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Most people are familiar with our separation of powers system. Our Founders had an 18th century mentality, informed by their experiences in the British mixed system, and they set up a government *designed* to disperse power and create veto players. In that sense, they succeeded.
The stable parliamentary systems with few veto players that came in the 19th and 20th century would not have been believable to our Founders. Just let all the commoners vote and make the House of Commons sovereign and only constrained by elections? No way.
And you can see this in our system, it's essentially a copy of the 18th century British mixed system, without the social classes. We froze in place a Commons (House of Representatives), an elected Lords (Senate), and an elected monarchy (presidency).
The latter two elements withered in the British system, resulting in the familiar single-veto player parliamentary system they have today, once suffrage was expanded. Our Constitution, however, locked the strong separation mentality of 18th century english thought in place.
Since the Founders couldn't rely on the British social structure (royals, nobles, commoners) as the basis of division , they enhanced the institutional divisions, to grind up power. Some of these institutional divisions are famous and well-known.
Most importantly, the different branches have different constituencies. House districts are small, resulting in localism and more extreme members. On the other end, the presidency has a psuedo-national constituency, encouraging a national view of affairs.
Likewise, with terms of office. The two year House term means reelection is always soon, tying members more closely to public opinion. Six year Senate terms allow more breathing room. And it works! Senate votes from five years ago are rarely salient in elections.
Related, the actors have different time horizons. With the two-term norm and then amendment, POTUS can't afford to wait to do things. It has to happen now. A committee chair in the House with 14 years in and maybe that many more to go? Much more risk averse, can wait.
The Framer also put the institutions different distances from democracy. Direct elections in House. Indirect elections in Senate. Double indirect for POTUS. Over time we flattened these with the 17th amendment and the choosing of electors by popular vote, but intent was clear.
The Founders also were vague about the overlapping authorities, encouraging different institutions to fight. Who has the war power? Fight it out in the public sphere. Can POTUS fire cabinet officials? Can Congress create agencies shielded from POUTS? Who knows! Fight!
The Framers did make Congress central to the structure---only they can sit in existential judgment of the other branches---but each branch has plenty of authority to compete in battle with the others. https://twitter.com/MattGlassman312/status/1179808071499108353?s=20
One thing the Founders did that is underappreciated is that they staggered the elections for the different branches. This is both well-known and under-considered.
Everyone is aware that voters can punish a POTUS by electing an opposition Congress at the mid-terms. But in the bigger picture, *the federal government is NEVER fully constituted at one moment in time.* That is, you never elect the entire government at once.
That is totally contrary to the strong parliamentary single-veto model, in which an election is held, someone wins, and has almost *complete* control of gov. It literally cannot happen in the United States. Two-thirds of the Senate is *never* up in the biennial elections.
In essence, the federal government is always composed of actors elected from different constituencies, with different and time horizons, chosen by different voters at different points in time, with vague overlapping authorities.
Whats' the upshot of all of this, here and now in 2020? Let me give you five.
First, gridlock and squabbling and nothing getting done in Washington isn't itself a sign of constitutional dysfunction. The system was designed to make policy change very, very difficult. It doens't mean the constitution is broken.
Stuff the founders didn't foresee, like mass democracy and parties as the organizing units of politics may exacerbate this, for sure. But it's also baked right into the cake.
Of course, that the system isn't failing on its own terms does NOT mean we have the best system of government for the 21st century. Far from it. The policy needs of a modern society might very well be incompatible with the Founders' constitution.
Do we have the best system for providing national health care to a continental nation? Or for managing a continental economy or pandemic in a global environment? That wasn't the Founders goal.
They wanted a stable system that didn't lapse into monarchy or anarchy. They got it.
They wanted a stable system that didn't lapse into monarchy or anarchy. They got it.
Second, policy stability. Our system has so many veto players relative to other western democracies that the status quo is always going to be a huge favorite over any policy changes that might be put up as alternatives.
This cuts both ways. If you want to change something, it is extremely difficult. But if you achieve a change, particularly a legislative change, it is extremely difficult to undo it.
Third, the filibuster is less important than you think. Sometimes, people argue the Senate standing in the way of legislative output. But it only *really* matters in a very specific case: when between 50 and 60 Senators want something, and the House wants it, and POTUS wants it.
Undoubtedly, more legislation would pass and it would be of a different character, absent the filibuster. But there are so many other veto players that the overall structure of the system would still *radically* favor the status quo over alternatives.
Fourth, institutional capacity matters. A lot. Which in turn means public opinion about institutional capacity matters a lot. When Congress faces democratic pressure to pay its staff less and hire fewer of them, it loses power relative to POTUS.
https://d1y8sb8igg2f8e.cloudfront.net/documents/Congressional_Brain_Drain.pdf
https://d1y8sb8igg2f8e.cloudfront.net/documents/Congressional_Brain_Drain.pdf
The history of the 20th/21st century is one of Congress enhancing POTUS power, without corresponding enhancements of its own. That presents problems.
Congress faces a continual racheting-up problem, in which they give POTUS statutory power by majority vote, but cannot take it back without a supermajority, almost impossible to build, members may have substantive or party reasons to support the POTUS. https://twitter.com/MattGlassman312/status/971860223408459776?s=20
Finally, a gridlocked system also inherently favors the executive, who will be looked toward to take action when collective decisionmaking across the separation of powers. If the system can't act, POTUS will often do so unilaterally.
You see this all the time. Trump didn't invent it. But the failure of his legislative program helped make him a groundbreaker in expanding unilateral POTUS action, especially in the realm of approprations. FEMA money for unemployment. MilCon money for a wall. Etc.
The problem, however, is that all of this is weak sauce. Our system biases the status quo, and executive action is no substitute for legislation. The next POTUS can just wipe all of it away. The only true durable changes are the statutory ones.
This means that anything that promotes gridlock empowers the executive to take unilaterally take action, but the actions themselves are of a much more suspect, and much less durable character. That's energy in the executive in some sense, but not great energy. /END
An additional excellent point raised by @jbview. Our system promotes a "transformative" legislature, where policy is developed, deliberated, changed, etc. The parliamentary systems, on the other hand [...continued] https://twitter.com/jbview/status/1305203305791066112?s=20
...despite their name, don't really do a lot in parliament. Sometimes they are called "arena" legislatures, because all they do is serve as the site where policy developed elsewhere (in the government, in the party) is rubber-stamped.
