoral system. These specific ones are probably unlikely, but I like a lot of what the author proposes.

The author also, rightly, explains the problem of third party futility as a function of our electoral and governmental structure. We can't hope to break free from that without changing the rules. Until we do that third party votes are mostly meaningless in terms of achieving policy goals.

Sadly, the biggest disappointment is that we're very far away from these kinds of reforms becoming mainstream.

[Toby Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former lawyer, this book held my attention as Max proposed an alternative to our system of electing members of Congress and the Senate as well as the president and vice president. I’m not sure I agree with his proposals, but it gave me something to think about.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the broad strokes and goals of this book (a parliamentary system with a mixed-member proportional legislature using shifting, negotiated coalitions), but it also has a number of problems. There’s unequal treatment of various possible reforms, blithe dismissals of some under unfair terms (we could use ranked choice voting for single member district elections while using proportional representation for party list seats), unexplained, arbitrary goals like a House of constant size (few parliamentary systems have that, and it’s a partisan accident of history that we do), and failures to fix or prevent the problems it sets out to solve. It also creates some weird, unnecessary problems like a Senate with eight-year terms.

After Stearns’ three constitutional amendments took effect (assuming you can convince the public to give up voting for president), we’d still need to 1) abolish or reapportion the Senate (the democratic answer is abolition), 2) ban partisan gerrymandering, 3) fix the Supreme Court with staggered 18-year terms (and fix the McConnell/Garland problem), 4) create a mechanism that would have blocked Trump or removed him from office (a 60% no confidence vote is useless when the strongest vote for removing him was 57%), 5) specify that money isn’t speech and can thus be regulated, 6) specify that corporations aren’t people and don’t have the rights of humans, 7) ensure congressional representation for Washington, DC, the territories, and Native American tribes, 8) enable some form of national plebiscite, 9) make Election Day a federal holiday, and 10) require automatic voter registration nationally, ideally with a voting age of 16 or less.

Stearns is a moderate who warns against hubris and repeats that he seeks the least radical way to fix our existentially broken system, but that just reminds me how “moderation” is so often a pose rather than a principled belief system. If we want to fix our system and reach something meaningfully closer to democracy, we must do what it takes to get there, no matter how “radical” people subjectively perceive it to be. Yes, there are some practical advantages to Stearns’ proposals in terms of getting Congress to enact them, but it’s also clear that this was thought up by a constitutional law person and not a political science one. Writing the Constitution with no political science insight (because little existed) was one of the biggest root problems making our 1787 Constitution outdated and inadequate. We can hardly afford to repeat that mistake.

[A. Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stearns' Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy is the most important book I’ve read about reforming our system. I can’t recommend it enough and it needs to be part of the policy conversation from kitchen tables and coffee houses to the offices of members of Congress.

He argues forcefully, as a Constitutional Law scholar, that many of the cherished myths about our system of separation of powers - so called Madisonianism - are wrong, and have been wrong since the founding. Some of the conditions that allowed them to work fairly well have faded into the past. He makes the case that most of our ills today flow from our two-party system (that UCLA scholar Lynn Vavrek calls "calcified") enabled by our winner-take-all electoral districts and primary elections. He advocates for a multi-party system and for the President to be chosen by an enlarged multi-party House in the manner of a Prime Minister as in many other countries.

Others have recently written about this, including a recent New York Times OpEd by Lee Drutman and Jesse Wegman. Stearns proposal is the "German" (and New Zealand) form of Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) where voters vote for both a single member district House member and for a party preference. Via a simple algorithm, the whole body is made proportional to the party preference vote. Stearns asserts an advantage of MPP over other forms of PR is that in that MMP would not threaten incumbents. And that a multi-party system, where no one party can likely form a government or pass legislation by itself, will encourage cross-party cooperation in contrast to our current two party hyper partisan war footing.

However, Stearns goes further in daring to propose making the President like a Prime Minister by transferring their (and the VP’s) election to an enlarged and multi-party House of Representatives (from the current popular election via the electoral college). He also introduces a form of parliamentary vote of no confidence (60% threshold in the House only).

