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Why did you want to write about Political Parties . Your first book was focused on political lobbying. In the universe of potential reforms, the electoral college. The money in politics which we hear a ton about. Executive power. You chose to focus on parties as a linchpin. Can you talk about what drew you to parties . Tell us about the process. Great to be with you again matt. A fun reunion on cspan. So why did i write this book . I wrote this book because i was worried about american democracy. I saw hyper partisanship as a serious problem affecting our country and i wanted to think about if there was some way to maybe solve that problem. It kind of flowed in an indirect way from my previous book which was about the growth of corporate lobbying. In that book, i had concluded that one way reason they were so powerful was because they wrote a lot of the laws. Because there was not a tremendous amount of expertise. After that book came out, i went talking to folks in and around congress. Thank congress should hire more staff so they have expertise. I said of course. That makes total sense. Yet it didnt happen. One reason was because it became so centralized in congress. And somehow i will is that even adding new staff wouldnt solve this problem of hyper partisanship in a way in which nothing gets done because theres so much gridlock. I realized the core problem of our democracy was the fact that we have two distinct National Parties. Think that something that is new and its at odds with the way our governing institutions work and its driving us all crazy. Can you talk about why you think its new. American political history goes back more than two centuries. And talk a little bit about how the framers envisioned politics working. The role for factions and parties that they saw. And why this is such a departure. Lets start with the framers because this is where the conversations on political history start. The framers were engaging in this radical act of coming up with a system of selfgovernance. They thought Political Parties were a dangerous thing. They fit their history of ancient rome and greece and early republics. They saw that civil war was a real threat and selfgovernance. They saw it happens when got split into and they were two parties, a majority and minority party. The Majority Party would use his power to oppress the minority party. So they thought they were going to come up with a system of government that would make it hard for parties to form. There were going to have three branches of government on top of federalism. That did make it very hard for parties to form. At least in a coherent way that we see parties today. Thats one of the reasons american parties have always been so weak and incoherent until recent times. A lot of parties were state and local separate branches. So parties were kind of a mess. In recent years. American politics was truly nationalized for the first time. So we have these truly nationalized parties that represent genuine genuinely different values, different visions of america. We have this partisanship which was the very thing the framers feared. Just going back a little bit, the twoparty system which has not always been democratic and republican. Essentially it has survived for centuries. Why has it and toward . Why has it and endured . Historically, it seems to have endured and these parties have been responsive to national crises. The present national concerns. I would like to hear more about that. I think its indoor because of the parties at a National Level didnt stand for that much. And that essentially we had a multiparty system within the twoparty system. That the parties themselves were these broad coalitions. So they were more flexible. And at a governing level, in congress, you could build different coalitions based on issues across parties that often the local identity was more important than the National Identity and that allowed for politics that helped to grease the wheels of the legislative process. In an earlier era where local concerns were more important than national, it was just easier to build different coalitions at different times. Now because the parties have become so distinct and separated and theyre both competing for this narrow but elusive majority. The compromise of the Coalition Building that our system of government depends on no longer works. Theres this fascinating kind of warning within your book and we will get to Solutions Later in the conversation about the nationalization of these clinical parties. This hyper partisanship as you call it. One thing that struck me is in reading your book, were our politics more in peril during earlier eras in the past century . Perhaps during the Great Depression or the 1960s when we had scores of urban riots. Antiwar protests. Three liters, three political leaders were assassinated. And police were clubbing demonstrators outside the Democratic Convention in chicago. Im wondering if looking back, if you saw democracy really under greater threats in the 30s or 60s. And how you would place the parties in those earlier eras versus now. Certainly the idea of violence is not something new. The idea may be that that there was some peaceful age of american politics i think is a total myth. Politics has always been nasty and at times, little violent. But what was different about the 1960s was that the conflicts over civil rights were not hyper partisan conflicts. So there was a higher percentage of republican members of Congress Voting for the major civil rights bill in the 1960s. So the Democratic Party came to own that set of policies. What it meant is that though these were difficult conflicts and certainly they were people who lost their lives in these conflicts. They didnt threaten the fundamental stability of the political system because they didnt create a condition in which everything was at stake with every election. Which is, the situation we are in now which is creating these