The Dream of a Truly American Democracy

Transcript of episode 1: 

Hello and welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast where it is my job to discuss democratic institutions.

What if I told you that one simple change in the democratic institutions of the United States could solve most of America’s political problems? What if I told you that one institutional change that doesn’t even require a change of the constitution could create a truly American democracy? Would you believe me?

Let’s call it the political American dream. A democracy in which everyone’s voice would be heard and all political actors could thrive. A democracy that would truly represent the American population.

But what if I told you also that this may never happen, unfortunately, because the framers of the American constitution were skeptical of giving too much power to the common people? Because they didn’t give the people any veto power? So with the Democrats and Republicans in power, they are the gatekeepers of democratic reform, they decide whether the people will have more political power in the future.

The United States is often called the greatest democracy in the world. Maybe it’s the greatest, but it’s definitely not the most democratic democracy. In this episode I will explain what the fundamental problems in the US democracy are, and what I perceive as THE most pressing problem that towers over all other problems in the US democracy. And how can we explain the complete dissatisfaction of many people on the left and the right with decisions and legislation worked out in Washington by a political elite.

This complete dissatisfaction culminating in violence, and fundamentally questioning democracy by both the right and left. The right-wing Republicans now believe in authoritarian government, while the left-wing Democrats want a socialist country — we had this same pattern one hundred years ago in Europe as well. Furthermore, the BLM movement has shown that the US democracy still is not working for people of color. All of this can be primarily explained by one democratic institution – arguably the most important institution in representative democracies: the electoral law that constitutes the parliament.

I will compare the US and Swiss democratic institutions, and tell the story of how Switzerland went from a divided society with deep religious and social cleavages to a vibrant working democracy through the introduction of an open-list proportional representation electoral law.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the first episode in my new podcast the Rules of the Game, where it is my job to discuss, analyze and compare democratic institutions from around the world.

I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

I believe that a public discussion of democratic institutions is important and that people should take part in that discussion. I have decided to dedicate my time to contribute to that debate with my knowledge and my perspective. I strongly believe in the wisdom of the people and the power of knowledge. People should be more aware of the political institutions that govern their lives.

Please subscribe to this podcast on any podcast platform and you’ll always get the latest episode. You can find me on Twitter at @skyburz and you can find show notes with links to all material discussed on my website: rulesofthegame.blog

You know that a democracy is not in good shape when people start talking about a possible civil war and martial law. That is exactly what has happened in the United States of America. The US democracy has been downgraded to an anocracy by Polity V, the most well known measurement of democracies, after the mob stormed the capitol two weeks ago.

The scenes were horrendous around the Capitol, there was a huge discussion whether we should call it a terrorist attack, a riot, or a failed coup. It was an insurrection after all, committed mainly by white supremacists and other right-wing group with detailed knowledge of the layout of the capitol and equipped with pipe bombs.

It has become clear that the leaders of the mob had clear intentions to threaten fundamental constitutional processes – the counting of the electors’ votes, and possibly to harm or even kill members of the House, the Senate or even their Vice-President Pence. Thus it could have become much worse.

It was an attack on democracy itself, one of the most important democracies in the World. I have been deeply worried from the scenes. The scenes were the culmination of years’ long violent rhetoric, questioning of fundamental principles of democracy and the spreading of false information about the election results. I was appalled, shocked and horrified by the scenes. I never thought that this would actually be possible in the US. And also I was deeply saddened.

Furthermore I was questioning, what exactly was driving these peoples’ aggression and hate? How could they feel so much hate to attack their own symbol of freedom and justice? What happened that they have stopped believing in that symbol and institution of democracy and their freedom? Their own liberties, or have they never actually believed in democracy?

President Trump and many Republican leaders are to take most of the blame as they have created the lies and misled their supporters to believe that they actually could overturn the election. President Trump was rightfully impeached by bipartisan support. There is no doubt that the article of impeachment was included in the constitution by the framers for exactly this case. And all who followed his orders and committed crimes have to be prosecuted to uphold the rule of law.

I want to take a step back now and talk about the more fundamental problems of the American democracy. Obviously, this is an outsiders’ perspective, so I might not see some of the nuances.

It is worrying that a large part of the Republican party is still questioning the results of the presidential election – despite the overwhelming rebuke of any claims by courts around the country. The judgements against voter fraud stand at 64 to 1. But still a large part of Republicans believe that the vote was stolen. So they don’t only question the electoral institutions, but they also fundamentally question the legal branch of government. This leads to a bigger problem: that large parts of the American people question the fairness and legitimacy of the American democracy.

On the political right, the Republican party has to a large extent become a white working class party due to realignment of political preferences. These people don’t feel part of the elite, but are deeply resentful of the political elite in Washington. The realignment of political preferences is well explained in Lee Drutman’s book “The two-party Doom loop”.