Stearns provides a good primer on the issues that have caused our democracy to break down. These include why we only have two parties (single-winner district elections). While the concept of electoral “spoilers” is familiar to many people, Stearns goes farther by concluding that in our electoral system third parties are "randomizers", a conceptualization that explains a lot. Two partyism requires having a wildly overbroad coalition before the election. On the right, it's led to what others have called asymmetrical polarization. Put simply, Republicans must keep the Trump Maga base in the coalition, or they will lose. The need to have a majority coalition before the election might seem normal to us, but it's not as Stearns goes on to explain in his "world tour" section looking at electoral systems and executive forms in several major democratic countries. Stearns also examines the change in the media space in the last few generations which has fueled hyper two-party partisanship.

While the book is good for those new to the subject, I'm personally not new to the idea of different forms of democracy. I was a political science major years ago in the 1990s when I first read Arend Lijphart's work on comparative democratic institutions Juan Linz' "Perils of Presidentialism". It was obvious then as it is now that Presidentialism and single-winner elections produce more problematic democratic outcomes than PR and a Prime Minister. But like most Americans I went through high school social studies imbibed on the cherished myths the superiority of the American form (especially in the context of the 1990s end of the Cold War and Fukuyama’s “end of history”). Stearns calls this conception of the constitutional order the "rock, paper, scissors" democracy where each branch checks the other one. To paraphrase the Federalist Papers, ambition checks ambition. So, though I found PR and parliament enticing as an undergraduate, it was surely not needed for us with our broadly construed two parties always searching for the median voter (another, as it turns out, non-empirical myth).

Stearns makes it clear in his analysis that this Madisonian, rock-paper-scissors conception of the constitution never worked. Parties formed quickly after the country's founding. The institutional jealousies the Federalist Papers had hoped for gave way to partisanship. Witness the complete ineffectiveness of the impeachment clause to ever remove a President.

While PR could be passed by law, having POTUS elected by the House like a Prime Minister would require a constitutional amendment. How can he even imagine that’s possible now?

Both parties now (despite some inroads in the concept of proportional representation among Democrats) are not talking at all about constitutional reforms. They are still, even despite the dysfunctionality of it, fixed on achieving a knockout, trifecta blow. Real reform doesn’t seem to be part of either party’s program.

Political scientists and historians have noted that for the most part countries have only changed their electoral systems or constitutional systems when confronted by serious internal disruption or losing a war. Stears notes that we have had three constitutional crises – the period after the American Revolution before the constitution’s adoption, the Civil War and its aftermath (Reconstruction), and now (I write on Feb. 1st, 2025).

Two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states (to pass this or any other reform) still feels impossible, despite the crisis. After the end of the American Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments were passed (13th, 14th, and 15th amendments). How does our current moment compare?

I suspect we are either in a place, democracy wise, like Taiwan or South Korea in the early 1980’s or Germany in 1933. All three are now vibrant democracies. (South Korea has shown recently how to hold a President in a Presidential system to account). The pair of east Asian countries, despite decades of authoritarian rule, were soon to return to democracy. The path for Germany in 1933 was much longer - through periods of Nazi and Communist rule - and threatened to end humanity.

The high form of our republican system – from the civil and voting rights acts in 1965 to the mid-1990s – is long gone. There’s no going back to it. Come what may or how long it will take, I think there will come a point where all major political groups will grow tired of the continuous fighting and accept an electoral system and executive where there are strong incentives to form coalitions and work together and cooperate. Compared to the hyper partisan two party system and Presidentialism, multiparty Parliamentary Democracy is a “Farewell to Arms” – an offramp from the culture war fights and an onramp to policy making and hope.

Stearns’ Parliamentary American is a thoughtful and hopeful call. I hope that everyone with the power to make and promote public policy, and their constituents, read it.

