Americans now know who our next President will be, and plans are well underway for the new administration—who will have a part in it and what they hope to achieve. In the meantime, we, the people, have some thinking to do ourselves.
Germany’s Wurzburg University has developed a Democracy Matrix, a tool for measuring the quality of democracies in nearly 200 nations around the world. Nations are classified as Working Democracies (35 in 2020) and Deficient Democracies (36-81). Everyone else (82-176) is some version of hybrid or autocracy.
Suffice it to say, the United States has not done itself proud, placing # 36 at the top of the Deficient Democracy list. It is a poor and embarrassing showing, but at least better than the lowest-ranked nation, Eritrea, a Hard Autocracy. The top 5 democracies in the world are Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Germany, with other European nations, several Asian countries, and a few Caribbean islands rounding out the Working Democracy list.
The state of our United States democracy now and in the future was a hotly debated issue during the Presidential campaign, with ugly words exchanged among candidates, families, and friends, some with painful and long-lasting consequences. There are measures, though, that we can consider and possibly take to protect and improve our democracy.
We must understand and acknowledge that while our Constitution has been the model for other democracies that followed our lead, it is neither infallible nor sacrosanct. It was conceived and written by educated white men in the 18th century who were creating a new form of government that did not address most people, including women and people of color. It is rife with compromises made to reach consensus agreements. The US has adopted only 27 Constitutional amendments in more than 2 centuries, while other more recent and higher ranked democracies view their constitutions as works in progress needing adjustments as time moves forward.
Two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, suggest several structural changes to our government in their book, Tyranny of the Minority. One is to elect our Presidents by popular vote, not through the Electoral College, a compromise structure established to keep less populous states from being overpowered by their more populous neighbors. Another is to establish term limits for members of the US Supreme Court. Very few other nations allow life-time political appointments, and few have decision-makers serving into their 90s. The authors also note that the US Senate, like the Electoral College, provides far more clout to less populated states than to more populated, again a Constitutional compromise more than 250 years ago. For example, our least populous state, Wyoming, has the same number of US Senators as our most populous state, California, giving the almost 600 individual Wyoming citizens far more representation than the almost 39-M individual Californians. The political scientists also note that some democracies have done away with their “upper chambers” altogether,” retaining one chamber with representation by population. Both Denmark and Finland have one legislative chamber.
Such changes would require Constitutional amendments, no small achievement. Amendments to our Constitution require a 2/3s vote by Congress and then approval by 2/3 of the states, within 7 years. In other words, it a long and arduous process. The last Constitutional amendment attempted, the Equal Rights Amendment, passed Congress in 1972 but failed when the state approval clock timed out.
As the dust settles on this contentious and painful election year, we Americans of all political stripes would be wise to seek ways to make our government and our elections more responsive to all citizens of the United States.
It is also worth noting that the Harvard political scientists have another book, also about democracies. It is called How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future.