incredibly highstakes, incredibly emotional politics. And this bifurcation of the country into two entirely distinct political coalitions. Which is undermining the basic sense of legitimacy and fairness in which a system of democracy has to depend on. The 30s was also a challenging time and there were folks who dont democracy had come to its end. There are a lot of all of which should remind us that selfgovernance democracy, is not something we should take for granted but it is a somewhat fragile thing. My question is, was there a bargain made on the issue of race and civil rights . That the parties agreed for a number of decades to essentially push the issue of jim crow. And racial segregation. Aside to have these more harmonious and bipartisan potential because, once civil rights was introduced, certainly for a lot of white americans in the south and in the north in particular, the stakes were extreme high and that was true for africanamericans as well. Exactly right. There are folks who nostalgia that bipartisan consensus. Of course that consensus was really based on the exclusion of civil rights from the National Stage in the continuation of the jim crow south. This is why politics is fundamentally about conflict. We just have to figure out how to have them in a way thats not so binary and zerosum. That the civil rights of the 1960s set in motion. The realignment of america along cultural and social and identity lines which we are experiencing the culmination of. I would say from the mid60s through the late 80s and early 90s, we did have a functioning for party with liberal republicans and conservative democrats alongside liberal democrats and conservative republicans. Although that system wasnt perfect, in retrospect, it worked pretty well because it meant you can get different coalitions along different issues. Lots of landmark legislation passed with overwhelming support. And congress i think was at its institutional height. It hadnt seeded as much power to the executive branch as it has now. For a lot of voters, it meant the parties didnt really stand for anything which was a frustration but at a functional governing level, i think it worked pretty well. Ultimately, i think we ought to get back to Something Like that but with actually multiple parties that voters can make choices more clearly. You mentioned civil rights. Beyond civil rights. How would you explain so that the past several decades, how would you sum up, especially in the 60s, 70s and 80s we see the breakdown of this for party system. Are there broad cultural forces at work. The rise of the cultural wars. Things like wrote the roe versus wade. How would you explain forces driving the rise of these National Parties and the binary polarization. I think you identified a few of them. Civil rights. The increasing of culture war issues at the National Level probably played into that as well. I spent two chapters in the book detailing the trend and even that doesnt do justice. Talking as a historian here. In short, as americans become more prosperous and the middleclass expanded, the pressing Economic Issues of an earlier era and the culture war politics gained. The parties took on more distinct and separate national images. By the 1990s when the culture war issues really reached a level of national the Democratic Party had become the party of cultural liberalism and the republican Party Cultural conservatism. These feed on themselves voters start identifying which party fits with their values better and the parties themselves change. The National Identities change and the mood shifts. Thats what led to where we are today. You describe in the book a memo from Newt Gingrich who was the house speaker. The leader of the socalled republican revolution in 1994. The memo was to fellow colleagues about how to describe democrats. Im quoting from your book. He recommended that republicans use words to talk about democrats such as, bizarre, dk, destroy, devour, greed, radical, sick, steel and traitors. Thats a remarkable set of attributes to fix on ones opponents. Those that encapsulate a different level of rancor . Even as we discuss politics has always been bitter and brutal. I we talking something fundamentally new in the early 90s . Newt gingrich did a bunch of things and that 1994 midterm election. He encouraged his fellow republicans to talk in a more aggressive way about democrats. He also for the first time really nationalized congressional elections. In the past, gingrich noticed something that republicans kept winning elections for president. But they were losing congressional elections. He thought the key was to emphasize these National Themes that reagan had one on. So he changed the playbook for how you do congressional elections. I think its a complicated figure. He often becomes this caricature of everything was fine and then gingrich took over and everything went to hell. But he was picking up on trends that were happening before. One reason he came to power was that there were republicans in the house that were tired of being in the minority and tired of the go along leadership. And they had been the majority in the house for 40 years and had grown a bit corrupt and increasingly strong centralized leadership. Which a lot of republicans rebuild against because they felt like they were being cut out of the process. Which led to the rise of Newt Gingrich. I think hes an important player but a product of his time. To be clear, your book is primary about institution did not individuals. Gingrich probably is more of a symptom. More symptomatic than a cause. Theres a reason gingrich emerged. I dont want to undervalue the roles of actors at particular times. But we often overrate the role in transforming institutions when they are largely responding to pressures and incentives. One of the repression things about your book is is not focused on trumpet. Its really quite refreshing given the litany of stories and the cooper focus on him. Getting back to the 90s and 2000s. Bring us where