[Fred Heeren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven’t bothered doing reports on the books I’ve been reading for some time, but here’s one I needed to write up recently for my Provocateurs and Peacemakers group:

PARLIAMENTARY AMERICA: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy
By Maxwell L. Stearns, a constitutional law professor and professor of Law and Economics for over 3 decades.

In the months and probably years ahead, more and more of us are going to be thinking about possible fixes for the extreme polarity that characterizes our country and government. Maxwell Stearns is here with an answer that is radical just where it needs to be, yet doable with three amendments to our constitution. Admittedly, many more of us will have to be desperate before such amendments might get passed … but that day may come.

Main points:
- The two-party system guarantees not everyone will be represented.
- We’re in the midst of a 3rd Constitutional crisis.
- We can learn from other democracies that have certain features that work better than ours.
- Our present system doesn’t allow, practically, for more than 2 parties.
- 3rd parties can only serve as spoilers or randomizers, making our vote meaningless.
- But when we have 5 parties, or 6 or 8 parties, and a system where they need to form coalitions to form a majority government, more of us can be represented: And our politicians are forced to work together, meaning politicians are no longer elected according to their ability to appeal to an ever-more extreme party base, but in large measure according to their ability to collaborate effectively, to serve more people.
- So this parliamentary, muti-party system that Stearns proposes is a more representative democracy, representing more viewpoints, more people.

Stearns begins by showing how we are in the midst of a 3rd Constitutional Crisis:
What were the first two?
- First was the framing of the constitution itself: This was after the American Revolution, when the 13 states were ineptly ruled by our Articles of Confederation, which gave the states all the real power and the Congress –1 branch—tried to raise taxes and regulate commerce but the states just said: ”No thanks” and erected trade barriers against each other and gutted the economy. The Philadelphia Convention was supposed to address all this, not to write a constitution, but they ended up writing the constitution, which made “we the people” a higher power than the states. And Stearns point was we learned from our mistakes and we weren’t afraid to make things up as we went along, to build on what England and other governments had learned through the centuries.

- The second constitutional crisis was the Civil War, along with the period of Reconstruction that followed it. The Reconstruction Amendments couldn’t survive Lincoln’s death when his southern-sympathizing successor Andrew Johnson took office and the North prematurely withdrew their troops so that the amendments were no longer enforced, depriving Blacks of their recently granted civil rights. But the point is, we eventually started making these critical changes, these amendments, once again in the spirit of continuing to “form a more perfect union” and “promote the general Welfare.” We changed in reaction to the crisis.

And today, according to Stearns, we’re in the midst of a 3rd constitutional crisis, which is the result of a 2-party presidential system that isn’t working.
He explains that the framers of our constitution explicitly wanted to avoid the birth of parties or factions; yet the constitution they wrote paved the way for our presently entrenched 2-party system, which we’ve been accommodating for over 2 centuries.

Says: “The two-party system creates a zero-sum power struggle—a party is either in power or in opposition.” [Your side is either represented, or you’re opposed to your government.]
And: “The 2-party system not only suffers from the limited range of candidates; it also suffers from the voters’ inability to express at the ballot box what they care most deeply about.” [p. 212]

He describes our present voting system, with its primary-caucus cycle and then our votes filtered through the Electoral College of 538 electors: Which has produced the “third-party dilemma” —
so that each time a third presidential candidate and party run a campaign, they have no real ability to compete against the 2-party system, but they do have the ability to take more votes away from one side than the other, and become spoilers, which is what happened in 2000 with Ralph Nader, helping George W. Bush beat Al Gore.

But another possibility is that third parties can become randomizers, meaning they pull votes from both other parties so that the election really becomes a matter of chance: As in 1992 with Ross Perot weakening George H.W. Bush against Bill Clinton, and back n 1980 John Anderson’s 3rd party helping to make the outcome between Reagan and Jimmy Carter a matter of chance.

