Sorry if I am being unfair, but itseems to me a bit naïve to base all of your Structural Democratic Reforms project solely on election theory, and ignore other institutions that are extremely impactful, but more neglected by and less accountable to the wide public, such as Supreme Courts, Central Banks and regulatory authorities (and even Audit Institutions).
Before the Hamas’s attack, Israel was in political turmoil because a sort of constitutional crisis between its Supreme Court and the government regarding the 2023 Israeli judicial reform. Current US Supreme Court not only struck Roe v. Wade this year, but it also decided that, while the Head of the Executive is immune against prosecution for any official act (Trump v. U.S.), regulatory authorities (that ultimately respond to the President) have no power to issue binding interpretations of statutory law (Loper Bright Enterprises et al.), thus ending four decades of the Chevron deference doctrine. Now consider that Supreme Courts allegedly have a longevity problem—they used to serve for an average 17 years, and are now predicted to serve for 35 years. Other jurisdictions face similar issues (e.g.: Brazilian judiciary has had a tremendous political impact in the last 10 years, and now legislators want to restrict Supreme Court judges powers). An obvious fix would be adopting term limits, but, though I am a passionate defender of judicial review, I think that centralizing so much power on such a small body is a mechanism design nightmare.
Sorry if I am being unfair, but itseems to me a bit naïve to base all of your Structural Democratic Reforms project solely on election theory, and ignore other institutions that are extremely impactful, but more neglected by and less accountable to the wide public, such as Supreme Courts, Central Banks and regulatory authorities (and even Audit Institutions).
Before the Hamas’s attack, Israel was in political turmoil because a sort of constitutional crisis between its Supreme Court and the government regarding the 2023 Israeli judicial reform. Current US Supreme Court not only struck Roe v. Wade this year, but it also decided that, while the Head of the Executive is immune against prosecution for any official act (Trump v. U.S.), regulatory authorities (that ultimately respond to the President) have no power to issue binding interpretations of statutory law (Loper Bright Enterprises et al.), thus ending four decades of the Chevron deference doctrine. Now consider that Supreme Courts allegedly have a longevity problem—they used to serve for an average 17 years, and are now predicted to serve for 35 years. Other jurisdictions face similar issues (e.g.: Brazilian judiciary has had a tremendous political impact in the last 10 years, and now legislators want to restrict Supreme Court judges powers).
An obvious fix would be adopting term limits, but, though I am a passionate defender of judicial review, I think that centralizing so much power on such a small body is a mechanism design nightmare.
And Central Banks face political scrutiny everywhere; yet, while Open Philanthropy did fund research on macroeconomics and there’s a consensus that monetary authorities must be insulated from the Executive, I am unaware of anyone in EA-space currently doing research on Central Bank politics (though, here, I would say it’s probably not a neglected topic—it’s just that the public tends to ignore it, and maybe crypto-friendly EAs just despise central bankers).