alt Hacker NewsIt is interesting that this is a mainstream existing thing in the US (at the state level), but more of a fringe proposal in the rest of the English-speaking world.
I think the answer may be that the difference in political systems (parliamentary vs presidential) and party systems (less two-party but with greater party discipline) solves many of the problems term limits are intended to solve in completely different ways.
Maybe a better answer would be for US states to adopt the parliamentary system? Although there is some debate about what the "republican form of government" clause means, it arguably doesn't rule out parliamentary republicanism, and Luther v Borden (1849) ruled the clause wasn't justiciable anyway. Added to that, the widespread practice in first half of the 19th century, in which governors were elected by state legislatures, was de facto the parliamentary system. I don't think there is any federal constitutional obstacle to trying this – it is just a political culture issue, it currently sits outside the state constitutional Overton window.
While you could adopt the Australia/Canada model of a figurehead state governor/lieutenant governor with a state premier, I think just having a premier but calling them "the governor" would be more feasible
> Maybe a better answer would be for US states to adopt the parliamentary system?
Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think it would change outcomes as much as people would think, but to scope limit this back to California again because electoral law discussions just fucking spiral anytime there’s no geographic constraint, the root of California’s lawmaking problems is that the legislature is both poorly structured and poorly balanced against the direct democratic approach we have taken for so much of our lawmaking. I don’t think that’s inherent to the non-parliamentary system we have in place, but a result of incremental rule changes stemming from decades of ballot propositions that are supposed to solve a problem, but don’t and tend to have negative knock-on effects that fly under the radar.
Or put another way: the legislature is for legislating. It doesn’t need a competing power structure, and it doesn’t need to be balanced by anything other than a good functional Executive power and a good functional independent Judiciary. If you have that as your starting point, then maybe there’s room to discuss if there are any real advantages of a Parliamentary system instead.