Stearns explains that: “Our voting process rewards strategy over sincerity, and it increasingly plays to the base of each party rather than the center of our politics.”
And describes how, esp since 1994, this has pushed the center of both parties farther and farther apart.

The heart of the book is a tour of a number of current democracies around the world, which alone is worth the price of the book. He shows the strengths and weaknesses of each system, and we see where he gets his ideas for the best features to adapt as our own. So he tells us about the various kinds of parliamentary democracies in England, France, Germany, Israel, Taiwan, Brazil, and Venezuela.

Some of these, like Germany, have come up with a system to “never again” allow a fascist party to gain power, called MMP, mixed-member proportionality. This combines two kinds of governing members: those elected by their party, and those elected by their districts. So voters each cast two ballots, one for a candidate running for their district (like our U.S. House district), and one for their party. So the 2nd ballot determines the party proportional representation in their Bundestag, their parliament. So for citizens, both their geographical concerns and their ideals are represented.
Most of these governments are set up to encourage multiple parties. But not just any tiny extreme group can form a party. There’s always a threshold, whether minimum of 5 or 10 % or whatever, so they often end up with between 4 and 8 parties. The Netherlands has a less than 1% threshold, so I guess they could end up with dozens of parties.

Stearns created a chart (p. 166) where he shows where each country falls within 3 categories along the side: presidential, hybrid, or parliamentary — and 3 categories along the top: purely districted, hybrid, and purely proportional.

Our own form of government falls under the category of presidential and purely districted, AKA 2-party presidentialism, which was in place earlier than most of these other democratic systems, before anyone could learn from our history, and its considered a combination of some of the worst democratic features in terms of what our system has become today, falling short of its original intent to promote a separation of powers, and checks and balances, because its extreme partisanship in recent years has impeded effective governance and widened cultural gaps—the opposite of promoting “the general welfare” as intended.

He says: “The greatest threat to a democracy is extremes. Once we recognize the general failings, or threats, associated with presidentialism and executive hybrids, it is clear that we must consider the alternative of parliamentary democracy. The question is which parliamentary system is most effective. MMP is a conceptual midpoint between the extremes of the United Kingdom’s strictly districted approach and Israel’s pure proportionality.” (p 167)
And: “A parliamentary MMP system encourages voters to vote sincerely for parties that reflect their ideological views, rather than admonishing them strategically to select the least bad of two options.” (p. 168:)

He proposes to do all this with 3 amendments:
1 Expanding the House of Representatives,
2 Having House party coalitions choose the president, and
3 Giving the House the power to terminate the presidency of a president who loses their confidence by failing to do the job well.

So for the FIRST AMENDMENT, voters will cast two ballots, first for named candidates in their geographical districts, as today, and second for one in a list of qualifying parties, those that meet a 5% threshold. This second ballot creates more parties, and it means the House will double in size from 435, under current law, to 870 members.

What this accomplishes is this, he says: “With multiple parties in the House, no party is ensured a majority, thus making coalition building among parties essential…. Today, compromise is all too often regarded as a sign of political weakness…. Coalition building rewards cooperation, not ever-widening entrenchment.” (p. 178)
He says it also ends incentives for hyper-partisan gerrymandering, because the parties and the issues take center stage.

The SECOND AMENDMENT—having House party coalitions choose the President—lessens the campaign expense and the power of money and shortens our absurdly long campaign season and bypasses the electoral college. It avoids the cult of personality and also rewards the citizen’s sincere expression of political preferences and gives them greater input on public policy.

And with Mixed Member Proportionality, he says, it “lets voters express preferences outside the over-simplified liberal-to-conservative dimension.” (213z)
He says: “Coalitions that broaden perspectives, accommodate competing views, and moderate the extreme edges of he most strident ideologies improve outcomes for more citizens.”

The THIRD AMENDMENT reinvents Presidential removal through use of the “no confidence” vote, which overall can create more confidence in a good leader.
Our present system of impeachment has turned out to be mostly for show, as in the case of the four impeachments of Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump twice, none producing a conviction. Nixon was the only one ever to be convicted.