we are today. You write that congress hasnt had a serious burst of bipartisan lawmaking since 1990. When i read that, part of me thought okay, i know congress is dysfunctional. I used to work in congress. Before richard gephardt. Then i thought well, clinton enacted nafta, a host of other Bipartisan Legislation. A lot of them we may disagree with but there was that. After 9 11, both parties seem to come together around Bipartisan National Security reforms whether good or bad than the passage of tarp in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Other parties in the past two decades, have they been able to reach compromises and find some level of Common Ground especially in times of crisis or are these examples i am fighting, really so exceptional to this toxic hyper partisan warm . I think theres been a steady decline. I talk about in 1990, Congress Passed major environmental law. Major Immigration Law and budget reform and americans with disabilities act with our landmark legislation. Not to say there hasnt been major Bipartisan Legislation since then. Having four major bills in the year doesnt happen anymore. Its been sputtering out in which weve had that genuine twoparty system. Basically nothing the only legislation now that passes is partisan. Theres some stuff that passes in criminal justice reform. Of 2018 was something. But if we think about the denominator which has been House Congress has called on to solve. Seems like an overwhelming majority support like common sense gun reform. The title of the book has the phrase, twoparty doom loop. Can you talk about why its so dire. Why we cant seemingly escape this. Of course we know politics is never static. But doom would imply theres a certain stasis and weve spiraled into a really negative. Or era in which really there is no escape unless we have fundamental reform. What we have in this era is to distinct parties fighting over a zerosum conflict. If one party is democrats at its core. The other part is republicans which has its core in rural traditional White Christian america increasingly, disconnected from the global economy. And with two very different visions of governing america. The challenge is that they are in roughly equal power. Democrats can win control of washington. Republicans can win control. And weve had going back to 1992, this era of pendulum politics. Unified to divided government. And if Democrats Gain control after the 2020 election. They will probably only keep it for two years even if they do. The stakes are incredibly high. Our in this era of extended trench warfare with no obvious resolution point both sides desperately fear being in the minority. Both sides think they can win the majority. It is a stalemate and neither side has any intention of ever backing down. To even engage in political compromise is essentially to back down. Just like youre stuck in a traffic jam and you cant move. There are fundamental barriers ahead. Kind of like your Worst Nightmare where youre stuck in this endless cycle. All the forces in our political system lead to more escalation as the stakes get higher. People get more emotional and you cant compromise but people are cutting off friendships. People are surrounding themselves with people who share their values. Engaging leading information and news that reinforces. Now we have two sites that have fundamentally different relations to work is even a true fact at this point. Are using the elections, for example the 2018. The antitrust partisans, that it wasnt an escape of some sort. That led out some of the steam. The democrats won the house. That this had a tonic affect on some of the toxins. Sure. It let out some of the steam. Its not a longterm solution that that majority is not likely to be a permanent majority. Once trump is out of office, a lot of that energy will dissipate and democrats will be disappointed with whoever they elected president. And will disengage. Theres two big problems. One is that there are pressing National Issues we have to deal with. Climate is probably the most important and most existential that we are not dealing with at all. And to is this escalating hyper partisanship. We are now fighting over basic rules of elections. Of who gets to vote and how votes are counted, legitimacy. The democracy will always involve conflict. The challenge is we need to have some system by which we can agree that some set of rules are fair and some procedures are fair and we can abide by those outcomes. When things like elections are fundamentally called into question. We dont have any way to arbitrate disagreements, we dont have a democracy anymore. You write in the book at one point that you are a democrat. You say that the common argument is that its really one party that has become to extremist. Its gone off the rails. Its become captured by far right forces. But that argument is flawed. These are deeper, systemic problems. This idea of the doom loop. Could you talk about why you think the arguments, democrats are with moderates and liberals and on the far left whereas republicans are really quite extreme. Why is that flawed . I think its flawed on a few levels. I do agree the Republican Party has become extreme by any historical or comparative standards. But to just say, the problem is the Republican Party and therefore democrats need to win elections. That doesnt solve the underlying hyper partisanship problem. It just makes it worse. Although i may be a democrat. Anything things are better if democrats were in power, i dont think thats the solution to the underlying structural problem. I think the reason the Republican Party has become so extreme is fundamentally a function of the twoparty system. Because there are a lot of folks in the Republican Party who were not on board with what trump stood for and where he wanted to take the party. But he said you cant be a democrat so, theres no other party. He is to come along with me. Slowly, they have come along with him. If there were another party, i think there