The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy by Maxwell L. Stearns. Here is a description:
Can a parliamentary democracy end America's constitutional crisis?
Americans face increasingly stark choices each presidential election and a growing sense that our government can't solve the nation's most urgent challenges. Our eighteenth-century system is ill suited to our twenty-first-century world. Information-age technology has undermined our capacity to face common problems together and turned our democracy upside down, with gerrymanders letting representatives choose voters rather than voters choosing them. In Parliamentary America, Maxwell L. Stearns argues that the solution to these complex problems is a parliamentary democracy.
Stearns considers such leading alternatives as ranked choice voting, the national popular vote, and congressional term limits, showing why these can't solve our constitutional crisis. Instead, three amendments―expanding the House of Representatives, having House party coalitions choose the president, and letting the House end a failing presidency based on no confidence―will produce a robust multiparty democracy. These amendments hold an essential advantage over other proposals: by leaving every member of the House and Senate as incumbents in their districts or states, the amendments provide a pressure-release valve against reforms threatening that status.
Stearns takes readers on a world tour―England, France, Germany, Israel, Taiwan, Brazil, and Venezuela―showing what works in government, what doesn't, and how to make the best features our own. Genuine party competition and governing coalitions, commonplace across the globe, may seem like a fantasy in the United States. But we can make them a reality. This rare book offers an optimistic vision, explaining in accessible terms how to transform our troubled democracy into a thriving parliamentary America.
And from the reviews:
Drawing on history, social choice theory, and a study of democracies around the world, Maxwell Stearns argues for a radical restructuring of American government to save us from hyperpolarization and distrust in our institutions. A clear, earnest, and patriotic argument for parliamentary democracy in the United States.
―Richard Hasen, author of A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy
Anyone who cares about the future of American democracy should read this book. In Parliamentary America, Stearns provides a bracing and insightful analysis of what ails American democracy, then prescribes a strong and controversial cure. Whether one agrees with Stearns's cure, considering and debating the ideas in Parliamentary America could be a big first step in remaking and reanimating the democracy America deserves.
―Henry L. Chambers Jr., University of Richmond School of Law
Amid all the justified concern over democratic backsliding in America, too few observers have dared to say that it is time for a thorough rethink of the very basic constitutional structure. Stearns boldly lays out a plan to move the country toward a parliamentary form of government with a proportionally elected legislature. This is the most important book written on American constitutional structure in decades.
―Matthew Shugart, University of California, Davis
This is not just another treatise on political reform. Stearns pushes us to confront uncomfortable truths about our democratic structures, challenging the status quo with a blend of historical insights and forward-thinking solutions. With the precision of a seasoned constitutional law professor, he makes a compelling case for radical reform.
―Lee Drutman, New America; author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America