Wikipedia:Peer review/How Democratic Is the American Constitution?/archive1

How Democratic Is the American Constitution?

Someone cited this book as a source for a different Wikipedia article, so I borrowed it from the library to check up on it. I discovered it had this article, and I ended up doing a major expansion. I thought I'd solicit feedback now in case I needed to check the book itself before returning it to the library. If you haven't read the book, then you will be able to tell if I haven't explained something clearly. If you've read the book or have it, you can check my accuracy. This article probably also needs basic markup improvements and general copyediting, since it's fresh from my Emacs buffer. Thanks for reading, Beland 04:55, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

• Nice article, thanks. I never really thought of the U.S. as a "pure democracy", and I'm not even sure that one would work at that scale. Anyway, I saw a few places in the article where you could add some useful cross-links, such as representative democracy, suffrage, slavery, American Civil War, &c. Is the "I" in the book title supposed to be capitalized? Also we usually include the ISBN number for books. — RJH 17:30, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I linkified the ones you suggested and probably too many others. Feel free to directly tweak links as desired. I actually checked on the title page of the book itself, and yes, the "I" in "Is" is capitalized there. This follows the rule I learned in elementary school, which is that all verbs, even short verbs like "is", get capitalized in proper titles. The ISBN of this edition is 0-300-09218-0; I'm not sure where that's supposed to go. Also, this is not the only edition of the book in publication, nor is it the most recent, and I gather different editions have different ISBNs. -- Beland 06:00, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

You could probably just put the ISBN in the parentheses with the publication date, thus: (2000, ISBN 0-300-09218-0). — RJH 18:51, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Added. -- Beland 03:10, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

• It looks like an interesting book. It would be nice to see some sort of totals at the bottom of the table in the article. BlankVerse ∅ 10:43, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Done, though I did not try to make them look pretty. -- Beland 03:10, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• I haven't read the book so cannot comment on the accuracy of this as a summary but I make two observations: I'm not convinced that a precis of a book dealing with politics is a meaningful entry in an encyclopedia and, even if it is, a precis without any critique makes the entry less neutral than it should be. To take one issue as an example: the partisan jerrymandering of constituencies is clearly undemoctratic since it disenfranchises the voters from the minority party in each constituency. Thus, no matter what voting system might be in place, the result would be skewed. Unless you contextualise the book and consider how justifiable its conclusions might be in the light of a more objective set of criteria, I regret to say that I doubt the worth of this piece. My apologies.

David91

• I don't think there are any "objective" criteria, really, but I do agree that it would be nice to attach criticism, or at least link to opposing points of view. I'll have to leave that to others, because I am not really familiar with any such sources. I'm not sure what the jerrymandering example was supposed to be showing, exactly. Clearly a voting system which used a single voting district for the entire state (like most PR systems, I assume) would not be subject to jerrymandering...who is supposed to be asserting this false claim? -- Beland 03:10, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see some explanations for "stong judicial review" and the other 3 elements in the table, especially where to draw the line so it becomes "strong". Especially I want to point out that Germany is stated as having a "stong judicial review" while Austria and Switzerland are listed as "NO"-countries - this is somehow confusing, because the systems in all 3 countries are rather the same: all 3 have one federal constitutional court that has the power to review and invalidate all legislative acts that are inconsistent with the constitution. In addition what constitutes "strong federalism"? Is this with regard how much power is given to the states and if yes, how many powers are necessary to qualify? While Germany has certainly a stronger federal tradition than Austria (a few more legislative powers are in the hands of states), the system itself is rather similar. To sum up, I've not read the book, but in order to write a good article on it, I would suggest to give some more explanations in what the author actually wants to say + some conclusions of his international comparisons. Themanwithoutapast 00:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

A good question. There are some sections in the book which directly correspond to those answers. I've added as much material as I can along those lines. (A lot of what's in those sections is devoted to considering which choice is the better one.) If there's any remaining doubt over who should be classified where, Dahl doesn't give any more explanation (in this book, at least) about why he arranged these countries as he did, as far as I know.

It would be cool if Wikipedia created its own government-system comparison chart(s), which would presumably be better explained, more detailed, and more reliable. -- Beland 03:24, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

The issue is not whether it would be "nice to attach criticism"? Criticism is not critique and you open Pandora's Box with an invitation to consider whether there are "objective" criteria! But let us put all that to one side. The difficulty with PR systems is to match the desire for local representation with wider voting patterns so, upon what criteria is the size of a constituency determined at each level within the political system? It is convenient in the U.S. that there are states within a federal system but, if you were to adopt a slate system for an entire state, is the list going to be open or closed? Is the list going to cover only the President and each state's legislature, or will candidates be listed down to city and district level across all functions currently elected? If so, what controls will be put in place to ensure that nepotism does not replace gerrymandering? And even if non-partisan controls are enforced, why would this be a more representative system than, say, Mixed-Member Proportional Voting? Obviously, this is not the place to debate the merits of the different systems of PR nor to judge PR as against any other system, but I repeat my opinion that unless there is some contextualisation and critique of all these candidate voting systems (and in this, I concur with Themanwithoutapast that international comparisons should be validated), any page that simply reproduces the POV of one book on politics lacks the necessary quality of neutrality. -David91 08:44, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, feel free to add context. I guess it's safe to return the book to the library, since additions along these lines would need to come from external sources, with which I am not familar. -- Beland 04:18, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(a) This is the peer review page and I have no interest in adding material. (b) If you look at the other books covered in the Political Books classification, almost all the entries are very short or the material is about the book's production history or a comment. In my short survey, I found no other entry at your length. My advice (which has little value since I am relatively new at this Wiki game), is to reduce this entry to about ten lines of text and walk away. Alternatively, you might consider putting it into Wikify and let the world have a go at it. -David91 06:04, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)