The Framers failed to anticipate universal suffrage and the American two-party system, let alone how these developments would change their system. Instead of letting Congress debate and decide policy, voters can now decide many issues directly. The chapter describes Americans grudging recognition that partisanship can lead to stable, responsible government. It then describes how 20th Century scholars developed rational voter models to formalize these ideas. It also asks how social voting, party leadership, identity politics, candidate charisma, and deep-pocketed donors change these results. Finally, it also argues that the existence of legislative deadlock lets comparatively small minorities take centrist compromises off the table. This forces the party system into presenting extreme choices that most voters oppose. The ensuing standoffs can last for years years and sometimes decades.

This chapter asks how voters react to political messaging and, crucially, sometimes change their minds. It begins by reviewing experimental psychology, neuroimaging, and artificial intelligence research showing that the brain reasons in two distinct ways: Recognizing patterns (fast or Type 1 thought) and constructing logical arguments (slow or type 2 thought). It then argues that the first mode almost always dominates political thought. The paradox is that humans have evolved to feel pleasure both in confirming old patterns and in being surprised by new ones. This means that while political messaging is often repetive, humans are also susceptible to messages that feature large departures from current orthodoxies. Because of majority rule, politicians will normally prefer messages that appeal to large numbers of voters. This explains how even highly-polarized electorates can sometimes realign around new issues to restore a more centrist politics.

This chapter reviews the Framers basic design principles, including separation of powers, federalism, and a frank recognition that all governments are and must be coercive.  It then presents a simple baseline for describing voter (un-)happiness with whatever policies the government adopts. The chapter ends with a detailed roadmap of succeeding chapters.

This chapter starts by reviewing the history of American news media since 1789, focusing on how new production technologies and business models led to a comparatively unbiased, objective journalism in the mid-20th Century. The difference today that audiences have become far more polarized. This has enabled market segmentation strategies in which each broadcaster avoid competition by pandering to a different political viewpoint. More recently, the rise of the Web has accelerated the rate at which new political messages can be invented, tested on audiences, and eventually refined to the point where mainstream outlets are prepared to broadcast it. The question remains how effectively large news organizations and Web platforms can suppress information they disagree with. The chapter explores when and to what extent todays markets permit this.

The chapter begins by reviewing the long history of how Congress has procedural rules for itself and, in the process, created protections against majority tyranny while limiting the power of transient majorities to rewrite Americas laws. It also describes how members individual political need to depart from party platforms limits party leaders power and often promotes bipartisanship. The trouble is that these same rules facilitate gridlock, stoking anger and polarization across the wider society. The chapter concludes by analyzing how filibusters, supermajorities, and government shutdowns limit majority tyranny by supplying a practical test of when proposed legislation unduly burdens the minority.

The chapter begins by describing the presidents relations with Congress, backed the threat of presidential vetoes on one side and impeachment on the other. It then traces the rise of the federal bureaucracy as an independent policymaker, asking whether and to what extent presidential power, rule of law norms, and bureaucratic incentives can ensure broadly democratic outcomes. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the Presidents War Powers, the dynamics of wartime elections, and the Executives alarming authority to impose emergency measures without Congress.

This chapter reviews and reconciles two theories of voting. Rational man models treat voters as actors seeking to maximize their material self-interest. Because their policy knowledge is limited, they often rely on ideology, trusted figures, and information picked up in the course of everyday activities to reach a decision. By comparison, survey evidence has shown that many voters are social, i.e. routinely adopt the opinions of those around them. The chapter concludes by describing various theoretical frameworks which unify these models. The combined models typically predict new behaviors in which initially small majorities are typically amplified; established opinions resist change for long periods; and very dramatic, once-in-a-generation events can abruptly reshuffle voters beliefs.

This chapter briefly describes the Madisonian or mainstream American political thought that the book seeks to describe and update. Given that the Constitution has been amended 27 times since 1787, this is clearly a moving target. Moreover, The Federalist barely mentions such centrally-important institutions as parties, newspapers, and Big Government bureaucracies. The chapter identifies various 20th Century texts that that fill these gaps.

This chapter begins by arguing that rule of law exists in the probabilistic sense that dispassionate judges often reach similar legal conclusions for reasons that appear to be universal across humans. Well-designed legal systems amplify these probabilities so that majority opinion quickly hardens into clear rules. Still, the question remains why judges should elevate rule of law above their own personal preferences. The answer seems to be that the legal communities they serve value and reward predictable outcomes. Still, the strength of this incentive varies from one era to the next, and is almost always weaker in highly polarized eras. Politicians threats to pack or otherwise hamstring the Court can compromise its rulings. Despite this, the Court remains an indispensable check on Congress, the Executive Branch and, through the antitrust laws, private power.

The chapter reviews the geographic aspects of Madisons system at the local, state, and regional levels. It begins with the crucially important rules that translate citizens votes into seats in Congress. It then describes how the advent of computers made it easier for politicians to evade traditional anti-gerrymandering rules and argues for an alternative, computerized approach that is simultaneously neutral, transparent, and respects the constitutional principle community. The scheme is further described in an Appendix. The chapter then turns to the states role in fostering political consensus within their borders while leaving room for different policy choices on the national scale. It concludes by examining how voters pushed the federal government into expansive missions that undermined the Framers principle of limited government and produced a bloody Civil War. The result was a new uncertainty over just where federal power begins and ends which still exists today.

This chapter briefly reviews the books main arguments and offers limited reforms to improve the Framers design. The deepest challenges involve the characteristically 21st Century debates over COVID, global warming, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Given that even the experts disagree, neither side is likely to persuade the other any time soon. The challenge for the Constitution is to manage the debate for years and even decades. Here the best option is to promote a pragmatic politics that encourages politicians to try different solutions, and just as promptly discard them when they fail. Obvious reforms include safeguards to ensure that key research is never blocked to defend political arguments, and sunset laws that automatically eliminate statutes that fail to show results.