For years the public has become increasingly disillusioned and cynical about its governmental institutions. In the face of alarming problems-most notably the $400 billion budget deficit-the government seems deadlocked, reduced to partisan posturing and bickering, with the president and Congress blaming each other for failure. And neither party can be held accountable. The public tendency is to blame individual leaders- or politicians as a class-but an insistent and growing number of experienced statesmen and political scientists believe that much of the difficulty can be traced to the governmental structure itself, designed in the eighteenth century and essentially unchanged since then. Is that inherited constitutional system adequate to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, or has the time come for fundamental change? Should we adopt an electoral system that encourages unified control of the presidency, the Senate and the House? Lengthen terms of office? Limit congressional terms? Abolish or modify the electoral college? Introduce a mechanism for calling special elections? Permit legislators to hold executive offices? Redistribute the balance of powers within the governmental system? In this revised edition of his highly acclaimed 1986 volume, James Sundquist reviews the origins and rationale of the constitutional structure and the current debate about whether reform is needed, then raises practical questions about what changes might work best if a consensus should emerge that the national government is too prone to stalemate to meet its responsibilities. Analyzing the main proposals advanced to adapt the Constitution to current conditions, he attempts to separate the workable ideas from the unworkable, the effective from the ineffective, the possibly feasible from the wholly infeasible, and finally arrives at a set of recommendations of his own.

Nations around the world are facing various crises of ineffective government. Basic governmental functions—protecting rights, preventing violence, and promoting material well-being—are compromised, leading to declines in general welfare, in the enjoyment of rights, and even in democracy itself. This innovative collection, featuring analyses by leaders in the fields of constitutional law and politics, highlights the essential role of effective government in sustaining democratic constitutionalism. The book explores “effective government” as a right, principle, duty, and interest, situating questions of governance in debates about negative and positive constitutionalism. In addition to providing new conceptual approaches to the connections between rights and governance, the volume also provides novel insights into government institutions, including courts, legislatures, executives, and administrative bodies, as well as the media and political parties. This is an essential volume for anyone interested in constitutionalism, comparative law, governance, democracy, the rule of law, and rights.

Variously and roundly perceived as gridlocked, incompetent, irresponsible, and corrupt, American government commands less respect and trust today than perhaps at any time in the nation's history. But the dysfunction in government that we like so little, along with the policy disasters it engenders, is in fact a product of that deep and persistent distrust, Stephen M. Griffin contends in Broken Trust, an accessible work of constitutional theory and history with profound implications for our troubled political system. Undertaken with a deep concern about the way our government is performing, Broken Trust makes use of the debate over dysfunctional government to uncover significant flaws in the conventional wisdom as to how the Constitution works. Indeed, although Americans strongly believe that our government is dysfunctional, they are just as firmly convinced that the Constitution still works well. Griffin questions this conviction by examining how recent policy disasters—such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis—are linked to our constitutional system. This leads him to pose the question of whether the government institutions we have inherited from the eighteenth century are poor fits for contemporary times. Griffin argues that understanding the decline of trust in government requires investigating the historical circumstances of the last several decades as well as the constitutional experience of the states. In particular, he examines “hybrid democracy,” the form of constitutionalism prevailing in California and other western states that combines Madisonian-style representative government with direct democracy. Hybrid democracy offers valuable lessons relevant to our contemporary difficulties with dysfunctional government at the national level. These lessons underpin the agenda for reform that Griffin then proposes, emphasizing democratic innovations aimed at producing both more effective government and greater trust in our political institutions. Building on a better understanding of the sources and consequences of government dysfunction, his book holds genuine hope, as well as practical possibilities, for the repair of our broken political and constitutional system.

"Our government is failing us. Can we simply blame polarization, the deregulation of campaign finance, or some other nefarious force? What if the roots go much deeper, to our nation's start? In Relic, the political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe boldly argue that nothing less than the U.S. Constitution is the cause of government dysfunction. The framers came from a simple, small, agrarian society, and set forth a government comprised of separate powers, one of which, Congress, was expected to respond to the parochial concerns of citizens across the land. By design, the national government they created was incapable of taking broad and meaningful action. But a hundred years after the nation's founding, the United States was transformed into a complex, large, and industrial society. The key, they argue, is to expand the powers of the president. Presidents take a longer view of things out of concern for their legacies, and are able to act without hesitation. To back up this controversial remedy, Howell and Moe offer an incisive understanding of the Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the most powerful movements in American history. The Progressives shone a bright light on the mismatch between our constitutional government and the demands of modernity, and they succeeded in changing our government, sidelining Congress and installing a presidentially-led system that was more able to tackle the nation's vast social problems. Howell and Moe argue that we need a second Progressive Movement dedicated to effective government, above all to reforms that promote strong presidential leadership. For it is through the presidency that the American government can address the problems that threaten the very stability of our society"--

Constitutional scholar Elliot Bulmer considers what Britain might learn from Westminster-derived constitutions around the world. Exploring the principles of Westminster Model constitutions and their impact on democracy, human rights and good government, this book builds to a bold re-imagining of the United Kingdom’s future written framework.

In October 1999, some fifteen academic experts and government practitio ners from Germany and North America gathered for two days at the Uni ver sity of Augsburg to discuss the topic of "Constitutional Reform and Consti tutional Jurisprudence in Canada and the United States." The present volume documents the results of that conference, a collaborative effort of the De partment of Political Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the Institute for Canadian Studies, University of Augsburg. In organizing this workshop, we were guided by two basic sets of ideas and assumptions: First, all "established" democracies are regularly confron ted with the need to adjust their constitutional order to changes in their envi ronment lest democratic stability be transformed into rigidity; in many wes tern nations, including Canada and the United States, developments such as the crisis of the Keynesian welfare-state or the emergence of increasingly heterogeneous, postmodern societies have ushered in an era of heightened, yet not always successful constitutional reform activity. Secondly, however, there is no unique path towards, or model of, an "optimal" constitutional order, however defined; rather, constitutional reform processes, their under Iying normative principles and their outcomes are strongly path and context dependent. Therefore, the participants of the workshop and authors of this volume were asked to examine the specific preconditions, context, nature and impact of recent constitutional reform processes in the Uni ted States and Canada.

"The countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean are all self-governing, determining their own futures. But some 40 years after gaining independence from Britain, the question remains whether these countries are truly democratic and whether the parliamentary and electoral systems adopted, are well suited to the Caribbean experience. Meighoo and Jamadar answer these questions in the negative. A true democracy, they argue, is one where the Legislature has the authority and the strength to make the Executive effectively accountable and responsible to it and where the electoral system results in the true practical separation of the Legislature and the Executive. Using Trinidad and Tobago as the model, Democracy and Constitution Reform in Trinidad and Tobago offers an overview of the constitutional reform process in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In these young, postcolonial democracies, where party politics have had a negative impact on the process of democratic reform, the authors review the historical, political and cultural motivations that have spawned the most recent debates on constitutional reform; and more particularly on the proposals for parliamentary and electoral reform. The book concludes with a review of past proposals and recommendations, and puts forward the authors' own suggestions for reform. At a time when most of the Commonwealth Caribbean is undergoing a process of constitutional debate and change, this book makes a valuable contribution to the discussion and provides a basis for the informed citizen, student or pundit to judge the process of reform. "