Problems In Political Institution Design

1. How can you design a political system so that a thin majority coalition is weaker than a large majority coalition?

2. How can you assure that judges will interpret the laws faithfully and not with excessive partisan bias?

3. What is the best strategy to prevent a lawless person like Trump from gaining power or abusing it once it has been gained? Do courts need more remedies? Do laws and executive orders need to clear a pre-approval process? Does something need to be done to weaken the partisan grip on legislators so that they exercise more independent judgment? Should the President's personal power be weakened, for example, through independent agencies? Is it a matter of political culture? Is it a matter of insuring that no substantial coalition feels too neglected by the power that be?

4. What is the best way to encourage politicians to be truthful and to make clear lies or disregard for court orders fatal to any politician's career?

5. Isn't there a better way to get budgets approved than a process that involves playing chicken with government shutdowns, the frequent use of continuing resolutions, and omnibus budget bills?

6. What is the best way to discourage the circulation of routinely factually inaccurate news reporting of the kind exemplified by Fox News and Truth Social?

7. What are the best ways to reduce corruption and self-dealing in government?

8. How can a line be drawn between preventing gridlock on one hand and not giving too much power to coalitions with only narrow majorities?

9. What features of an electoral system are most important to making it resistant to systemic manipulation in favor of the party in power?

10. How can civil service and government contracting systems be improved?

11. How can abuses of the pardon and commutation power be limited?

12. How can the system be designed so that civil society and individuals and organizations are protected from tyranny and abuse, and have the power to reinforce the democratic process?

13. Is it important to enshrine substantive policies and not just processes?

14. What is the best balance to strike between ease of amendment and protection of minorities and stability?

15. How does one balance informed decision making and maintaining support from an mostly uninformed public?

16. What is the best way to design a public law system?

17. Is there a good way to systemically screen out dark triad personality persons from positions of power?

18. Can a well run government have less powerful top leaders?

19. How can the policy making process be made more deliberative and information driven?

20. What is the best way to protect the interests of people who can't vote?

21. What are good ways to balance intense special interests with low intensity broad based preferences?

22. What is the best way to distribute power within the judiciary that makes no one judge unduly powerful if atypical and allows workable delegation of authority while keeping the need to get decisions right on the merits at the forefront?

23. What is the best way to discourage abuses of discretion without taking away all discretion?

24. What role should political parties play in intermediating between the general public and institutions of power?

25. What is the best way to deal with public officials, either elected or appointed, who are incompetent, corrupt, criminal, ill-intentioned, lawless, or lazy?