Would you be okay with U.S. being a parliamentary system?

[progressive85]

Let's say that there was a unicameral house of representatives - much larger than 435 - maybe something like 701.  And instead of voting for state electors, you voted for the party and your local MP.  The Parliament (House) is basically where all power is found and decisions are made.  Top party MPs make up the Prime Minister's Cabinet, replacing the Secretaries we have in the US.  Prime Minister comes from a district (constituency), and is the leader of the country (and also their party).

How would you like this system, and would we have had the same leaders (Bushes, Clintons, Obama, Trump, Biden)?  Or would we have had Prime Ministers Gingrich, Hastert (god help us), Pelosi, Boehner, Ryan, and Pelosi?

[Damocles]

Yes, this would be a good thing. A parliamentary system with proportional representation is much more amenable to governing a vast, multiracial, democratic country, than the current presidential system. Coalition government by multiple strong parties, with unified platforms, would avoid the cantankerousness of the current intra-party disputes.

[Aurelius]

Absolutely not. Horrible, horrible, horrible idea. Will elaborate more later, but separation of powers and voters knowing what they are voting for are key reasons, among others.

[Damocles]

Absolutely not. Horrible, horrible, horrible idea. Will elaborate more later, but separation of powers and voters knowing what they are voting for are key reasons, among others.

Legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government exist in an ordinal relationship, not a coequal one. “What laws should we have?” is the first question, followed by “Who should enforce them?”, and then by “Were the enforcement actions fair?”. You cannot have competing fonts of legitimacy regarding what the law ought to be. Competing popular mandates and divisive opinions about the legitimacy of such acts are a primary ingredient for a civil war.

For what it’s worth, the current political system doesn’t do much to solve the adverse selection problem in political economy. The Democratic Party, for instance, includes everyone from AOC and Omar, to Manchin and Sinema. These people really should be in separate parties, but the current political system needlessly cludges them together.

[Continential]

I'd prefer a semi-presidential system, but I prefer a parliamentary system over the status quo.

[Del Tachi]

A semi-presidential system with a directly elected Head of State would be okay, but the status-quo is 100x preferable to going to a full Westminster-type system.

Parliamentary systems have huge democratic deficits imposed by how their rigid political parties and hierarchical systems limit opportunities for grassroots participation and stifle debate.  America has a more robust culture of political participation because party bosses are weak and politicians more responsive to voters.  The politics of countries like Canada, Australia, the UK, etc. are extremely elite- and party-driven in a way that has made civil government in those countries ineffectual, unambitious, self-assured and overly comfortable. 

[TML]

I would only accept this system if First-Past-the-Post were abolished along with it. Canada hasn't abolished FPTP yet, and that is one of the major contributing factors to its system not working as well as it should in theory (the existence of FPTP there has resulted in several elections where the party who won the popular vote overall did not win the most number of seats in Parliament and thus was not able to be the governing party).

[parochial boy]

I never really get the desire to position a semi-presidential system as some kind of "compromise" solution. France is the semi-presidential system par excellence and this in practice leads to the French president being the individually most powerful political figure in any electoral democracy as he defaults to having a legisliative majority and the hyperpersonlisation of the office means weaker parties default around individual personal projects.

More to the point, it is no coincidence that the two western democracies experience the biggest socio-political crises and the worst loss of trust in the political authorities at the moment are the US and France. As in, the two principal presidential regimes. A President has all the flaws of FPTP wrapped up to the next level, not just a hyperpersonalisation; but also that the election of one individual on a winner takes all basis leads to the default exclusion of political opponents from the decision making process with the consequential anger and disillusion of those excluded from having an effective political representation.

As for the fear the parliamentary systems lead to a concentration of power. Well there is no need for a unicameral system, and no necessary need for the executive to drive the parliamentary agenda.

[Damocles]

I never really get the desire to position a semi-presidential system as some kind of "compromise" solution. France is the semi-presidential system par excellence and this in practice leads to the French president being the individually most powerful political figure in any electoral democracy as he defaults to having a legisliative majority and the hyperpersonlisation of the office means weaker parties default around individual personal projects.

