RESPOND ASSIGNMENT
For the initial post, respond to one of the following options, and label the beginning of your post indicating either Option 1 or Option 2:
Option 1: Does democracy require equality of income or wealth? Discuss why democracy might make a country more or less egalitarian?
Option 2: Political scientist Larry Sabato has proposed a new constitutional convention. Select any one of his proposed ideas and write a short list of pros and cons for this idea and support your reasoning.
Be sure to make connections between your ideas and conclusions and the research, concepts, terms, and theory we are discussing this week.
Option 2 Better Constitution
Sabato proposed a more perfect constitution, that is embedded with the very real current normative democratic majoritarian political theory. Whether it is the point on expanding seats in Congress, or term settings for Presidency, it is apparent that the populous vote of the nation is what he theorizes will eliminate the current issues in the Constitution. However, is there an issue, is it broken, and if so, is it reparable by these proposals? Fleming questions what is wrong with Congress and if increasing its responsibility will even make it less broken (Fleming, 2009). For instance, Sabato’s proposals on Congress expansions are a gesture to make it more representative of the population of each state (Sabato, 2007). The pro for this is that it is truly representative of the people that are in that state’s census. Another pro is that Senators can be more representative of the nation as opposed to just individual states, if there was accepted proposal of previous presidents becoming a new unit of Senators. Also, the constituency of the Senators would be smaller and perhaps there would be more personal connection to the candidate. However, the cons are that there is an inherit level of checks and balances between the branches: executive, legislative, and judicial that would not function as well otherwise if Congress was expanded and made more powerful. Furthermore, creating less partisan house would likely not fix anything, and can cause more stalemate than successful voting on bills, etc. The Senate is sort of an extended republic of the nation, via representation of states, and would do more for the common good of people of the nation, than do the House of Representatives for instance. Proposing a more unicameral Congress will not fix the Constitution as Sabato may believe, because history has indicated it with the House issues we currently see. Sometimes the more democratic House may be less inclined to vote for the good of the nation, so what would a more democratic Senate do? The push-pull of Congress’ lower and upper chambers is there for a reason.
