I can’t count the number of book reviews I’ve read of works advocating constitutional and political reform which conclude along these lines: “the author’s suggested remedies are interesting, but unlikely to be enacted.” Well, that’s a downer! In a way, one of my objectives in writing Broken Trust was to deliberately get under the skin of people who write such reviews. I wanted to approach the issue of fundamental constitutional reform from these angles: how would you motivate people toward reform in a country with an old and revered Constitution? How could we make the possibility of reform more persuasive and imaginable? What sort of reforms should we be interested in, especially if we think the political system is clotted and unlikely to change? And, as implied by the title, I put the decline of trust in government at the center of these discussions.
I look forward to discussing Steve’s provocative book at an APSA panel on constitutional reform and dysfunction.