More to the point, it is no coincidence that the two western democracies experience the biggest socio-political crises and the worst loss of trust in the political authorities at the moment are the US and France. As in, the two principal presidential regimes. A President has all the flaws of FPTP wrapped up to the next level, not just a hyperpersonalisation; but also that the election of one individual on a winner takes all basis leads to the default exclusion of political opponents from the decision making process with the consequential anger and disillusion of those excluded from having an effective political representation.

As for the fear the parliamentary systems lead to a concentration of power. Well there is no need for a unicameral system, and no necessary need for the executive to drive the parliamentary agenda.

Nevermind the fact that the very word "President" in English comes from the Latin root word "praesidere", meaning "to act as head or chief." Nowhere in that title is it anything similar to the Latin word "dictator", meaning "a person with absolute power."

Those advocating for a strong President, with a competing popular mandate to their own legislature, must honestly look in the mirror and ask themselves what they really want. Do they want someone to personify the United States in its affairs and dealings with foreign heads of state, or do they want a cudgel of state power that they can use to oppress and repress their neighbors?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Yes, we should of replaced it, Grant wanted to replace the Congress with a Parliament, the Prime Minister could live in WH and instead of a Veep the Prime Minister is in Congress and instead of the Senate we have a Congress but D's never was for that even during Grants time because Grant wanted three terms and the current system allows for two

There won't be any Filibuster to block anything

[progressive85]

Absolutely not. Horrible, horrible, horrible idea. Will elaborate more later, but separation of powers and voters knowing what they are voting for are key reasons, among others.

interested to hear your elaboration - do you personally believe that the country has evolved into something where we have much stronger party allegiance and thus not voting like older generations did (for the candidate, not the party)?  I just feel that America in the 50s was fine with the presidential system and the Congress, but that was eons ago and we've become so bitterly partisan that the alignment between the presidential vote and your vote for congressperson is so strong.

[VPH]

Not federally, but I would love to see it on the state level somewhere. Theoretically, nothing in the Constitution stops them from doing so.

[Person Man]

I think separation of powers is good but not FPTP.

[Sir Mohamed]

I would favor a parliamentary system with 4-5 parties and proportional representation. I think that would help to end gridlock and stalemate and be better to represent a diverse country of over 330 million people.

[Big Abraham]

Imagine the American version of PMQs.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I would favor a parliamentary system with 4-5 parties and proportional representation. I think that would help to end gridlock and stalemate and be better to represent a diverse country of over 330 million people.

Most countries with PR typically end up with a de facto two-party system, just with the two parties being coalitions instead of parties in the American sense, and those that don't often end up with a sort of state of permanent dysfunction or weirdos holding the balance of power. The US would definitely not be any different, you'd just see the Democratic and Republican parties fracture. There would be other benefits, such as the enfranchisement of people who live in strong areas for the other party, and being able to choose what faction of the party you want to support outside of a primary, and probably would on a whole be better, but it's silly to pretend that it would result in a true multi-party system, or that multi-party systems are particularly democratically healthy for that matter anyway. Look at Greece, Israel or various Eastern European countries for examples of how multi-party systems don't mean more of a healthy democratic system.

[Cokeland Saxton]

I would prefer it. As long as we got rid of FPTP, having more parties would better represent such a large and diverse country. Two parties is no longer enough, especially with how partisan they have become.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I would prefer it. As long as we got rid of FPTP, having more parties would better represent such a large and diverse country. Two parties is no longer enough, especially with how partisan they have become.

Like a lot of posts in this thread, two different things are being conflated. A Parliamentary system does not mean a multi-party system or lack of FPTP, as both Canada and the UK use FPTP as do some Commonwealth countries that have completely two party systems too (like in the Caribbean) and PR doesn't necessarily mean a Parliamentary system, for example Mexico has a system based on the US but uses PR to some level for Congress elections.

[Samof94]

Imagine the American version of PMQs.

That would be interesting to watch.

[Vice President Christian Man]

I'd be open to the idea depending on how it's legislated but the Swiss model for governance would be better than the UK or Canadian model.

[Blue3]

I would prefer to start with the States adopting a unicameral parliamentary model.

And I like the idea of the head of government still being confirmed by the people in a referendum... that the parliament/legislature selects a person to lead the government, but the people then still have to go out to vote to confirm that person with  50%+1 of the general population vote.