are republicans who would have joined a different party. If you think about trump support in the primary, probably got about 40 percent of people are republicans or republican leaning. Probably got 30 percent. Thats like 12 percent of the country. Which is in line with a lot of the far right parties in europe. But because we have a twoparty system, you can be the plurality of a plurality and gain toll party. So trump got to redefine the Republican Party. For a lot of voters, it was a binary choice. Ive read a lot of columns that that i dont love trump democrats are crazy so i guess i will have to vote for trump. Theres no other alternatives. The vast majority of the folks on the right who were opposed to trump have come around and are now supporting him. If you dont want to be a democrat or independent and have no power. So the other side is so evil that we have to stick with our team. The logic, lesser of two evils is the defining logic. If you do a Google Search for the lesser of three evils, you wont find that much. Its not a phrase that exists. Youll find theres a martial arts movie. But apparently it didnt do too well and they changed the name to fists of the warrior. That might be an appropriate name for contemporary partisan politics. Let me ask you in terms of getting out of this doom loop. Why isnt it conceivable that in 2020. Lets say trump loses. That the republicans dust off the 2012 autopsy report and the party shifts. It becomes a more moderate party or lisa has a much bigger space for more moderate policies on issues like climate change, immigration. Even taxes. Why does that seem so farfetched in your analysis . Those are the folks that are more active in the Republican Party now so the idea there are all these folks active and powerful in the Republican Party, they believe deeply in these values. If they lose in 2020, they probably think they were cheated. They probably think the reason they didnt win is because they didnt fight hard enough on their values. And those are the groups in the republican coalition. The idea they would embrace a completely different vision of what the party stands for seems to defy logic. Thats not the values of the Republican Party. Theyre not going to suddenly transform their values when they think they can continue to win on those values. Maybe if they lose for president ial elections in a row and become a minority faction in a dominant democratic politics, then they might rethink. But thats a ways off and i dont think that will happen anytime soon. One of the things i like about your book is its not at all relentlessly bleak. The first sort of half or two thirds is focused on the analysis. The problem. You really got a very meaty solution section. Youve clearly thought deeply about them. Id like to spend time going through your case for reform. And thats the subtitle. The case for multiparty democracy in america. Multiparty democracy seems very foreign to us. To a lot of americans. That would be the chief advantages to having a multiparty marcus lee . I know it sounds foreign but it should be seen as foreign for two reasons. One is i think we had a multiparty democracy in the u. S. Contained within the two parties. What we had was much more a kin to a multiparty democracy with different factions and coalitions than what we have now. I think the multiparty of the 2010s is the radical deviation. If you look at what political reporters are writing about. I read medicines federalist number 10. The one about counteracting factions. The key to a stable democracy is fluid coalition. They have different factions on different issues. But you want to have a democracy so no group feels like it will be in the permanent minority. And no group seems like a permanent majority and therefore sees it as an opportunity to oppress the minority. That is fundamentally a vision of multiparty democracy in which different parties built different coalitions at different times. Depending on the different issues. Is more responsive and fluid. Parties can come and go in response to changing commands and concerns of the electorate. I think it should seem that foreign to us. Its just that we havent conceived of our political history in that way. I think it has tremendous advantages. One obviously, it breaks this binary zero some politics and builds into politics thats fundamentally about compromise and Coalition Building. Other advantages as well, one is that turnout is consistently higher. Because every vote matters. In a proportional multiparty democracy. Whereas in the u. S. , if youre not in a number of the swing districts, it doesnt matter. One of the things thats perplexed folks is like to have such low voter turnout. We made it much easier to vote for the last 60 years except for some backsliding in some states. Voter turnout has remained flat and may go up and down depending on the election. The reason is, with only two parties, a lot of voters feel like they dont have a party they feel excited about. Voters feel like whats the point of voting. Most important, both Political Parties have written off large parts of the country. Where if every vote matters, youre more likely to vote and are more likely to go after your vote. Also, gerrymandering is a function of our twoparty system. Its a uniquely american problem. If you have more parties and larger districts, which you would need to get proportional voting, gerrymandering goes away because you dont have a way to run these complex algorithms to predict how lines will yield different delegations. Can you talk about other reforms you envisioned. Multimember house districts. What are these and why would they be better . In order to have proportional representation, the system we have now of plurality elections were somewhat unique. Theres only a handful of countries that use it. Most have moved over the course of the 20th century to proportional representation. There are many types. Theres the hyper pr that israel uses that i think generates too many parties and too much