People on the right feel their status in society is declining and that the lifestyle and privileges they have taken for granted are in jeopardy. Ezra Klein’s book “Why we are polarized” makes the same point. He writes: the experience of losing status — and being told your loss of status is part of society’s march to justice — is itself radicalizing.”

So the fundamental worry is that the Democrats, due to demographic change through immigration, will soon have the absolute majority in America and will impose their liberal and socialist values upon them and make them pay for it with high tax rates. It’s an existential threat and would signify the end of their great American libertarian country.

Essentially, they have to pay too much taxes for something they don’t want and don’t feel represented by, the system will be rigged against them for the eternal future. So they have to win this end game.

Furthermore, they are also deeply resentful of the swamp in Washington that is benefitting from lobbying. The swamp resembling the lobbyists, corporate corruption, but also the huge administration in Washington, what they call the deep state.

Now it is not only people on the right that question the workings of the American democracy, it is also people on the left that fundamentally question whether the American democracy serves them at all.

On the left the people, the progressive branch of the Democratic party feels that social welfare is way too weak and that social justice has never been achieved really. The state is rigged against them. The police is corrupt and racist. The political class in Washington is not able to solve the most pressing issues of the country – letting inequality rise, neglecting people, and only catering to the rich corporate elite. Special interest groups and money runs the show. Indeed, the rich get lots of government handouts – just like the poor. See Washington Post article, that I will link to in the show notes.

So there are indeed many similarities between the right and the left, especially when it comes to their attitudes towards Washington. Both sides think that the political elite in Washington is catering to their own needs, increasing inequality and not playing by fair rules. The rich get richer, while large parts of the population suffer. Also corporate money is buying the members of Congress. Rich families do the nominating of Congress members when they are to be elected. This is what Lawrence Lessig describes in a very cool TedTalk, I would highly recommend it. He said that there is corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That is only 0.5% of the American population are making the nominations of candidates. That’s his argument. So in 2012, 0.000042% – that is 132 Americans – gave 60% of the Super PAC money. Super-PACs are the Political Action Committees that collect large parts of the donations.

He quotes William Tweed, an American politician in the 19th century who said: “I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”

Furthermore, corporations now spend about $2.6billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures — more than the $2 billion that is spent to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s. This is what Lee Drutman writes in an article titled How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy. I will link to it in the show notes as well.

Now I argue that there is one important reason for many of these imbalances of the American democracy: The US electoral rules are not able to create a fair representation of the American people. The winner-take-all plurality single member districts are not allowing for a fair representation and the entry of new political parties to challenge the old ones.

This example may illustrate the problem. Imagine 100 electoral districts for 100 seats in the House of Representatives. In each district party A wins 51% of the vote, and Party B wins 49% of the vote. Then, in single-member districts, you’ll end up with a parliament that only represents party A, but not party B. All 100 hundred seats would go to party A, because they win in every electoral district by a small margin. Now this is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point. Now imagine we would use proportional representation with one electoral district and the seats allocated by the vote share for each party. Then we would end up with 51 seats for party A and 49 seats for party B. So a much fairer representation. This illustrates how skewed the allocation of seats in a first-past-the-post system can be. I’ll link to some more resources if you’d like check out the differences between a majoritarian and a proportional electoral system.

American politics seems to have developed into a zero-sum-game by now, or at least that’s what people perceive. Republicans think that they could lose that zero-sum game for ever if Democrats get the upper hand in some crucial states, like Texas, especially in presidential elections.

Voters on both sides of the political divide are extremely worried that the other side will win and have unchecked power to implement their alarming agenda. The next election will always be the most decisive. Losing is no option anymore – at least that’s the message that the politicians try to convey. And in the case of Trump, losing will be denied and the result attacked in court. That’s at least what we have seen in the last few weeks.

There are also other important effects of the first-past-the-post electoral law that has created the two-party system. Now I am not saying these consequences that I will outline would not exist with a different electoral law, but a more dynamic and competitive party landscape would create an environment to find solutions and not a total gridlock.

The political polarization between the two parties has been paralyzing Congress. The capacities of Congress to produce legislation has greatly diminished. There is little continuity in staff around Congress members. And this has fundamental consequences for the legislative process. First, lots of tasks and production of legislation is left to lobbyists. Since members of Congress are overwhelmed with raising money, and the amount of material they should work on, they are happy to delegate tasks to lobbyists. So corporate money doesn’t only have a huge influence on the selection of candidates. It also has a huge influence on legislation. The two-party system has created a paradise for lobbyists.

Second, lots of legislative work is also left to the administration of the executive branch of government, which hands a lot of political power to technocrats. Lots of legislation leaves it up to the administration to work out the details. This again allows interest groups and lobbyists to have greater influence, because they can work with the technocrats in the government.

