The parliamentary benchmark
On The Bob Zadek Show the parliamentary system functions chiefly as a comparison. In an episode on whether America has become an “elective monarchy,” Frank H. Buckley proposed going back to what he called the way it was intended to be: let Congress appoint the president and let Congress have the ability to remove the president by majority vote. Bob Zadek replied that if that seems extreme, that is the way it is in a parliamentary system, and Buckley added that when he mentions the idea people tell him it sounds like a parliamentary system and that Americans will not like it, to which he answers that it was huge in Canada. Zadek closed the episode saying he has a huge amount of both curiosity about and respect for a parliamentary system, and that experience shows that system works better than the system into which the United States has morphed Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014).
The same comparison recurs in a 2020 impeachment episode. Zadek described the British system’s vote of no confidence as a low-drama event—“Okay, you blew it. We need somebody else”—and called that system politically healthy while calling the American system politically unhealthy, saying the country struggles to use the impeachment process as a vote of no confidence. John Rothmann responded that in his interview with David Frost, Richard Nixon said about his enemies, “I gave them the sword and they thrust it into me and twisted it,” and that this is what happened with Donald Trump. Rothmann also recalled that when Harry Truman became president and there were real questions about whether he had any popular mandate, J. William Fulbright proposed that the United States revert to a parliamentary system, and that there was a debate in 1946, particularly after the ‘46 election, whether Fulbright was right; Rothmann’s answer was that the United States is not a parliamentary system and is not going to become one Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Minority leverage in the Senate
A 2017 episode on federalism and the flat tax used the phrase for a different purpose. Zadek observed that with Republicans holding the thinnest of voting majorities in the 100-member Senate, smaller wings of the party such as Rand Paul and Mike Lee would have disproportionately large control and a say and a seat at the table over legislation, because without the liberty wing supporting what the Republicans want to do their efforts will fail. He said this becomes something akin to a parliamentary system where minority parties or minority thinkers have a large amount of power, and argued that electing Austin Petersen, with libertarian leanings, would give libertarians and independent-minded people enormous power in the Senate Federalism and the Flat Tax: The Austin Petersen Plan (2017). The comparison here is not to coalition government as such but to the leverage a small bloc can exercise when majorities are thin.
Two dimensions, not one
Lee Drutman’s appearance on breaking the two-party doom loop supplied the show’s most analytic treatment. Asked by a caller to comment on the state of the parliamentary system in Israel, which the caller called a paralytic nightmare, and by Zadek whether Israel is an example of a system that works, Drutman said it is important to make clear that parliamentary systems are often conflated with multi-party systems, and that there are two separate dimensions: two-party versus multi-party, and parliamentary versus presidential. The United Kingdom, he said, is basically a two-party system but a parliamentary system in which there is no separately elected president; most European countries are parliamentary systems without a separately elected president, with France the major exception. Israel, he said, is a parliamentary system with a form of hyper-proportional representation in which the entire country is one electoral district, with 120 seats apportioned at a very low threshold, creating a system with way too many parties—he believed 17 parties in government. He attributed the recent impasse in part to Netanyahu’s stubborn politics rather than the system itself, and noted that Arab parties are treated as pariah parties, so about 20% of the seats in the Knesset belong to a party nobody will ever form a coalition with. Drutman said he would rather have two parties than 17, that the ideal is like four to six parties, and that countries in Western Europe such as Ireland and New Zealand, which he called examples of really top-thriving, healthy democracies, tend to have about four to six parties. He said he was not recommending that the United States become Israel, and that what he recommends for the United States is a much more modest version of multi-party democracy Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop (2020).
The House as the parliamentary part
In a 2022 episode on enhancing trust in democracy, Zadek told Ned Foley that it sounded like he had an ally in his campaign to convert the United States to a parliamentary system, describing how groups of somewhat disparate leaders can get together and form a coalition, and saying he has always looked with envy at the parliamentary system. Zadek also argued that Madison’s view of factions offsetting factions was a description of a parliamentary system, which Madison understood because England was a parliamentary system. Foley replied that he shares that view and that it should be the starting point, that if he could wave a magic wand he might want to replace the American system with the kind of thing Canada or Britain has, but that this is not going to happen because amending the Constitution is so difficult. Foley said the House of Representatives is the part of the American system most like a parliamentary system, and that the first structural thing to do is address gerrymandering, which he described as self-interested politicians manipulating boundaries to protect themselves from voters. He proposed a system of self-districting, closer to what other parliamentary systems use for proportional representation, in which each citizen could sign up to be in a chosen district rather than having politicians choose the boundaries. He noted that the requirement to have districts is not in the Constitution but an act of Congress first adopted, he thought, in 1842, and that in the old days some states chose at-large elections for their House seats—New Jersey in the 1830s, he said, might have had six or seven seats all elected statewide. Zadek said he had presented a gerrymandering cure almost identical to Foley’s, and that roughly 96% of seats are uncompetitive through gerrymandering Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022).
Across episodes: no single arc
The topic is touched in the 2014 elective-monarchy episode, the 2017 federalism episode, the 2020 impeachment episode, the 2020 doom-loop episode and the 2022 trust-in-democracy episode. The excerpts show no development from one treatment to the next: Buckley proposes Congress appointing and removing the president, Zadek repeatedly voices admiration for the parliamentary model, Rothmann insists the United States will not adopt it, Drutman distinguishes the parliamentary dimension from the multi-party dimension, and Foley treats the House as the closest American analogue while proposing self-districting. Each guest advances the comparison on his own terms, and no later episode answers an earlier one.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe how a vote of no confidence is formally moved or what follows its passage, beyond Zadek’s characterization of it as a low-drama event. They do not state the constitutional provisions governing impeachment beyond the two-thirds Senate conviction threshold mentioned in the 2014 episode, nor the outcome of any impeachment trial. They do not give the details of Drutman’s proposed electoral rules for the United States, beyond his statement that they are used in Ireland and Australia and would probably create about four to six parties. Foley’s self-districting proposal is described only in outline, and the excerpts do not say whether any jurisdiction has adopted it.