This topic got started as comments in P&E, but I think it’s worthy of a separate conversation. I’ll start by pulling posts:
If there are not going to be any “states” or a federation then you need to start with a cool new name. “Republic of North America”? OK but perhaps we can jazz it up a bit.
As a U.S. citizen, I can choose the government that serves me, and there are fifty to choose from. I like that. This would not be the case if we did away with states.
I think I will start by saying that to redesign from the ground up is very unlikely. The challenge of a New Constitutional Convention itself would be a hard sell. Getting the majority of Americans on board with “starting over” and rewriting the Constitution is probably a non-starter.
I’m willing for this thread to consider partial restructures or all out blank slate. I don’t expect the ideas of this thread to ever be implemented. I just want to explore how we could restructure things, what a fairer system might look like.
To begin with, a “minor” fix might be reorganizing what the states are, redrawing state lines, and even combining existing states or breaking up others or doing away with some states.
If we aren’t tied to historical legacy, what would make sense?
I personally consider federalism to be one of the great innovations of the United States. It would make sense to have a clearer and cleaner delineation of which authorities reside with the federal government and which reside with the states but – using the example from @Aeschines – I really don’t think that having a federal real estate code would make sense since localities and regions differ so dramatically in regard to issues of land use.
Plus, there is only so much that a single legislative body can get through in a given session. Decentralised legislative functions are essential for a large country.
Plus, on major issues that you take a strong position on, do you want there to be only one government, which may be controlled by your political opponents?
For instance, do you want abortion to be under the sole jurisdiction of the federal government, with no other government that you can try to influence?
But, looking at this from outside, you could look at a common code for electoral administration, and non-partisan commissions to recommend electoral boundaries and judges for appointment.
The Democratic People’s Republic of North America? 
That’s a huge if right there, historical legacy being in significant part what humans run on. Fun to play with, though.
Are we maybe settling the area now called the USA on an alternative Earth, and need a constitution for it? In which case, the first question might be where the borders are. The current USA isn’t contiguous and Hawaii’s quite a long way away from the rest of it. But I don’t suppose that addresses the underlying question; the contiguous USA is large enough to pose the same sort of issues whether or not the country’s going to include Alaska and Hawaii (and other places with intermediate status; though I think we ought to ditch the intermediate status, so that citizens of all places considered to be part of our new country have full voting rights.)
I like the idea of two houses of Congress with different length of terms and elected from different size of areas. I don’t like having everybody elected nationally; it’s a big country with a lot of different attitudes. But we should avoid having one of the houses becoming possibly controllable by a very small percentage of the total population. I’m not sure how to write that. Periodic re-districting for both houses, maybe? If we don’t have state boundaries, that should be possible. But without any state boundaries, how do we sort out the kind of laws that reasonably should be local? And we’re certainly going to at least have some sort of municipal boundaries. Because City X with 10 million population needs a certain sort of trash pickup legislation doesn’t mean that Village Y with 273 people needs to or even can do the same thing, and trying to make them all do the same thing would only create an unworkable mess.
I’d like to get instant-runoff voting into the constitution. I think it may be the best way out of the two-party bind.
I’d also like to get in there that financial and time limits and truth-in-advertising laws enacted equally on everybody don’t violate protections of free political speech; that corporations are not people and do not have the rights of citizens; that requirements for safe handling of weapons are legitimate and that specific locations can ban specific weapons if they can show good reason; and I’m sure I can think of some more but I need to go hang out the laundry, now.
I would agree we don’t need everything at a national level. Certainly cities will exist as local jurisdictions.
We can have “states” or some other divisions of administration above cities but below federal. They would have some amount of jurisdictional autonomy, just like cities do.
The current Constitution limits federal authority to enumerated powers, and nominally leaves the bulk of power to the states. The intent is to distribute control as local as possible for issues that do not affect other states. That seems like a sound principle - assign authority to the lowest common level, or something.
I don’t think driver’s licenses and such have to be federalized. Reciprocity of recognition handles that. If we want a national ID for internal matters, we could make one.
I created a sister thread for practical changes that could be implemented now.
I’m not talking about rerunning history. We stick with the current external boundaries. No arbitrary annexing of Canada or ceding Texas back to Mexico.
I’m thinking more along the lines of why are there North and South Dakota? Do we really need two? Is there any reason for Montana and Wyoming to be seperate states? Why not Wyomontana, or WyTana?
I would suggest, however, one key change - all US Territories should be offered a choice of independence or statehood. Puerto Rico, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands - they deserve full representation. Want that why the US Revolution happened?
I think the current structure is pretty good. Only thing I’d change would be:
- Direct popular vote election to the presidency.
- Supreme Court justices can be removed from office by a 3/4 vote of the Senate
- Much stricter control on the media and journalists, to prevent muckraking
- House and Senate both elected to 4-year terms, with a 20-year max limit on time in Congress
- Supreme Court decisions can be overturned, but only by a 3/4 majority of both houses of Congress. The exception to this would be laws pertaining to Congress itself, such as Congress salaries.
- Constitutional amendment needs only 3/4 majority by referendum or 3/4 of states
Because the sizes would be, at least potentially, unwieldy? Are you suggesting changes like these only because of the sparse population?
