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

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Maxwell L. Stearns

Parliamentary America

Name: Parliamentary America
Price: 82.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781421448336

The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy

Maxwell L. Stearns

$82.99

Hardback

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English

Johns Hopkins University Press
05 March 2024

Politics & government; Political science & theory; Public administration

Can a parliamentary democracy end America's constitutional crisis?

Winner of the IPPY Book Award for Current Events I: Political, Economic, and Foreign Affairs

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 proposals: 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.

By: Maxwell L. Stearns
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 31mm
Weight: 658g
ISBN: 9781421448336
ISBN 10: 1421448335
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 05 March 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Maxwell L. Stearns (BALTIMORE, MD) is the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He has authored dozens of articles and several books on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the economic analysis of law.

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

[Stearns] proposes three specific amendments to the US Constitution, complete with the text of the amendments themselves and detailed explanations of how they operate. Yet if all Stearns sought was just to make a proposal, he needn't have written a book in the first place. Instead, Stearns builds up his own interpretative framework, grounded in an analysis of American social, political, and media history, as well as comparative political science....A valuable contribution. —Liberal Currents