Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
by akiselev on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @11:16PM
(#33352652)
>* Well, checks and balances in the American constitution were founded on the idea that there would be no "factions" (parties), and so the three branches (legislative, executive, judicial) would balance each other without any single group ever taking over.*
I’m not a constitutional scholar but I take issue with that characterization.
Federalist #10 by James Madison is all about factions, how they are inevitable, and how the system of government should be structured so that their self interests balance out for the good of the nation. Madison wrote the Virginia Plan which proposed the three branches of government and he wrote down exactly what his thinking was at the time. For most of the 18th century the British empire was a single party state ruled by the Whigs which is what they were trying to avoid by explicitly allowing room for many factions.
Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution
by PaulDavisThe1st on Thursday October 27, 2022 @01:06AM
(#33353342)
Jamelle Bouie (NYT) is something of a constitutional scholar (albeit of the popular book based variety) and he would eviscerate your argument. Recent pieces by him in NYT explain specifically why Madison's ideas about factions are not ideas about political parties.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bouie+s...
The modern approach is generally a parliamentary system rather than a presidential system, and multiparty proportional representation (sometimes with multi-member districts) rather than two-party first-past-the-post single member districts. Some places to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
If you want to look at more "advanced" constitional forms, then consociationalism is a good place to start, although much less widely adopted and more controversial as to whether it's progress or not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consociationalism