[zywoo]

Yes. Building on the separation of powers, I hypothesize that democracy’s legitimacy rests on three sources: a constitutional state, a ceremonial sovereign, and the popular referendum. These three must be tightly coupled in order to achieve the greatest stability of democracy.

But the reasoning does not stop there. The most important additional constraint is that these three sources of legitimacy must never be coupled with the lower triad of separation of powers at the federal level. If they are, the result is destructive: for example, a monarch deciding executive affairs turns into dictatorship, while referendums deciding legislative matters become tyranny of the majority—the clearest case being Britain’s 51% vs. 49% Brexit vote. Only when the upper and lower dimensions remain uncoupled does democracy become highly resilient.

I believe Britain has not done well in resisting this vertical coupling, while the United States has yet to fully develop the concept of a ceremonial sovereign. What I am sketching is a somewhat complex six-dimensional model of democratic tension. If it takes shape, it might provide an optimal solution to democracy, building on Lijphart’s two-dimensional model—but I have not yet reached a full conclusion.

At present I am writing a comparative study of constitutional monarchy in Britain and Japan. I am deeply grateful for your help and inspiration. Recently I have been studying everything from Britain’s last royal veto in 1708, to modern European referendums, to the unique features of Japan’s constitutional text. This is time-consuming work, but thanks to AI, my efficiency has already improved greatly.

[smcin]

I don't follow your terminology or your reasoning.

What you want to call "The Symbolic Sovereign" boils down to a (reasonably) independent judiciary/Supreme Court/High Court + (optionally) a constitutional monarch or ceremonial president, which the US does not have as a separate office (that gap gets filled by other nonprofits, watchdogs, civic bodies, activists like Leonard Leo, media organizations, churches, commentators like Jon Stewart, interest groups, lobbyists, authors). Couldn't we just call that "rule of law + an independent civil society + media"?

But the US Supreme Court is(/used to be) credible not because it rarely took action, but because justices and their rulings (and the appointment process) were non-partisan. Pre-Citizens United (2010), anyway.

Post-2013 the US now has unlimited untraceable dark money in politics, amplified by social media to inject influence into the political process. I think that renders it utterly irrelevant now whether a country has a popular referendum process (or else uses the executive or legislature to change things). Clearly this leaked into other countries. At least a-decade-and-a-half ago.

If you have enough money you can now pervert/coopt any of these. The details are irrelevant (unless you're doing a post-mortem). Scott Galloway keeps warning about increasing inequality of wealth in US politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E

You don't want to talk about social media + money replacing discourse, post-2010. I think that intentional omission alone invalidates everything else in your analysis. At least tell me why you disagree.

Pointing out the Brexit vote was only 51-49 doesn't matter; with more spending it could have been made 60-40 but then the electorate might have smelled the rat that's been there for smelling for a long time. Why have 40+ years of UK referendum process not resulted in any referendum on anything constructive, e.g. renationalizing UK water, electricity and railways? How has that not happened, if the UK is a functioning democracy?

[zywoo]

I agree with you that since the 2010s, money and social media have profoundly distorted the democratic process. In fact, that distortion is one of the reasons I began thinking about how legitimacy can be safeguarded. If information channels themselves are manipulated, then the institutional design must provide stronger redundancy and anchoring.

But where we differ is on the role of referendums. I do not see referendums as inherently democratic; their scope must be strictly limited. Using referendums to decide day-to-day policy (Brexit being the obvious case) is dangerous, because it allows short-term passion and financial influence to reshape a country’s direction. By contrast, referendums that are narrowly restricted to constitutional amendments carry a different weight and legitimacy.

This is why I emphasize that the “upper triad” (constitutional state, symbolic sovereign, and referendum) must remain separate from the “lower triad” (executive, legislature, judiciary). When they couple vertically, the results are destructive: a monarch deciding executive affairs becomes dictatorship, while referendums deciding legislative matters become tyranny of the majority. Only when the two dimensions are kept apart does democracy gain true resilience.

As for the United States: yes, the Supreme Court has historically played a quasi-sovereign role. But unlike the common view, I would argue its credibility has come from greater restraint—speaking only on the most fundamental constitutional questions, not by becoming more entangled in daily legislative and administrative disputes. The increased politicization since Citizens United shows how quickly resilience erodes once the symbolic anchor is dragged into ordinary partisan combat.

Civil society and media absolutely matter. But they are always active participants in daily contestation. What my model requires is at least one symbolic institution that stands above politics—its authority latent, not constant. That distinction is crucial for long-term stability.

The same reasoning applies to political figures. Even someone like Trump should certainly be allowed to explore different executive strategies. But the system must never allow him—or anyone else—to undermine state sovereignty, trigger populist plebiscites on ordinary policy, or erode the separation of powers. Flexibility in policy and rupture in constitutional order must remain categorically distinct.

I do not deny the corrosive influence of money and media platforms. On the contrary, that is my starting point. My point is simply this: because we cannot fully control these forces, democracy must be designed with either sufficient redundancy, or strong institutional anchors—and ideally both—while still allowing individuals in society to voice diverse perspectives. Without such architecture, democracies that look stable in calm times will appear dangerously fragile when the storm comes.

And for ordinary citizens, if dark money and social media manipulation become a systemic cancer, resilience still exists in layers. At the shallowest level, you can “vote with your feet” by moving to a clearer state environment. Deeper, you can keep appealing to the Supreme Court as a constitutional guardian. At the state level, you still defend your values with one person one vote. And at the very last resort, the people themselves remain the ultimate guarantor that democracy cannot be permanently hijacked.

[smcin]

This is deckchairs on the Titanic. "long-term stability"? US federal debt is now 122% of GDP and rising; from only 79% in 2019. [0] In a few years we get to the levels at which countries either slide into war or sovereign default. I cited you Scott Galloway saying the current US political process is simply generational theft by the elderly from the young. [1] Even just look at the discrepancy in % home ownership level (by age) and you see how unsustainable it is.

Sure in principle, a (US or UK) referendum process would have to be safeguarded, if all the other legs of healthy democracy were still in place, and the (US) judiciary hadn't already in 2010 removed the mechanism by which excessive money coud be kept out of politics, but that's all well in the rear-view mirror.

I think your analysis is wanting to hang everything on some structurally independent mechanism that will persist longterm, regardless whether it's a referendum mechanism or rule of law + independent media.

> At the state level, you still defend your values with one person one vote.

No you can't do that either, because only a few (27+16 / 438) Congressional districts in 2024 were toss-up/competitive and not safe/gerrymandered, per Brennan/Cook Political Report [2]. And when one party establishes a quadrifecta in a state, they try to lock down that numerical advantage for another decade or two.

[0]: "U.S. Debt Is on Pace to Set a Record High, Going All the Way Back to 1790" https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/upshot/record-debt-republ...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E

[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/comp...

[zywoo]

You’re right: the rot is deep, debt, money in politics, gerrymandering, media capture. I don’t deny any of that.

But precisely because corruption runs so deep, structural anchors are more essential, not less. You say it’s deckchairs on the Titanic, but isn’t the better analogy to ask whether we can refine them into lifeboats? Otherwise, collapse is the only destination.

If we abandon the search for resilient anchors, then democracy becomes exposed to only two paths: slow erosion into dysfunction, or a dangerous temptation toward authoritarian shortcuts. Structural anchors may not be perfect, but without them, there’s nothing left to resist the slide.