Galen Druke and Jake Arlow of FiveThirtyEight –
Not all democracies are the same. Sure, the bedrock principle — governing according to the will of the people — is consistent, but there are lots of structural decisions that influence who “the people” are and how their diverse wishes are tallied. Those decisions have consequences, influencing who runs for office, how they campaign and how they ultimately govern.
Take our presidential primary system as an example. How we seek to find a consensus within parties in the U.S. is, as we’ve covered in past episodes of The Primaries Project, unique among the world’s democracies. It’s accidental and arguably doesn’t always do a great job of finding a consensus. So is there a better way of doing things?
