Keep up with the show and I hope I could catch past episodes online.

I was somewhat disappointed with responses of your guest professor to your questions regarding parliamentary gov’t. It seems he has not been reading up adequately on the relevant political science literature. For instance, on the question of how to strengthen political parties, he does not even mention the role of the electoral system at all (first-past-the post, party-list proportional representation, single transferable vote, etc.) and ignores the post-World war II experiences of France and Germany in their efforts to improve their party systems. There is also the issue of checks and balances in a parliamentary set-up. He does not mention that for most modern parliamentary systems, there is an independent judiciary which is not subordinate to parliament and there are constitutional courts which have the authority to rule on constitutional questions even to the point of striking down laws and executive decrees. In fact, for most modern parliamentary systems, the fusion of powers applies only to the “political” organs of gov’t and does not apply to the other institutions.

On another issue, political scientists have noted that presidential systems tend to become dictatorships more often than parliamentary systems. At one time or another, most presidential systems after WWII have succumbed to dictatorship while a large proportion of the parliamentary systems have managed to remain democratic throughout.

Your show is to be commended however for discussing such vital issues and principles so necessary to understanding constitutional matters. May we have many more such presentations and more power to you.

…..”I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

…. “Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.”

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

“The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.

“Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.”

“By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.”

“My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.”
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

You have to combine John Locke with Montesquieu. Property rights and the protection of property rights and the giving up of some natural rights in favor of an institution is the basis of the social contract of representative government. The breakinbg of that social contract is the basis for revolution. The rationale of government’s existence is economics. The economic base.

Your not enjoying the Federalist papers is quite understandable since it clearly shows the mindset of both Madison and Hamilton who were discussing the dialectical history of man’s development.

It shows very clearly in Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constituion which are the economic provisioons of the the same.

Hamilton’s influence in those two sections is very apparent. He became the First Secretary of the Treasury of the U.S. and was the architect of the dirigist principles of the newly formed Republic. In principle he wanted the U.S. built along the lines of Athens and Sparta combined. A commercial republic but backed up with a strong military force (national military force) Their democracy then was a form of democratic centralism.

Please note the changes that brought forth liberal democratic systems was liberal economic principles and the industrial revolution. The Age of Capitalism…

For that you have to credit Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

Geroge Will the conservative columnist of the Washington Post always loves to comment that the idea that there are over a hundred and fifty nation states (the U.N. membership) in the world is false.

John Locke, Smith and Marx all agreed that the price of commodites correlates to the labor input.

Marx was not an economist but he was a sociologist. He correctly pointed to the fatal flaw in industrial capitalism. Overproduction and obsolecence. -Modern speak – deflation and depression.

Smith rightly brought out the fact of efficiency in “free” markets with the big “IF” at the the start of his every theory.

Marx correctly pointed out his analysis based on the anatomy of society (class system or the human food chain))and the constant clashing of power and wealth and its influence on the market. Hence Stiglitz won a Nobel prize in economics pointing out the lack of symmetry in economics. Meaning- humans do not all think alike.

That brought forth Keynes who offerred the solution – to prevent depressions you simply inflate. That is where the challenge lies today. Exporting inflation is also known as imperialism. The poor countries know it as free trade. It is said Keynes died of stress after the formation of the first Bretton Woods agreement when the Americans refused to go with the idea of a neutral international currency that he had called Bancor.

Please note:

First published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations is generally regarded as the formulation of contemporary economic thought. Adam Smith a Scottish professor of moral philosophy, expounded the then- revolutionarry doctrine of economic liberalism.. The book’s importance was immediately recognized by Smith’s peers and later economists have shown an unusual consensus in their admiration for his ideas. Combining economics, political theory, history, philosophy and practical programs, Smith assumes that human self-interest is the base psychological drive behind economics and that a natural order in the universe makes all the individual, self-interest strivings add up to the social good. His conclusions, that the best program is to leave the economic process alone and that government is useful only as an agent to preserve order and to perform routine functions,is now known as laissez-faire economics or non-interventionism. In noting for the first time the significance of the division of labor and by stating the hypothesis that a commodity’s value correlates to its labor input, Smith anticipated the writings of Karl Marx. Like Marx’s Das Kapital and Machiavelli’s The Prince, his great book marked the dawning of a new historical epoch. Edwin Canaan, economist.

“Adam Smith’s enormous authority resides, in the end, in the same property that we discover in Marx: not in any ideology, but in an effort to see to the bottom of things.”
–Robert L. Heilbroner, economist who worked with J.K. Galbraith.

Forms of government are superfical the essence is the rationale or substance of governance. Hence you take your list of weak and or distentegrating states and you will see poor economic stats. The per capita income of every country is a simple measurement that mesures how high the ladder of industrial development a country is. Weak economics weak government.