To quote this problem, Supreme Court Justice Alito in 2017 said: “the vast majority of federal law is… made in a way that is never mentioned in the Constitution. It is promulgated by unelected executive branch officials in the form of federal regulations. … The result has been a massive shift of lawmaking from the elected representatives of the people to unelected bureaucrats.”

Furthermore, also presidents in the US are more and more ruling by executive orders. Finally, lots of policy making decisions are left to the courts – since lawmakers are not able to work out the details in laws, because Congress rarely finds solutions that both parties support, it is left to the courts to make policy decisions in many cases. The courts thus have become way more powerful, but also partisan. All these aspects of the American political system are described in John Matsusaka’s book “Let the people rule” published in 2020. I will also link to it in the show notes.

To summarize for now, we can say that the House of Representatives is not very representative of the people due to electoral system used. The nomination is done by a small group of wealthy donors. Furthermore, electoral districts are also highly gerrymandered for parties to optimize seats, a huge problem that I haven’t even mentioned yet. These electoral districts are drawn by partisan committees. I will link to an article on gerrymandering in the show notes. Many people do not think that the government is responsive to their needs. The two parties are dominating the political landscape. There is no room for other parties and no possibility to enter national politics. The duopoly in American politics created by the FPTP electoral system defies any sound political competition. Entry of parties is nearly impossible. Congress is so polarized that Congress members rarely reach across the aisle to work and propose legislation. The legislative process has broken down. The technocrats in Washington have therefore taken over lots of legislative functions. The executive has become very powerful because of the gridlock in Congress, and also the courts have taken over policy decision making.

Now it happens to be the case that Switzerland was in a similar situation just about one hundred years ago. Switzerland’s constitution was greatly inspired by the American constitution: for example, the bicameral system with Senate and House of Representatives has many similarities with the US system. Switzerland also had a federal structure with three tiers of government, hence the division of power is comparable.

Swiss politics was dominated by a rich political and corporate elite that had lots of influence over legislation and legislatures. Especially the working class, but also the party of the farmers and small businesses was underrepresented due to the majoritarian electoral system. There was also a great divide between the urban and rural areas of Switzerland. The last civil war ended in 1847, which was fought between the conservative Catholic cantons, our states, that wanted to separate from the Swiss confederation due to religious cleavages. It was a secessionist war between the rural Catholic areas and the more progressive Protestant urban cantons.

Politics was dominated by one large party, the Radical Democratic Party that most of all represented the corporate elite that had close links to the government. The Radical Democratic Party dominated the executive government for a very long time, pretty much since the first modern constitution was written in 1848 until around 1920, when Switzerland introduced a new electoral system. You could call this great influence of the party and its links to business a swamp.

Political competition was limited, because the electoral system favored the large parties in the middle of the political spectrum. Entry for smaller parties was nearly impossible. Electoral districts were also subject to gerrymandering. The party in power tried to gain seats by redrawing the electoral district boundaries. Even though Switzerland had multi-member electoral districts, the requirement of an absolute majority to get elected strongly favored the already strong moderate parties. The lack of sound political competition in many electoral districts created lots of conflicts between political factions.

The country was hugely polarized between the interests of the left-wing Social Democratic Party that was driven by the Unions, and the more libertarian Radical Democratic Party that was representing the corporate interests.

In 1918 there was the Swiss general strike, when 250’000 union members and working class people took to the streets to demand, among other things, a limit on hours worked per week and a national insurance mechanism for financially securing retirement and a pension in case of disabilities. Many Swiss cities had to be protected by the military and Swiss government builded was guarded against demonstrators. Two of the main demands were also: the election of the House of Representatives (National Council) via a proportional representation and the women’s suffrage. So two main demands were aimed at making the Swiss political system more inclusive and more representative. The change of the electoral system would allow new parties to enter the political game.

During the demonstrations, three people were killed by the army that was deployed to end the strike. The middle class was afraid of a revolution. The country was also so divided by the urban, more liberal interests against the rural conservative cantons.

How did Switzerland resolve the tensions? The Swiss people voted in 1918 to implement electoral reform and to elect the 189 members of the National Council by an open-list proportional electoral system. The cantons (states) became multi-member electoral districts that were much larger than the previous electoral districts.

Three initiatives were necessary for the Swiss people to get proportional representation. Popular initiatives submitted and voted on in 1900, 1910, and 1918. The last popular vote finally was approved by the male population and brought the long awaited proportional electoral law.

On October 26, 1919, Switzerland for the first time elected its members of the House of Representatives, called the National council, by the new electoral system of proportional representation – an open-list PR system. Turnout was at an all time high of over 80% of the electorate.

