Bibliography 2

On the framers taking a “first principles” approach

• A debate from the constitutional convention revolved around to what extent the U.S. could integrate mechanisms from European institutional design, and to what extent the founders should devise wholly new systems. Advocates on both sides agreed that the end product would be different from any existing government and that it should fit what they saw as the distinct aspects of the American experiment. Some sources that cover this:

  • Goodykoontz, C.B. (1954, May). The Founding Fathers and Clio. Pacific Historical Review, vol. 23, no. 2.

  • Greene, J. (1990). Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Politics of the British Empire and the United States. W. W. Norton and Company.

  • Hendrickson, D. (2006). Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding. University Press of Kansas.

  • Morgan, E. (2005). The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Mullett, C.F. (1939, November). Classical Influences on the American Revolution. The Classical Journal, vol. 35, no. 2.

  • Wood, G. (1998). The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. London: University of North Carolina Press.

  • Original writings

    • Adams, J. Defence of the Constitution of the United States.

    • Adams J. The Adams Papers, ed. C. James Taylor. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda.

    • Correspondence between founders from The University of Virginia’s “American Founding Era Collection” and the U.S. National Archives’ “Founders Online.”

    • The Federalist Papers (in particular the following, which explicitly contrast European mechanisms with those under discussion in the U.S.: 5, 12, 14, 19, 20, 22, 37, 39, 42, 54, 75)

    • Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses. (2015). Ed. C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society.

    • Hamilton, A. (1781). The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 2 (1779–1781).

    • Madison, J. (1786). Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies.

    • Madison, J. (1973). The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, vol. 8: 10 March 1784 – 28 March 1786.

    • Marshall, J. (2014). The Papers of John Marshall, ed. Charles Hobson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, vol. 2.

    • The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand. New Haven: Yale University Press.

On government size

• Budget

  • Historical Tables. Office of Management and Budget. https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/. (Specifically Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (-): 1789–2028)

• Headcount

  • Kastor, P. (2018). The Early Federal Workforce. The Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/the-early-federal-workforce-by-p-kastor.pdf?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Executive%20Education.

  • Executive Branch Civilian Employment Since 1940. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/.

  • Some estimates are even higher than the figures I used:

    • Light, P. C. (1999). The True Size of Government. Brookings Institution Press.

    • Light, P. C. (2017). The True Size of Government: Tracking Washington’s Blended Workforce, 1984-2015. The Volcker Alliance. https://www.volckeralliance.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Issue%20Paper_True%20Size%20of%20Government.pdf.

  • Contractors:

    • Stanger, A. (2011). One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy. Yale University Press.

  • Indian citizens per MP

    • Chhibber, P., Jensenius, F., & Shah, H. (2019, 6 March). This data shows why Indian MPs don’t truly represent their people. ThePrint. https://theprint.in/opinion/this-data-shows-why-indian-mps-dont-truly-represent-their-people/201769/.

On issues with prior efforts to increase access to participation:

• Bagg, S. (2023, 13 July). Two Fallacies of Democratic Design. https://lpeproject.org/blog/two-fallacies-of-democratic-design/.

• Demsas, J. (2022, 22 April). Community Input is Bad, Actually. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/local-government-community-input-housing-public-transportation/629625/.

• Demsas, J. (2023, 21 August). Americans Vote Too Much. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/american-election-frequency-voter-turnout/675054/.

Categorization of democracies:

• Countries and Territories. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores.

The Congressional Apportionment Amendment:

• Congressional Apportionment Amendment (2023, 11 July). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment.

On voters’ assessments of incumbents:

• Huber, G., Hill, S., & Lenz, G. (2012, November). Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters' Limitations in Controlling Incumbents. The American Political Science Review, 106(4), 720-741.

On Referendums

• On “Leave” supporters regretting Brexit:

• Raven, P. (2022, 17 November). One in five who voted for Brexit now think it was the wrong decision. YouGov. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/11/17/one-five-who-voted-brexit-now-think-it-was-wrong-d.

• Larik, J., Härkönen, J., & Hix, S. (2022, 30 November). Will support for Brexit become extinct? UK in a Changing Europe. https://ukandeu.ac.uk/will-support-for-brexit-become-extinct/.

On elections where all major candidates were unpopular

• Pighi Bel, P. (2021, 20 April). Pedro Castillo vs Keiko Fujimori: por qué el antifujimorismo sigue siendo una de las fuerzas políticas más importantes del país [Pedro Castillo vs. Keiko Fujimori: why anti-Fujimorism continues to be one of the country's most important political forces]. BBC New Mundo. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-56754234.

On arguments that voters cannot be trusted to reach informed opinions on complex topics:

• These arguments date back millennia, but one of the most notable accounts is: Lippman, W. (1922). Public Opinion. Harcourt, Brace & Co.

• For more recent examples that lean on the increased complexity of the environment that voters have to assess, and that present data on voter ignorance, see: Brennan, J. (2017, 16 September). Against Democracy. Princeton University Press; Jones, G. (2020, 4 February). 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less. Stanford University Press.

• Somin, I. (2008, March 6). Voter ignorance and the democratic ideal. Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, Volume 12, 1998 - Issue 4: Public Ignorance and Democracy. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08913819808443511?journalCode=rcri20.

• Arnold, J.R. (2012, December). The electoral consequences of voter ignorance. Electoral Studies, Volume 31: Issue 4, pp. 796-815. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379412000789.

• Well Known: Twitter; Little Known: John Roberts. (2010, 15 July). Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2010/07/15/well-known-twitter-little-known-john-roberts/.

On voter ignorance

• Well Known: Twitter; Little Known: John Roberts. (2010, 15 July). Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2010/07/15/well-known-twitter-little-known-john-roberts/.

• One especially absurd example of bias in voter decision-making: Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A., Goren, A. & Hall, C.C. (2005, 5 June). Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes. Science, 308:5728. Pp. 1623-1626. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1110589.

On Ashby’s Law:

• Ashby, W.R. (1958). Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems, Cybernetica 1:2, p. 83-99. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/AshbyReqVar.pdf.

On the origin of “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”:

• (2012, 28 April). If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter. Quote Investigator. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/.

On Audrey Tang:

• For a detailed overview of Audrey’s life and work, see: Qiu, M. (2023, 4 March). 我的99個私抽屜：唐鳳的AI時代生存心法 [My 99 secret drawers: Audrey Tang’s life in the age of AI]. 網路與書 [Internet and book publishing].

• For a shorter profile: Audrey Tang. (2023, 17 July). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang.

• For a profile of some of Taiwan’s digital democracy projects, see: Miller, C. (2019, 26 November). Taiwan is making democracy work again. Wired. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/taiwan-democracy-social-media; Horton, C. (2018, 21 August). The simple but ingenious system Taiwan uses to crowdsource its laws. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/21/240284/the-simple-but-ingenious-system-taiwan-uses-to-crowdsource-its-laws/.

On citizens assemblies

• Hélène Landemore’s work on this is excellent, for instance:

  • Landemore, H. (2020, 13 October). Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press

  • Landemore, H. 2015. Inclusive Constitution-Making: The Icelandic Experiment.

• Ovadya, A. (2021, 18 October). Towards Platform Democracy: Policymaking Beyond Corporate CEOs and Partisan Pressure. The Belfer Center (Harvard Kennedy School). https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-platform-democracy-policymaking-beyond-corporate-ceos-and-partisan-pressure.

Chambers, S. (2009). Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass Democracy? Political Theory 37(3).