DUCKPOND

SENATE REFORM July 30, 2010

Constitutional change is not under consideration in Australia, but case for change with respect to the US Senate seems clear and persuasive.

One suspects that change will not stop with the Senate, and will extend to the voting system and the process of prescribing district boundaries for the House of Reps. As Noam Chomsky and others remind us, the purpose of the Senate was the give a place for the men (and women) of property, and that purpose seems to have fully been realized. On these grounds it is possible to guibble with the founders of the American Republic but their institutional handiwork has endured in way that, for example, Cromwell and the English Commonwealth did not. Addressing the undemocratic character of the Senate, which Australia imitated if only to strike the deal on Federation bearing in mind wayward colonies like Western Australia, will not address the dominance of the executive branch. The American constitution has a remedy in impeachment for constraining executive power, that does not exist in parliamentary democracies.

Political commentator, E J Dionne, at The Washington Post (via Truthdig) addresses the issue of the case of reform of the US Senate:

Does any other democracy have a powerful legislative branch as undemocratic as the U.S. Senate?

When our republic was created, the population ratio between the largest and smallest state was 13 to 1. Now, it’s 68 to 1. Because of the abuse of the filibuster, 41 senators representing less than 11 percent of the nation’s population can, in principle, block action supported by 59 senators representing more than 89 percent of our population. And you wonder why it’s so hard to get anything done in Washington?

I’m a chronic optimist about America.

Constitutional change is difficult, given entrenched interest groups, general lack of interest in political structures, and the imagination to see that change could be positive. It is doubtful whether small states would support change, even with the obvious regional inequality in representation, as for example between New England and Florida. So I would be inclined to pessimistic, yet the argument “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may well not be able to fly. The historical significance of the Obama presidency may (hopefully) see the end of racial and ethnic exclusion since the Senate, although politeness we should not mention, has been vehicle not only of the rich but of specifically Euro-American heritage.

POSTSCRIPT:

Proportional Representation in Australia, on a State not a population basis, reinforces the power of the party apparatchiks by providing the opportunity to nominate for the leading ballot positions, and at the same time making the office holders accountable to the political machine rather than to the State based electorate. These operators, supported by opinion polls and focus groups, were, it appears, able to change the Prime Minister. The option exists in the Australian Constitution to have regional representation in the Senate. That seems to me a more sensible option, and once established might well lead to a more overall democratic change.Two representative legislature would then be redundant, suggesting they could then be combined into one.