My new piece in the NYT highlights how institutional design choices, which we come to take for granted as the background features of American democracy, dramatically shape the kind of politics and governance we end up with:
The ability of the American political system to deliver major policies on urgent issues is hampered by features of our institutions that we take for granted and rarely think about. Take the Constitution’s requirement that House members serve for only two-year terms.
Just a few months into a new administration, as the country grapples with issues of economic recovery and renewal, Congress’s actions are being shaped not by the merits of policy alone but also by the looming midterm elections. It’s not just the fall 2022 election; many incumbents are also calculating how best to position themselves to fend off potential primary challenges.
The ability of the American political system to deliver major policies on urgent issues is hampered by features of our institutions that we take for granted and rarely think about. Take the Constitution’s requirement that House members serve for only two-year terms.
Just a few months into a new administration, as the country grapples with issues of economic recovery and renewal, Congress’s actions are being shaped not by the merits of policy alone but also by the looming midterm elections. It’s not just the fall 2022 election; many incumbents are also calculating how best to position themselves to fend off potential primary challenges.
In nearly all other democracies, this is not normal. The two-year House term has profound consequences for how effectively American government can perform — and too many of them are negative….
In nearly all other democracies, parliaments are in power for four to five years. Political scientists view voting as primarily the voters’ retrospective judgment on how well a government has performed. Four to five years provides plausible time for that. But the comparison with U.S. House members is even starker than focusing on the two-year term alone. In most democracies, members of parliaments do not have to compete in primary elections; the parties decide which candidates to put up for office. But since the advent of the primary system in the early 20th century, members of Congress often have to face twoelections every two years.
Moreover, in most democracies, candidates do not have to fund-raise all the time to run; governments typically provide public financing to the political parties. The two-year term, combined with primary elections and the constant need to raise funds individually, generates exceptional turbulence and short-term focus in our politics.
When the Constitution was being drafted, many framers and others strongly pressed the view, as mentioned in Federalist 53, “that where annual elections end, tyranny begins.” At the time, most states had annual elections. Elbridge Gerry insisted that “the people of New England will never give up the point of annual elections.” James Madison urged a three-year term, arguing that annual elections had produced too much “instability” in the states. In the initial vote, the Constitutional Convention approved a three-year term, but with four states objecting, the convention eventually compromised on two years. The Federalist Papersthen had to devote a good deal of energy fending off the demand for annual elections.
If you think American politics is not chaotic enough, imagine if the Constitution had adopted annual House elections….
In discussions of the Constitution’s structural elements that we might well not adopt today, the two-year term for the House is rarely noticed. (Attention is usually focused on the Electoral College, the Senate or life tenure for federal judges.)
Yet as other democracies demonstrate, there is nothing inherently democratic about a two-year term. We do not recognize how distorting it is that soon after a president is elected, our politics are upended by the political calculations and maneuvering required by always looming midterm elections and their primaries.