Bruce Ackerman’s most recent book, The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (Harvard 2010), reflects his dual academic identity. As a political scientist interested in historical institutionalism (including its rational choice perspective), he identifies weaknesses in the United States government’s structures; as a lawyer, he attempts to find solutions. He carefully qualifies his project at the outset, saying that he is not interested in the US's status as a world power, which may continue whether or not its republican character is undermined, and that he is not "prophesying America’s fall into a godless condition of selfishness, sensuality, sloth."

Rather, he is concerned with the tendency of the United States toward an overly powerful executive, which he argues opens up the possibility for a constitutional crisis in a future, unstable political environment. The main deficiencies of the constitution consist in the populist, potentially extremist nature of the selection of presidents, an overly powerful bureaucracy, and a politicized military.

He offers three (and more!) practical solutions for this set of problems. First, he proposes a Deliberation Day two weeks before national elections: a national holiday when voters will be ferried to local meeting places, where they will be invited to deliberate on the issues following televised debates between leading candidates. This process would reduce the propensity of candidates to engage in sound bite politics, forcing them to articulate their positions knowing that the voters will be debating what they did not say, as much as what they did, in discussion groups and asking their representative, who must be present at the meetings, to respond to their concerns.

Second, he advances a Supreme Executive Tribunal, a replacement for the excessively influential and unelected Office of Legal Council, which issues self-serving opinions expanding presidential power. Finally, he recommends the distribution of internet news vouchers, which would allow readers to vote for internet news sites. These sites would then be allocated government subsidies based upon the number of votes they receive. All of these recommendations are far more fully developed in the book, which merits careful reading. He makes other suggestions as well, including reworking the electoral college and establishing a new Canon of Military Ethics, to remedy the potential for conflicts like the revolt of the generals against Donald Rumsfeld and the recent debacle over General Stanley McChrystal.

Using the problem of overly rhetorical, populist political communications as an example, Ackerman’s argument is that twenty-first century internet communications have rendered the expensive, time consuming process of reliable news gathering unviable. Communications have devolved to partisan blogs and cable news networks, which reinforce prejudice rather than informing readers. This problem is not unique to the twenty-first century, as Ackerman recognizes; nineteenth-century papers in the United States were equally partisan.

However, the impact that news has on political decision-making has changed in the past 150 years. The executive office can fill gaps left in the supply of information by issuing appeals for support for a Fearless Leader via Twitter, YouTube and the like. Ackerman resolves the problem with what is, in essence, a voucher system for news.

He fully admits that popular sites may not offer accurate information, and pornography sites may cynically attempt to cash in. He counters these claims, arguing that pornography sites can be systematically excluded from the subsidy and that news providers should be required to purchase a substantial insurance policy to compensate anyone who brings a successful libel suit against them (such policies would become impossible to afford once one serious mistake had been made). He also believes that insurance companies will ensure that news providers have the human and professional resources to engage in proper fact checking before providing a policy. Once the core of providing factual information has been guaranteed, the function of the bloggers, to interpret the news, will be left to the free market in information.

Ackerman does not claim that any of his suggestions offer a final solution for the problems that he, and other political scientists like Sanford Levinson and Desmond King, are worried about. However, he hopes to initiate a debate about potential solutions. Even those who believe that other problems, such as racial or economic inequality, are more important must admit that the proper structures have to be in place for remedies to substantive policy issues to be successful over the long term. He argues, "The present generation [of Americans] has benefitted greatly from [a] living tradition of constitutional adaptation; and it has a special obligation to continue modifying present arrangements to preserve republican self-government... We are failing to fulfill this duty."

One can only imagine what application some of these ideas, much less a debate of this kind, might have in the United Kingdom. Despite our rich, historical constitutional tradition, there is far less inclination to think structurally about ensuring democratic legitimacy, apart from continuous rumblings about reform of the House of Lords and the upcoming proposal to move to the Alternative Vote in general elections. With a few exceptions, British political scientists seem reluctant to think as boldly as Ackerman does. But many of his proposals resonate in our political culture as deeply as they do across the Atlantic. After all, it was Ackerman’s proposals that led to the creation of Child Trust Funds in the UK. Suffering as we do from an overly powerful executive ourselves, perhaps Ackerman’s book should provoke debate in the United Kingdom, just as it deserves to do in the United States.

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