S1 E4 Patterns of Democracy with Arend Lijphart

11/21/21 • 65 min

Peaceful Political Revolution in America

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast

I thought I'd jump ahead a little and discuss some of the basic changes we could make to our constitution which would actually make it a more democratic system of government. In this episode, I have the genuine pleasure to interview one of the leading experts on democratic forms of government. His seminal book, Patterns of Democracy is probably the best analysis in comparative democracies available today. We all need to know why.

Arend Lijphart's research focuses on comparative politics, elections and voting systems, institutions, and ethnicity and politics. His work has had a profound impact on the study of democracy and he is widely considered the leading authority on consociationalism. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (1977), Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (1984), Power-Sharing in South Africa (1985), Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences (1986), Parliamentary versus Presidential Government (1992), Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies (1994), and Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (1999; 2nd ed., 2012). Lijphart has received numerous awards throughout his prestigious career in recognition of his groundbreaking research, including the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Aaron

Wildavsky Book Award, and honorary doctorates by the University of Leiden, Queen's University Belfast, and the University of Ghent. He was elected to serve as president of the American Political Science Association in 1995 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the Netherlands Academy of Sciences. Most recently, in 2010, he received the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeritus Award in recognition of his unique and extensive contributions to the University of California, the discipline, and the world. He is also an acquaintance and I am especially happy to be having our first official Zoom meeting since we began exchanging emails almost 3 years ago. Welcome, Arend to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast. It's so wonderful to have you here.
Top Fixes to Our Constitution, in order of discussion:

Change Presidential System for Parliamentary System

Proportional Representation or Mixed Member Proportional Elections

Gerrymandering

Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico

Mandatory Voting

Abolish the Electoral College

Uniform National Voting Standards

Expand the Court to 17 Justices, Term Limits

Abolish Primaries

Fewer Elections

Term limits for Judges

Abolish the Senate

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast

Change Presidential System for Parliamentary System

Proportional Representation or Mixed Member Proportional Elections

Gerrymandering

Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico

Mandatory Voting

Abolish the Electoral College

Uniform National Voting Standards

Expand the Court to 17 Justices, Term Limits

Abolish Primaries

Fewer Elections

Term limits for Judges

Abolish the Senate

Previous Episode

S1 E3 Toward an American Revolution with Jerry Fresia

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast

If Bernie's regular castigation of the elites felt justified to you, you'll find this episode especially interesting. Today, I'm going to be talking about the people who gave us our constitution, the Framers. Who were they? What were their intentions? What kind of political system did they create? Does it explain the vast influence of the elites in our society today?

In his book, The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, Thom Hartmann writes, "If you were looking for a date when the American Oligarchy started, it would be January 30, 1976.

But our guest Jerry Fresia will explain to you why that's not quite true. It actually started on September 17, 1787. It was an overcast day in Philidelphia, the cool temperatures heralding the arrival of autumn as the Framers concluded their deliberations over the new Constitution.

Jerry Fresia's rather astounding book, Toward an American Revolution, could be titled the people's history of the U.S. Constitution. It is filled with stunning details about the Framers. Most of those facts have been buried away or happily forgotten by the American public. To our detriment, Americans have never fully come to terms with our Framers. In many ways, we have replaced their legacy with a more convenient fiction. Who were the people who created our constitution and gave birth to the world's greatest superpower?

There's a lot to unpack when it comes to the people who wrote our constitution, so let’s get started with an intense discussion about the untold history of the Framer's Constitution. Jerry Fresia is a political scientist and renowned artist. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has taught at numerous US colleges and universities. He left academia in 1989 and settled in San Francisco to pursue a career in painting. He has written extensively on both art and the political-economy of the United States. He currently lives in Bellagio Italy where he is best known for his remarkable Plein Air paintings of Lake Como.

https://www.amazon.com/Toward-American-Revolution-Constitution-Illusions/dp/0896082970

Next Episode

S1 E5 The Frozen Republic with Daniel Lazare

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast.

Thomas Paine believed that Americans must control their constitutions of government, that they should revise and update it every generation. But the Framers, subverting Paine's vision of a democratically controlled government, intentionally left out of their Constitution any process through which the people could do just that. As Jerry Fresia points out in episode 3, that was because their Constitution was designed to prioritize the individual accumulation of wealth and property over the well-being of society as a whole. The Framers did not want that system to be changed. In fact, as we are about to find out, they really did not want the system to even work, and peaceful political revolution was to be repressed at all costs.

In the previous episode, we discussed the kinds of changes we could make to our constitution which would make it more effective and democratic. We also noted that Americans, unlike in any other country, have an unusual reverence for their Constitution. As a consequence, our Constitution has remained frozen for over 230 years. Before we can even begin to think about making changes to our Constitution, like the ones we discussed in episode 4, we need to understand more about this rather bizarre reverence Americans have for their Constitution. For that, I’ve asked Daniel Lazar to talk with us about his book, The Frozen Republic.

There are more than a few big changes to our National Charter that are widely considered to be more effective and democratic than the ones we use today. We have talked about many of them already, yet those democratic improvements are essentially being ignored, even rejected by Americans, because Americans are captured by the very political system they are supposed to control. Americans don’t think about changing their constitution, or making a better one, because they blindly believe it is perfect and therefore impossible to improve.

Americans are largely unable to think rationally about the dysfunction of our political system or to express peacefully how it might be changed. We no longer understand how political systems even work, and we are afraid of each other. We no longer even want to control our constitutions of government. We’d rather suffer the intolerable consequences of a system driving us all over the edge than to dare to imagine we could create a better political system than the one we have inherited. It appears our constitution now controls us. We must obey it rather than critique it, and apparently, Americans prefer this kind of bondage to exercising their right to control their systems of government and to protect their liberty from the tyranny of the past.

Daniel Lazare is a journalist and the author of The Frozen Republic (1996), The Velvet Coup (2001), and America’s Undeclared War (2001). He is currently working on a book about the politics of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and he has been a long outspoken critic of the almost religious reverence of our Constitution, and he is here today to explain why.

Daniel, welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in American Podcast, it's great to have you here!