Should the House have more members?

This week, Julia, Lee, and James consider proposals to increase the size of the House of Representatives. Are 435 members able to represent effectively a diverse electorate comprised of almost 330 million people? If not, how many members should the House have? And will increasing the size of the House ameliorate or exacerbate its present dysfunction? These are some of the question they discuss on this week’s episode.

This episode is also available on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Show Notes

Lee reminds Julia and James that the original First Amendment to the Constitution proposed by James Madison in 1789 concerned apportionment and traces the present issue to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. He also mentions the cube root law to highlight the extent to which the United States is a global outlier when it comes to the size of Congress’s lower chamber.

James cites Federalist 58 when suggesting that increasing the size of the House is unlikely to empower its rank-and-file members and argues that the reform will further centralize power in the party leadership. He references Thomas Jefferson’s idea of a ward republic and Hannah Arendt’s council system when considering what a truly participatory politics looks like. He mentions John Aldrich’s work on parties in the first Congress to highlight the impact of party heterogeneity on centralization in the House.

Lee cites Frances Lee’s book, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign when considering the impact that a bigger House could have on Congress and its two political parties. He references his new book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.