Unbundling: Feasibility
But could this actually happen?
Previously I sketched out a plan to update the design of the House of Representatives, moving from a geographical first-past-the-post system that covered all issues to a national party-list proportional representation system split out into the major areas of governmental responsibility. Future posts will discuss potential modifications of the design and whether or not it will be a good idea; this post will discuss whether or not this is at all possible. I put 80% on “with a month of effort, we’ll have a good sense of whether or not it’s investing more” and currently put ~30% on “something in this space could be implemented.”
Amendments don’t happen anymore
The last amendment to the Constitution that happened was in 1992, the result of a student saying it was possible in a term paper:
Despite his enthusiasm, however, his professor didn’t buy his argument. When he got his paper back, he found he had received a “C” grade.
Disappointed, Watson decided to prove his case in the most extreme way possible: he started a one-man campaign to have the amendment added to the Constitution.1
Some have been attempted since then, generally ending in failure. The Equal Rights Amendment, for example, failed to be ratified in time; attempts to establish 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices2 have not gotten far at all.
I think the machinery is obviously in place for amendments to happen, if sufficiently many people want them to happen, and the problem is that people are targeting what they think would be good policies instead of policies that they think will have supermajority support.
Winning-First Politics
I think for any change like this to happen, it needs to be one that clearly benefits nearly everyone involved. I think that is the case for this proposal (or one like it), because it primarily increases the amount of power available to people in the system, and increases the job satisfaction of many of the people involved, and it does this mostly by superior efficiency rather than robbing someone else of their power (which they would sensibly oppose).
This is in contrast to proposals that have, like, 55% support; one recurring story from the Cold War was that whichever superpower had the stronger conventional army wanted a nuclear arms control treaty, which the other superpower was reluctant to sign, and the reluctant swapped when the conventional armies swapped. Similarly, whichever party currently has dominance in the Supreme Court is reluctant to give up that edge, and so bilateral disarmament has a hard time reaching supermajority support instead of just being a mildly good idea.
Note that this is more like an IOU than it is a research paper, because this is the most speculative section of my thinking. It hasn’t come into contact with representatives, their staffers, or the various other stakeholders; this is before I’ve spent the month interviewing people in DC and seeing whether or not something is possible here.
That is, the fundamental claim is that there’s a zone of possible agreement, here, not that I’ve already struck a deal.
Representatives
Pros: I think representatives will enjoy their jobs much more if they have narrower portfolios of responsibility, because it will allow them to:
Have more influence. If they’re one of 30 members of a Room, they will be a meaningful part of drafting and negotiating all legislation they touch, instead of a drop in the ocean.
Be operating in their area of competence more regularly. They’ll be spending all of their time operating in their favorite areas, according to them, instead of scattering their attention broadly. They can understand their areas and policies in those areas more deeply, and oversee the relevant departments in more detail.
Ignore irrelevant factors. Rather than having to stake out positions on the ten thousand different issues, they’ll be able to focus. There’s a foreign policy crisis, and voters want to know what their representative has to say? If you’re in the foreign policy Room, you’re already on top of it; if you’re in a different Room, you can ignore it, and not have to worry about a gaffe sinking your career.
Cons: I think the representatives that currently exist are optimized for winning elections in their local districts. I think changing the electoral system devalues the expertise that they’ve built up so far. Because the parties control the transition process, they should be able to make this a relatively smooth transfer, but it’s not obvious how things will shake out over the course of several election cycles.
I also think each representative will be only able to exert influence on a smaller number of issues, which might matter strongly to them. I’m uncertain how much people are generalists or specialists; most of the politicians who have national prominence3 have specialist viewpoints (which is why they are famous on policy or ideological grounds) but they might be atypical politicians.
Parties
Pros: Party-list electoral systems give parties much more control over themselves. Rather than having to deal with whoever wins the primary in particular districts, they can look at the national talent pool and construct the bench that they think will best achieve their ends (including appealing most to voters).
Issues on which one party dominates voter opinion will be more ‘locked in’; even if the party has a major down cycle, any room where they had 70-30 trust from voters will be one where they still hold the majority.
Cons: Proportional representation makes it easier for parties to split, and for minor parties to gain ground. This proposal doesn’t affect either the Senate or the Presidency, which means that the traditional divisions will likely still have major control over policy. Even if the socialists get 9% of the vote, and so three seats in a room, they can’t pass any legislation without forming a coalition with enough other representatives.
Unbundling also may upset current coalitional politics in the parties. Wealthy donors who want to fund coalitions that pair together popular issues and their pet issues might find the new electoral landscape less supportive of the sorts of trades that they want to make.
One core uncertainty here is how much parties care about their popular and their unpopular positions. A system where the Democrats and Republicans both get more of the policies that voters trust them on, and fewer of the policies where voters distrust them, might be one where both parties feel better off; but also they might feel worse off.
State Legislatures
Right now, one of the main ways that state legislators can affect national politics is by determining Congressional districts. This plan moves from district voting to national voting, which means that is no longer necessary. But 38 states need to ratify any constitutional amendment for it to pass; how will they be convinced that this is good for them?
I think the core pathway has to route thru it being good for the politicians personally, rather than good for the collection of politicians. If power shifts from the state legislators to the house representatives, this is a worthwhile trade if state legislators themselves hope to be house representatives at a later stage in their career, and with a party-list system, the parties will have some control over this. I think this may be as simple as convincing party leadership (such as it is), and then enough of the state legislatures following along, and I think this is unlikely to work without convincing party leadership.
Next up (after a break for Thanksgiving): filling out the details a bit more, looking at the process of filling out those details.
https://www.history.com/articles/the-strange-case-of-the-27th-amendment
Compare your sense of the geography of where AOC represents vs. the ideology / demography of who AOC represents.