The radical democratic party was still the strongest party in parliament, but it lost 11% of the vote share, and had to give up 43 seats. It also lost for the first time the absolute majority in the lower house. The leftist Social Democratic Party won an additional 19 seats, and thus further improved the representation of the labor movement. And the farmers and small business right-wing party, today’s People’s Party, won an astonishing 27 seats, up from only 3 seats. The conservative Christian Democratic People’s Party, which was already strong in the rural areas, kept about the same number of seats. The Swiss political landscape changed tremendously through the implementation of an open-list PR system. The new competition led to more topic driven politics and the parties had from now on to work together to implement legislation. The main parties are still the same to this day, but they are much more challenged by smaller emerging parties that attract young people to create better policy solutions.

Of course the cases of the USA in 2020 and Switzerland in 1920 are very different. But it’s good to know the story of Swiss electoral reform. There is a lot to learn from it. Swiss gerrymandering never reached the crazy patterns that we see in the US. But it was completely abolished with the reform. The discussion around gerrymandering faded as soon as the discussion around proportional representation emerged. People realized that only a radical reform of the electoral law could restore a healthy political landscape and balance between political interests and regions. The dominance of large political factions, and the absolute majority of the Free Democratic Party and its predecessor “The Radicals”, that occupied the government for over 70 years was broken, and replaced by a more balanced representation and sound political competition. Also the problem of uncompetitive districts became obsolete suddenly.

So what can we conclude from this comparison? The electoral law has tremendous effects on representation and the political dynamics. Powerful political factions may hinder progress and reform, if they prevent entry of new parties and try to fend off challengers to their valuable political power. Politicians are very unlikely to give up power. The Swiss parliament actually opposed all three popular initiatives to change the electoral law. Thus, without the possibility of the Swiss population to veto the national government, Switzerland might still be stuck with the less representative system, and a very angry crowd.

Politicians rarely change the political system on which they were elected, unless outside pressure becomes too high, as
for example in many European countries in the beginning of the 20th century, that were worried that communist parties would become too powerful and take over the political system. So they introduced electoral reform to achieve a better balance and prevented large swings between left wing and right wing politics. So in this case giving up political power was necessary to safeguard the European democracies from either right-wing or left-wing authoritarian regimes. Obviously, introducing proportional representation has not prevented all countries from sliding down the authoritarian slope, as for example the Weimar Republic has shown. But it may well have done so in many other cases. Finally, Switzerland through the electoral reform also kind of drained the swamp, because the power play of the political and corporate elite who had very close links was broken and challenged by new entries of political parties that obviously pinpointed to corruption and legislation that would favor this political elite.

So what is my dream for a truly American democracy? Can American democracy be as colorful, as diverse, as productive, or as creative as the American people? It seems only blue and red is a bit boring, only Democrats and Republicans? A reform of the electoral system to make the House of Representatives more representative of the American people would change the US political landscape and make it truly American: competitive, diverse, inclusive.

My preferred electoral system would be an open-list proportional representation, where people could choose from a party list, but make adjustments to candidates they prefer. An open-list PR electoral law would also allow smaller political groups to have a seat in Congress. Obviously I am biased here, because Switzerland uses that system.

The more proportional the electoral system the more dynamic the political landscape of the US democracy will be. A little change could thus create a whole new political dynamic. Such a system could be implemented without even amending the constitution. In the current tense and polarized situation, it is in the interest of both parties to reduce the strong swings between right and left, that make lawmaking extremely difficult. An even stronger right wing faction could become and existential threat for the American democracy in the current system, but would not be a threat in a more proportional system.

As I said, it is unlikely for the parties in power to give up power. But in the interest of safeguarding the American democracy, it would be a very wise move indeed. The framers of the American constitution were afraid of strong political factions, so they tried to divide power where possible and included checks and balances. They did not anticipate that the first-past-the-post single member districts would lead to the two incredibly dominant factions we have in the US today. A simple electoral reform would heal the wounds in the American democracy and make it more inclusive and balanced. I am sure the framers would have agreed.

Now I have left out many details due to time constraints. For example I haven’t talked about the size of electoral districts much that have a big influence on proportionality. There is currently a lively debate going on in the US around electoral reform. I’d definitely recommend the book by Lee Drutman “The Two party doom loop” in which he proposes to introduce Ranked Choice Voting in multi-member electoral districts. Currently I think ranked-choice voting is the favorite among electoral reformers in the US and you find more resources on the website New America.

Researchers who are in support of an open-list PR reform are Jack Santucci and Mathew Shugart who have written blog posts that I will link to in the show notes. Also of course, electoral reform would have consequences for the Senate and presidential elections. I haven’t talked about that at all. I leave that to another podcast.

Thanks for tuning-in to this first episode of the Rules of the Game podcast. If you have feedback, criticism, or anything else you’d like to let me know, please get in touch through the website, or Twitter. My Twitter handle is @skyburz and @rulesgamepod [not active anymore]. And please subscribe to my podcast on your preferred podcast platform, and leave a review.

You find all links to papers and books and the entire script on the podcast website: rulesofthegame.blog.