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Summary
Summary
"This urgent book offers not only a clear-eyed explanation of the forces that broke our politics, but a thoughtful and, yes, patriotic vision of how we create a government that's truly by and for the people."--DAVID DALEY, bestselling author of Ratf**ked and Unrigged
In the vein of On Tyranny and How Democracies Die, the bestselling author of Republic, Lost argues with insight and urgency that our democracy no longer represents us and shows that reform is both necessary and possible.
America's democracy is in crisis. Along many dimensions, a single flaw--unrepresentativeness--has detached our government from the people. And as a people, our fractured partisanship and ignorance on critical issues drive our leaders to stake out ever more extreme positions.
In They Don't Represent Us, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig charts the way in which the fundamental institutions of our democracy, including our media, respond to narrow interests rather than to the needs and wishes of the nation's citizenry. But the blame does not only lie with "them"--Washington's politicians and power brokers, Lessig argues. The problem is also "us." "We the people" are increasingly uninformed about the issues, while ubiquitous political polling exacerbates the problem, reflecting and normalizing our ignorance and feeding it back into the system as representative of our will.
What we need, Lessig contends, is a series of reforms, from governmental institutions to the public itself, including:
A move immediately to public campaign funding, leading to more representative candidates A reformed Electoral College, that gives the President a reason to represent America as a whole A federal standard to end partisan gerrymandering in the states A radically reformed Senate A federal penalty on states that don't secure to their people an equal freedom to vote Institutions that empower the people to speak in an informed and deliberative wayA soul-searching and incisive examination of our failing political culture, this nonpartisan call to arms speaks to every citizen, offering a far-reaching platform for reform that could save our democracy and make it work for all of us.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this urgent and hard-hitting analysis, Harvard law professor Lessig (Fidelity & Constraint) dissects the causes, consequences, and possible remedies for the crisis of "unrepresentativeness" facing American democracy. The sources of government dysfunction, Lessig writes, include voter suppression laws; gerrymandering; the "fraught" design of the Senate, which gives outsize power to less populous states; the Electoral College; and "money in politics." The problems aren't just with "them" (politicians, power brokers), however; they're with "us" (American voters), too: technology- and market-driven changes in the media landscape, especially the advent of cable TV and the rise of the internet, have left the voting public "divided and ignorant" on policy and therefore "incapable as citizens," according to Lessig. In the book's second half, he proposes a series of fixes. Some, such as ranked-choice voting, seem sensible; others, including "democracy coupons," in which every citizen would be given a stipend to contribute to political candidates as they see fit, appear complicated and expensive to institute, especially in the current political climate. But Lessig's call for a "slow democracy movement" to create better informed voters resonates, and he lists many examples of citizen movements that have achieved their goals. This bracing report on the state of American politics offers valuable insights for the 2020 elections. (Nov.)
Kirkus Review
In our endangered democracy, the nation's citizens deserve to be heard.In his latest critique of American democracy, Lessig (Law and Leadership/Harvard Law School; Fidelity and Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution, 2019, etc.), host of the podcast Another Way and co-founder of Creative Commons, focuses on a crisis that he sees as "much more fundamental" than the current president: "unrepresentativeness." This lack of representation has several causes: the structure of the Senate, with two representatives from every state, no matter the population; the winner-take-all system in the Electoral College, which negates the choice of many voters and impels candidates to focus on swing states; campaign funding that gives wealthy contributors hefty influence; gerrymandering, which usually benefits extremists of both parties; and voters who lack a shared reality and "are divided and ignorant (at least about the other side) and driven to even more division and ignorance" by media that seek to make profits rather than to inform. "The consequence together is thus not a democracy that always bends to the rich," Lessig argues persuasively. "It is a democracy that cannot bend, or function." The author's many proposals to improve representation are less convincing than his analysis of problems. His suggestions range from giving every citizen "speech credits" or "democracy coupons" to fund political campaigns to paying voters to watch long, "wonderful and hilarious" political ads. Lessig deems the Senate "the hardest circle to square," admitting that some of his ideasreforming the filibuster and allocating votes for leadership based on populationare unlikely to happen. As far as the Electoral College, the author advocates that states' electors should reflect the national popular vote; or, if not, then Congress should allow electors to cast fractional votes. To engage the electorate, Lessig proposes "a congressional jury" made up of randomly chosen citizens to examine both sides of a public issue and make recommendations that, he asserts, a congressman would be morally bound to consider.An impassioned call to all Americans to fight for equal representation. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Distinguished Harvard law professor and author Lessig declares that our democracy is in crisis and that he understands that the challenges to rectify the situation can seem insurmountable. He traces the evolution of our democracy from the vision of the framers of the constitution to the enormous influence on Washington of money, lobbyists, polling, and the media, resulting in the erosion of genuine representation of ""We, the people."" Lessig offers a thoughtful, illuminating, nonpartisan, and pragmatic analysis of the changes needed to restore power to the public. He addresses the need to reform the electoral college, to end gerrymandering and voter repression, and to reform campaign financing. Lessig also addresses people's need to renew their civic commitment to be well informed and to vote. In this bold and compelling book, Lessig both scrutinizes the laws and forces that led us to this point and guides us towards visionary changes that can reset and restore our faith in our democracy. Given the complexities of the tasks at hand, this a must-read and a much-needed wake up call.--Elizabeth Joseph Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
The US democracy is broken, according to Lessig. It is "broke" in many ways, but the core problem in Lessig's view is that its basic institutions no longer represent the people. "Government by the people," Lessig asserts, means all of us in the collective sense of what a democracy is supposed to be--ruled by the people. Instead, he claims, America's institutions themselves have fragmented, appealing to segmented parts of the population. This book looks at how the traditional media, followed by the new and eventually social media, helped "fracture America" by dividing the people and setting the resulting tribes against one another. The author examines how political parties, interest groups, and many institutions of government may no longer serve as instruments to unite but instead divide, resulting in a country at odds with itself, and whose various institutions fail to represent and be representative of the people. Overall, the book describes causes and consequences of the absence of representation in government and offers solutions in pursuit of a possible fix. This work will be a good addition to collections on American politics, government, and the media. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --David Schultz, Hamline University
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. ix |
| Introduction | p. xi |
| Part I Flaws | |
| Chapter 1 The Unrepresentative "Them" | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 The Unrepresentative Us | p. 67 |
| Part II Fixes | |
| Chapter 3 Fixing Them | p. 139 |
| Chapter 4 Fixing Us | p. 171 |
| Chapter 5 What "Fixed" Would Get Us | p. 221 |
| Conclusion | p. 231 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 253 |
| Appendix: Reformers | p. 255 |
| Notes | p. 263 |
| Index | p. 317 |