fracture. What i envision for the u. S. Is more like what i call modest multiparty a46 parties. A system that ireland uses. That australia uses. Rather than having a singlemember district which is what we are used to, you combine five districts into one and then you have five representatives fortunately so you dont have to get a plurality of the vote but you want up having to get about 17 percent if you use a system the irish use which is range rights voting. Can you give us an example, say of what would nebraska or oklahoma i think they have five congressional somebody from oklahoma may correct me. Its probably 50 percent republican. I think there was one democrat who won from oklahoma this year. Just barely. Liberals should have probably 40 percent of the seats. Thats a fair distribution. Of course if you expand and have multimember districts, you probably would have more than two parties because now parties can compete with out having to win a majority. Someone like Bernie Sanders might have a more moderate Democrat Party and then joe biden and then you may have different republican parties. One thats more traditional Christian Conservative free markets party. One thats the trump, america first, welfare chauvinism party. So you really see five parties. The biggest constituencies were presenting five parties essentially. You might have a small Libertarian Party as well. It depends. You could see more or fewer parties. People will vote based on the parties on offer. But theres nothing secret about just having two parties. You make a very good point in the book which i appreciate. Which is that our electoral rules, most of it is not set in stone. Frankly, none of it is. Can you talk a little bit more about because it was so refreshing to read about the shifts in our democracy. Can you talk about why, we dont have to be bound by two parties. Theres nothing in the constitution. The only reason we have two parties is because were plurality voting system. The framers unthinkingly imported that from the british. At the time, it was the only system available and it was a constituent based candidate based system. It seemed like, thats how we vote. Tremendous innovations in electoral rules have created systems that are fair and more representative. I think we can certainly benefit from the advantage of some of that innovation. And throughout our history, we have changed our rules a bit. In the 1830s and 40s when states moved to single block voting, which was probably the only thing worse than plurality voting. If you had 60 percent of support in a state, say theres 10 seats. Everybody gets 10 votes so if democrats have 60 percent, they can win all 10 seats. This is when states started doing this in the 1830s. Then they got rid of it. Thats why we have the single winner district mandate trying to enforce the one person, one vote to create a fullsized districts. But the constitution says states can do what they want. And if congress doesnt like what theyre doing, they can [indiscernible] talked about rent voting. There is unfamiliar to me and most other people. Its a system thats been used in australia for well over 100 years. Ireland, and a few other countries. It came to San Francisco first, oakland, new york city just adopted it for its primaries. Maine is using for its primary and president ial election. You ranked your candidates in order of preference. Then the candidates get eliminated from the bottom up. So its essentially like having a backup boat. Might be a candidate you likely you think its going to win what you want to register your support. And in second or third. You pick the candidate you think and when. It gives more expression to voters. Voters like having disability. It also encourages more Coalition Building. I may not be your first choice but id like to be your second choice. The cities that have adapted it seemed more less negative campaigning and voters tend to like that. Its a way to reduce polarization. In the multiwinter format, it would lead to multiparty democracy. It sounds really good and let me just play devils advocate. Most political reforms have unintended consequences. Some democratic reforms have clearly advanced democracy. Something like suffrage or the Voting Rights act. Others i think seem quite flawed in retrospect. Thinking about the california initiative. [multiple speakers] they were designed to put power into peoples hands. Take it out of the hands of corporations and legislators but that led to things like proposition 13. Proposition eight. All very controversial. Campaign finance reform in the 70s and into the 2000s. The rhetoric around those who seem to outpace the reality of what happened. They didnt deliver on the promise and didnt seem to curb the influence of big money in politics. Talk to us about, what do you think can go wrong with what youre calling in the book, the save america democracy act. What would be some of the unintended consequences you might worry about . The status quo, maintaining the status quo also has unintended consequences. Its important to have a realistic view of democracy. Which is that its not something that is always going to be messy and always a tradeoff between competing values. For me, the role of reform is to solve the most pressing problems at a particular moment. Also to think about changes that we have experience with. The idea of multiparty democracy, not a radical idea. Most have stable coalition governments. Not a crazy idea and there are certainly crazy ideas out there. Even reforms with back on and say maybe that wasnt the best idea. The california initiative, the direct primary. At the time, they were trying to solve a particular problem. If you went back to the progressive era and so theres all this concentrated power. Bows are bought by the wealthy industrialists. And what do we do about that . I guess we take power away from them because they dont seem to be representing the people that well. There was a that advocated proportional representation. There were 24 