One way to reform the House of Representatives? Expand it.

Lee Drutman co-wrote with Yuval Levin a Washington Post op-ed making the case for enlarging the U.S. House of Representatives.

More House members representing a finer-grained political diversity could also make meaningful intraparty factions more likely, and with them a greater possibility of legislative bargaining and accommodation across party lines.

Of course, any expansion would need to recognize that the House is intended to enable face-to-face bargaining, so it can only grow so large. How large? A group of scholars — including the two of us — convened by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently considered several options. In a new report, we recommend adding 150 seats, taking the House to 585 members. The chamber would then continue to grow with every decade’s census, following a formula roughly intended to ensure that no state loses seats, as was done throughout the 19th century.

That would immediately reduce the number of Americans represented by the average member by a quarter, yet the resulting House would still be a manageable size — smaller, for instance, than Britain’s 650-member House of Commons. Such an increase (that would modestly add new seats without taking away existing ones every decade) could plausibly appeal to the existing Congress, which would have to enact it.

Of course, this would not be a silver bullet for what ails the House. But it would improve representation while also yielding several other important benefits.