A no-confidence vote strengthens the separation of powers. The current power of the President makes party loyalists hesitant to cross him. “Congressional leaders will be more willing to hold a deeply problematic president accountable if their political fortunes no longer depend upon executive grace.” [219]

The amendment replaces “high crimes and misdemeanors” with “Maladministration.” And it spells out 4 categories of maladministration [p. 224x].

He lays out the process for how he thinks this reformed system can be put in place, which comes down to these three amendments being accepted by a 2/3-vote by Congress.

The constitution has been amended 27 times before, but there are people who benefit from the current, 2-party system who would fight it, like small states that benefit from the electoral college, and people who love partisan politics.

He examines other proposals for change, most of them smaller ones like implementing ranked choice voting or dumping the electoral college, but gives reasons why none of these fix the 2-system.

So he says: Whenever the crisis becomes obvious to enough people, here’s a plan and a way forward, giving us specific changes that will solve the worst of our present problems with our 2-party system.

He gives the proposed text for his three amendments in the appendix.

[Wendy Bornstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is extremely well written. The author fully details the structure of our present government structure and its evolution since its founding principals. He points out the positive aspects and flaws of each fundamental pivot along the American Democratic journey.

Readers will have an opportunity to compare and understand how other democracies have evolved on a world tour section of the book. The thesis of the book is to look at what works and what doesn’t work and how we can change our system to better serve the evolved needs of its constituents.

Our present government is not working. We have become very polarized in the two party system. The authors approach suggests expanding on what is currently working and creating more opportunities to build coalitions within the federal government where groups of constituents can work together to serve our country at various federal and more local levels.

The author gives an optimistic approach to create opportunities for a continuance of the American experiment. This is the time to explore his ideas and embrace ways to fix whats broken before we lose all we have built over the past almost three hundred years.

[Clifford Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A half a century ago the US system of government was working well, but over those 50 years problems in the American system have again degraded to the point where today many feel the system is horribly disfunctional, being on so many policies grid-locked and the hyper-partisianism. The distance between the parties is becoming wider and more extremist (hyper partisanism), and both badly represents the average American. The senate by its nature is anti-democratic, giving the state population with smaller populations greater representation. Even worse, the Supreme Court which was supposed to be non-political has become the most important political football that both sides via for.

According to the author, the framers of the constitution actually had attempted to ensure there would be no parties, but obviously, they almost immedicably failed in this intention. Because of the First-past-the-post voting with the parties selecting the candidates to vote for, a third-party candidate really only creates a spoiler that has many times throw presidential elections to the other party. Thus, there can not be an effective third party.

The author argues that the ready access to information lead to the current situation. With what the power of information age can do hyper partisan gerrymandering so that the candidates can select their electorate instead of the reverse. Also, the different information media are able to target their audiences, instead of the reverse because they have so much information on how to target a specific population, and of course attract advertisement money.

I recently read another book about the same subject called “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.” That book was more readable basically because it was not so technical. This book extensive discusses the different voting systems: RCV (Ranked-choice voting), MMP (Mixed-member proportional representation), and others. If one is not intimately familiar with the systems it can get confusing, and to make matters worse uses the acronyms. The Two-Party Doom look is more a history of the US system and is not so much a look at the voting in other countries as this book is. The Two-Party Doom Loop I think provides a better understanding of why the American systems does not work, and this book is more of a look at the voting in other countries, along with the United States, and comparing the failures. The Parliamentary America is more an argument for the authors recommendations of changes, and I think probably more practical, but I do not think that it will be enough. But better to do something than leave things as they are. A few what I think are excellent concepts like moving the senate to 8-year terms with half being elected the same year as the presidential elections, which should improve turnout. Also, there would be changes in the Senate including not being the source of new laws, only approval of House laws. It would become less Personally, I think that the US should go to a single house with super majorities needed to pass new legislation and simple majorities needed to totally remove previous legislation, after all, as the author states there is little difference in the politics of the two houses. Another very good idea which many recommend in using the cube root law to determine the minimum number of representatives. His recommendation is just to double the number which is not much more than what the cube root law would dictate. These new members would all be at large representatives in each state whose party proportion to the percentage of people voting for each party in the state.
Seems like these amendments might be something that would pass. The other significant country that is effectively a two-party system in the United Kingdom, and, like the United States, its history is, particularly recently, quite dysfunctional. It seems like cannot get anything worse than a two-party system. According to the author too many parties is a problem also. I think he said it is four to eight that is best. Most countries seem to use a number of around 5% minimum voters for a party to have representation to prevent too much fragmentation which would cause other problems. The only way to really understand how to best change the US system is to look at other countries since there is no way to test, therefore the author’s approach is the only practical means—see what has worked best for other countries. The countries that he has included is Brazil, German, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Israel.

