Having the topic of political reform start to seep into pop culture is a good thing.
Something interesting happened last night on SNL, which is Chris Rock’s monolog had some riffs on structural political reform. At around the three-minute mark, Rock made a few criticisms of the US government and actually made some passing reform arguments: First, he sideways suggested a parliamentary system. Specifically, he mocked the fact that the president gets to serve four years no matter what. A system that allows for the early removal of the head of government based on performance, is parliamentarism. In such a system the parliament can express no confidence in the Prime Minister and call for early elections or the party itself can decide to replace the PM (there are variations depending on the country). Unlike impeachment, which basically is for malfeasance, removing a PM is done usually over policy disagreements or the inability of the PM to govern adequately. This type of removal can also sometimes spark a new election, which is more democratic in the full sense of the concept as it allows the voters a say in which party continues to govern. In situations in which a party replaces its leader without an election, this allows for the majority party to have an incentive to handle a bad leader, as they can replace that leader internally without the stain of an impeachment trial and conviction. There are, of course, various complexities, depending on the specifics of a given system. At a minimum, there is a lot to be said (and that could be said) for having non-fixed terms for the head of government.
