[nicklaf]

An overgrown masters level project, eh? You could probably say the same thing about the founding of the United States!

"The US constitution is like an overgrown enlightenment dissertation. The founding fathers did a good job at growing the United States, and this is a great achievement! It requires certain personal traits not everyone has. But at a technical level, they made many beginner's mistakes when drafting the constitution, which the country tried to fix later, but not always successfully."

:-P

[gdy]

It may come to you as a surprise, but for an outside observer, who hasn't been indoctrinated at school by the religion of American exceptionalism, the US might not be a very good example. Think of American military-industrial complex that apparently defines the country's foreign policy.

[nicklaf]

My analogy was meant to cut both ways, and serves as much as a criticism of the US constitution as it does a compliment!

You'd certainly be wrong to assume that Americans are all in favor of our foreign policy, to say the least. Aside from that, some of the downsides to the US constitution that inspired my comment include the way the founding fathers totally failed to anticipate that the nation would be completely polarized by a two party system, and that this polarization would happen along geographic lines.

Admittedly, this compromise whereby rural states with lower populations enjoy disproportionate political representation is baked into the constitution being agreed to in the first place (the 3/5ths compromise being relevant here as well). As we've moved to more direct democracy, with things like the electoral college being bound to the (local) popular vote and the direct election of senators, the original intentions of having a federation of mostly autonomous states becomes more and more anachronistic, while still fueling an increasingly polarized electorate that pits high-tax revenue and high population centers like SF and NY against low-tax revenue and low population centers that make up most of the country.

The United States is large geographic region with a heterogeneous economy. I don't know if a parliamentary form of government would have served this kind of country well, but certainly most friends from abroad who have spoken to me on the subject have implied that proportional representation is far more sensible than FPTP voting, and that parliamentary forms of government avoid the gridlock and polarization that our de facto two-party system engenders.

[a-nikolaev]

Maybe.