The president would be selected in a parliamentary fashion with the top five parties recommending candidates for the president and vice president with a vote by the house. The house could also remove the president with a non-confidence vote of the president with a 60% vote. It is evident that the current impeachment process does not work considering the egregious actions of Trump and not being even impeached.

Another issue he mentions is that with the current system in most regions there really is only one party since a region tends to side of the extreme liberal or reactionary divide (hyper partisan) or the other, so only one party is considered acceptable, and there is no way to easily support regional parties with the American two-party system. A multiparty system allows more regional competition for votes.

I personally do not think these amendments are drastic but it appears that they might have a chance in passage. Not sure anybody has a more practical idea. I thought the book was a good read, and ranked it five stars. It provides good information of the current problem with the American system, but unless his ideas gain traction, I do not see a lot of point in reading this book unless you have a great interest in the subject.

[Howard Samuels · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm old enough to have lived through the administrations of many presidents of both parties. There were times when I felt strongly in support of, or against, various policies. But there has never been so much acrimony and division as there is today.

The Framers of the Constitution framers created a system with many checks and balances to control the inevitable factions. Those checks and balances aren't working in the current environment. Professor Stearns examines the contributing factors to our broken system. One of these is the inversion of the supplier and consumer relationship between media sources and viewers. The former barriers to entry into the media market have been erased with the FCC's elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and by the easy access to large audiences afforded by the Internet.

Our two current major parties are coalitions of multitudinous interests, ranging from gun rights and immigration to environmental concerns and transgender issues. The leaders of each party struggle to adopt positions that retain as many of the diverse factions as possible, for fear of losing them to the opposing party. Third-party candidates rarely succeed, in part because voting for one whose policies you strongly support may reduce votes for the major party most closely identified with them, thereby handing victory in a "winner take all" election to the opposing party.

Stearns points out that a parliamentary system allows representatives from any major interest to participate in governing the country without the contortions of attempting to fit into the larger party platform. No form of government is perfect, so Stearns examines several parliamentary democracies around the globe. Each has methods to address representational equity, the number of lawmakers, voting methods, and more. Stearns makes insightful analyses of these governments, and proposes a set of three amendments to the Constitution which promises to accomplish several goals.

It may seem like a long shot to actually amend our Constitution to fix many of these ills. But amendments are an integral part of the living nature of the document. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added only two years after the Constitution was adopted. There have been 5 amendments since the 1960s, with the 27th amendment having been ratified as recently as 1992.

Stearns applies his decades of wisdom garnered during a distinguished career as a constitutional law professor to his analysis and proposal. His love for the Constitution and our country is evident in the care and thoughtfulness he applies to his proposed solutions. If you are tired of the discord and churn, of years at a time of extreme satisfaction followed by years of intense unhappiness, and of the perpetual gridlock in Congress even on non-partisan issues, I highly recommend reading this book. The future of our democracy depends on it.