The fundamental issue about states is how regions with vastly different populations should be treated in the federal government structure. I think there are good reasons for not making all federal representation strictly based on population. If we grant that some intermediate division of government, between municipal and federal, is necessary, whatever we call them and however their boundaries are drawn, some of them are going to be very sparsely populated. I think the concept of equal representation for each state in one of the two houses of congress is a good compromise. How the responsibilities of those two houses are sorted out could certainly be a subject of fruitful discussion.
On the other hand, I don’t think that principle should be continued in federal, i.e. presidential, elections.
Some issues, off the top of my head, that should be dealt with in a new constitution:
Rules of ethics for legislators, administrators and the judiciary should be encoded. Enforcement would not be left to the bodies whose ethics are being regulated, somehow there would have to be a completely independent and incorruptible enforcement arm (well, I can dream).
Federal office of Ombudsman to investigate citizen complaints against any part of the federal government. Funding by a formula written into the constitution so it can’t be arbitrarily cut down to uselessness.
A requirement for any federal spending plan that it must include failure standards, i.e. minimum performance requirements below which the program will be considered to have failed, in which cases the programs will be discontinued (and, ideally, replaced by something better). In other words, put some teeth into the Office of Management and Budget reports.
These would make a good start, anyway.
Is it really “muckraking” that you have a problem with?
I think freedom of the press—or whatever the modern equivalent of “the press” is—is important. I think the way so many Americans get their view of reality filtered through the right-wing media (Fox News et al) is a real problem (and left-wing media at least has a potential to become a problem as well), but I’m not sure how or whether that problem could be solved with “stricter control.” Possibly something like a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, but updated (how?) for the modern media situation?
Having administrative divisions in no way implies a country has a federal government. Consider, e.g., France. I thought one of the premises of the OP is that there would be no autonomous “states”.
I’m assuming from your username, that you’re not American, and aren’t up on how states were originally formed.
Put very simply, there were the original 13 colonies that became the first 13 states. The US also had territorial claims out to the Mississippi River, even though it was essentially undeveloped with the exception of a few French and Spanish cities like Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, and St. Augustine.
The Constitution defines a mechanism for territories to become states - in essence there has to be some minimum population, there’s a referendum for statehood, and if that passes, Congress empowers them to have a state Constitutional convention to write the state’s constitution. Once that’s done, Congress and the people of the territory approve the new Constitution, and Congress passes a joint resolution approving statehood.
In practice, this is how most states were formed. There were a few cases where Congress didn’t allow it, and a few where the states were not part of a pre-existing territory, whether because they were already sovereign (Texas, Vermont), or carved out of Mexican Cession land (California), or set off from other existing states (W. Virginia, Maine, and Kentucky).
So most states were formed from either the existing territories between the original 13 colonies and the Mississippi, the Oregon Territory, the Louisiana Purchase territories, or the Mexican Cession territories.
Of course there was politics involved - in the case of the Dakotas, it was a way to add two Republican states rather than one.
1 a good idea
2. They can already do that.
An amendment can already do that.
My design?
Stick with the Constitution, pretty much as written but direct election of presidents. In other words, one amendment.
Four things definitely:
Direct election of President with rank-choice or something similar.
Debt ceiling automatically increased in line with budget. That is, if Congress and President budget something and Revenues aren’t there, then borrowing doesn’t need separate approval.
Stronger ethics rules for all branches of government.
Independent bodies to draw Congressional and state legislature districts.
I think one key question is, What are the boundaries of this thought experiment?
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Do we go for absolute global best practices, and perhaps go with a parliamentary system with a prime minister (which I personally am not thrilled with, but some might consider it best). Or do we build on what Americans are familiar with right now and stick with a president?
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Do we stick with global best practices, or do we try to create a better government than any that currently exists?
And part of my answer starts with asking the board a question: Is there any country whose system of government stands head and shoulders above the rest, irrespective of national character and culture, etc.? For example, Japan is a very cohesive society with near 100% literacy and one of the lowest crime rates in the world, but is its system of government superior in some outstanding way? I think not. Similarly, it seems that the Scandinavian countries have a nice social safety net and happy people, and I’m sure we can learn much from them in the details, but I can’t think of anything they do all that different from other modern, liberal countries.
Further, most of the countries of the world don’t have a balanced budget or anything else to emulate in the fiscal domain (those that do typically have a lot of oil). Most “modernized” countries have a fertility rate that’s below replacement, and many far, far below.
In short, there’s not a lot out there to admire or imitate in the macro. Most countries are just muddling along. This is the background to the thought experiment that needs to be recognized, IMHO.
Personally, I don’t have any brilliant ideas for reforming the government, and most of what I had to say is in the other thread about “fixing government.” I think it’s mostly about eliminating the dumb aspects of our system, such as fixing the Supreme Court and eliminating the Electoral College. I would also eliminate the Senate and mostly make states irrelevant. Beyond that, I think it’s mostly about fine-tuning social programs and the taxation system.
If I have a big but vague idea, I think we need to move from an economic system based on debt (personal and governmental) to one that is not while still maintaining personal freedom and retaining the best aspects of the free market. Not communism. I think we are a couple hundred years away from coming up with something that works, however.