cities that did move to the multiwinter form including new york city. I think it worked pretty well but then communist got elected and then the two parties shut it down. Democracy is not a thing to be salt. We always have to way, whats worse . Letting things continue as they are in a way that seems incredibly destructive and harmful or solving what is the biggest problem now. Maybe a generation from now there will be new problems. We will deal with those then. Because youre a senior fellow at new america, they have an interest in seeing some of your ideas for not saying your ideas totally online with tears. Some of them come into action. Can you talk about the mechanics of implementing these changes. How would these reforms actually get done . And beyond the book, are there steps you and your new america, not to link the two things together. Might take to promote your reform ideas. Theres a lot of energy out over electoral reform. As most political reforms have happened, it will happen in the states. And eventually it will happen at the National Level. Theres even been a bill introduced in this congress. And that would put in place multimember districts for the house. I think that big reform is never easy. We are at a moment in which americans are really frustrated with how the political system works. Two thirds of americans say they like more than two parties. More americans are choosing not to affiliate either with democratic or Republican Party. Inequality is incredibly high. And we are also seeing the breakdown of a lot of things that we thought of as just unchallenged. Free trade, the metoo movement. Black lives matter. I think it changed a lot of things. Changing social hierarchy. Although president trumps presidency has done damage, its also cleared away a lot of assumptions that our system works well but i think its woken up people that maybe theres a deep crisis in american democracy that we ought to reform. Thinking about american political history, there is a pattern of crisis and renewal. You think the revolutionary war, the amendments to the constitution reflect that. Weve had these moments where it seems something is broken and we make our democracy more inclusive, more responsive and functional. We create problems for another era but we solve the problems of that era. Event the parties in power now. If they see this as being harmful to their interests. How do the two parties now sign off on support legislation that i guess abolishes them in some way and breaks them up . The leadership of the two parties are going to hate this book. It will get attention that way. But thats okay. Reform happens when theres a Mass Movement of folks who demand it. Frankly, there are a lot of politicians who i think are really frustrated with being trapped in the system. They feel like theyre just put soldiers in this pointless war and they wanted to get into Public Service to solve big public problems and theyd like to engage in bipartisan problem solving and there prevented from doing so by their Party Leadership and their own voters. Particularly primary voters were with into her partisan frenzy. Think there are folks who do a lot better under a new system. In the book i talk about Different Cases of reform. New zealand went to a proportional system in the 90s. A lot of western european democracy made the transition in the first two decades. And in all these instances, political leaders realized, we can actually do quite well under this alternate system and it would be better for the country. I think its very shortsighted of them to persist in this trench warfare. A lot of folks in Public Service got into Public Service because they wanted to do good for the country and i think theyre very frustrated right now. We have just a few minutes left but i did want to pull back a little bit because as i was reading your book. As with the literature, popular literature that has emerged. So much of it seems to be in response to the 2016 election. What i wanted when i read this book is, do you think anything would have been different. The way you wrote it and the arguments you made had had a Larry Clinton won . Or would it feel quite as urgent . I think a lot about had Hillary Clinton became president. I think wed be in the fourth impeachment of Hillary Clinton and a scarier 2020 election. Sure i would have written a different book. I had been planning a somewhat different book although broadly the same seems prior to the 2016 election. Forced me to rethink and change the book i wrote. I think we see as many people getting politically engaged in response to trump. I think it would feel more of an extension of the obama years. I think in some ways, weirdly, we may be better off for having trump come to power. In a way in which she was completely disorganized and there was a buffoonery aspect to it. Rather than a more disciplined trump like figure. Last question. What do you make of these books on tierney . How democracies dive. The rules that warn. Your book seems to fall into that genre. How is your book in conversation with them . I draw a bit on how democracies die framework and to use that discussion. When mutual breaks down. I thought, this is actually the path we are on. Because we are witnessing the breakdowns of these fundamental norms. How did we get to this moment . What are the deeper structural and what in that can we change . But we can change the incentives. Weve done that throughout american political history. The idea is that institutions matter and welldesigned institutions can channel our best. And minimize our worst instincts. Thats the inspiration i take in proposing democracy reform for the 2020s. I think you really succeed in this book in capturing the breakdown of these structures and looking at the structural problems we have as well in proposing smart and sensible solutions. Its been wonderful to be with you. Thank you for being here. Great pleasure to have this conversation, matt

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