[Roger Machlis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Stearns has written an extraordinary and important book that provides a pragmatic prescription to solve the seemingly intractable constitutional and political crisis that has engulfed the United States. Stearns accomplishes this by providing a thoughtful and insightful analysis of the problems confronting our political system, and taking the reader on a world tour of the systems that other democracies have adopted. He chooses and adapts the best elements of those systems to design an elegant political solution that can work within the unique framework of the American constitutional system. The book is well written and engrossing from the start, and very approachable for both scholars as well as readers who are not in steeped in constitutional law.

In an era of hyperpartisanship and political paralysis that is literally tearing our country apart, Stearns has written a highly relevant tour de force that is a must read for every concerned US citizen who wants to make American democracy function again.

[John Hermle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book about how to fix our American Government. The author starts with the premise that we are currently in our 3rd constitutional crisis and to get back on track, we need some sweeping changes. After establishing some of our existing problems such as the two party system that doesn’t allow voters to chose candidates that reflect their true beliefs, Stearns takes you on a survey of the features of different parliamentary governments around the world highlighting the different aspects of each. Finally, Stearns lays out 3 constitutional amendments that could be made to fix our system as well as how these could be passed. I consumed this book as an audiobook, but wish I would have gotten the hard copy. The subject matter requires a lot of thinking about incentives of various government actors and how they might behave going under a new construct. I listened to it twice as I missed certain aspects the first time through. It’s definitely a thought provoking read.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like what Stearns has to say about modifying the way the US government operates and his proposed amendments, as I am also a big fan of parliamentary style government and the ability for more then two parties to participate in government. The world tour was also a great part to inclue to showcase how other countries do things and what is good and bad about there style, as well as to make the point we are somewhat of an anomaly as far as how democracies are built around the world. I do unfortunately think it would be much harder to infuse his ideas into the US government then he argues, but I'm all for it for me to be proven wrong. A great book and resource, and well sourced as well. Definitely recommend.

[Crusade Bus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very smartly written book proposing a transition the United States to something resembling a parliamentary model with uniquely American features. It’s also very clear about what problems it wants to address in what the author calls an ongoing constitutional crisis — the third such in American history. The least realistic part was the section on the path to passage of the proposed three constitutional amendments — however the author had done a public service to the political science and constitutional reform literature by drawing up a surgical fix that could end our presidential system without throwing out our entire system of government. Provocative and interesting.

[Josh Hedgepeth]

DNF at 45%. This had an extremely fascinating and engaging start. It's ideas on how to fix many of America's problems are intriguing to say the least. However, I'm dnfing this 1) because it quickly became a rehash of recent and modern politics that felt like fluff rather than relevant to the main narrative. It may be that this could have just been an article or essay and that's it. But 2) I'm also just really disenfranchised after the election. I'm even more interested in reading about politics and action, but this level of progressive radicalism just feels like fantasy at this moment in time. I may return to it, but for now I'm done.

[Jim Twombly · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I have been arguing something similar for quite a while, I think Stearns, while making a good argument for change, has made the solution more complex than is necessary and may overestimate the extent to which the public (and their representatives) would support his system. That being said, this is a great starting point for a conversation about developing governing mechanisms that could reduce polarization, create a more fertile field for additional new parties, and bring our policy debates back to discussions about policy.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former student of Professor Stearns’ Constitutional Law class, I cannot recommend this book enough. It explains in plain English what is wrong with our “democracy,” what other countries have done, and how we can fix our Constitution without ripping it up. This book is essential, and very well written!

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stearns tackles two-party winner take-all politics in the U.S. He provides a tour of variations in democracies in seven other countries. His proposals to change the composition of the House and replace the electoral college system could be part of the recipe for a more perfect union. Interesting read!

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some interesting ideas in this book. I don't know that implementing all of them would entirely fix the problem with the current US government, but I think they would likely make it better. Certainly food for thought.

[Justin Price]

Love the idea, but I can’t follow the argument, at least with this audiobook version. Also seems implausible in my lifetime.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably would have said 4 stars, but the audiobook was tough to stick with so I took a star off.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read about reforming the U.S.'s political system.