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Existing research on bicameralism has paid rather limited attention to examining the legitimacy of upper chambers. This paper addresses this research gap and examines the unintended roles of upper chambers using the case of the Czech Senate. It explains how citizens perceive the role of the upper chamber and how their perceptions can differ from the chamber’s actual role. The research employs content analysis of semi-structured interviews with two groups of citizens (30 in total). The results show that the Senate is perceived as an elitist, apolitical institution that is or should be composed of wise, experienced, and moral people. A minority of citizens perceive the Senate as a body representative of local interests. However, these perceptions do not correspond to reality. The difference between the Senate’s perceived and real role can have both negative and positive effects on the institution’s legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the way in which institutional context shapes legislators' ability to represent women's interests. In recent decades, scholars have turned their attention to the process of representation in parliament, and we develop a novel theoretical framework that accounts for patterns of representational behaviour. Through an examination of the different institutional contexts of the two houses of the Canadian parliament, we argue that unelected, less partisan contexts give legislators more opportunities to act for women's interests than elected, partisan contexts where legislators must respond to the demands of their parties and their constituents in order to maintain power. To illustrate our theory, we examine two instances of legislative policymaking on women's equality issues. Our illustrations justify further investigation of unelected legislators as critical actors in the substantive representation of women in institutions around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally argued that representative democracies are unresponsive to the needs of future generations. Representatives, standing for re-election, are incentivized by the needs of current generations, and fail to take the interests of the unborn into account. However, this argument bypasses the institutional diversity among parliaments. In this article, we focus in particular on bicameralism, and we ask whether the representation of future generations is more prevalent in upper than in lower houses. We expect that posterity's interests will be taken into account more strongly in upper houses which are (1) mandated to reflect on the long-term impact of policies, (2) less politically and publicly visible and (3) at least partially composed of non-elected members. Based on an exploratory analysis of representative claims made on behalf of future generations in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives and the Senate, we conclude that the institutional status of the parliamentary assembly is not related to the propensity of making claims on behalf of posterity. We provide several explanations why this might be so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of capitalist democracies, the contradiction between people's expectations of equality and the subordination they experience at work is intense. I argue that it is the defining experience of the contradiction between capitalism and democracy. Capitalism grants political rights to property owners, while democracy grants political rights to the citizens recognized as equals. They are thus regimes of government that distribute rights in dramatically different ways. This essay is grounded in the understanding that firms are best analyzed as "political entities," and workers as "labor investors," and have thus a legitimate right to bear on the government of their work life. Examining the history of how political entities have become democratic through the innovation of bicameralism provides a "real utopia": economic bicameralism, that is, a set of patterns that may be applied to democratize and transition the corporate firm beyond capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferreras's bicameral governance proposal for the corporation contributes to a recent wave of interest in democratizing the workplace. In this article, I connect this to a related ongoing movement in favor of the stakeholder approach to corporate purpose. I argue that this connection sheds light on, and may provide remedies for, some issues with the bicameral proposal: first, the risk of gridlock between the two parties in the dual governance structure; second, the indeterminacy of good management when shareholder primacy is abandoned. But I also note that shareholder primacy emerged spontaneously from structural features of the economy, so that special protection for the "good" firms is warranted, and that other key limitations of a market economy cannot be alleviated fully by democratizing the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the adoption of the Italian Constitution, why did the parties choose to reduce instead of emphasizing the differences between the two Chambers that formed the Parliament? This article highlights the importance of the debate held in Italy between 1948 and 1963 on the functions, composition and methods to elect the Senate. The result, the Constitutional Law 3, 1963, eliminated almost all the differences between the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. This cannot, therefore, be considered a 'small reform', as it was defined, but one that profoundly conditioned the Italy's subsequent political history and the evolution of Italian bicameralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second chambers frequently form part of national institutional configurations, but their impact on policy making can vary from negligible to all-important veto players. The standard approach is to assess their importance via two dimensions: formal powers and compositional differences vis-à-vis the first chamber. In this paper, we conceptualise a third dimension: the legitimacy of second chambers. We subsequently measure the strength of second chambers in 14 countries and develop a new index of bicameralism. Running several quantitative analyses with a total sample of 29 OECD countries, we show how this index is significantly correlated to lower state intervention in the economy and greater regional autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Czech Republic and Poland represent countries with bicameral parliaments, where the existence of second chambers has often been questioned because both countries represent unitary political systems. While the demand for territorial representation is often quoted as the key reason for establishing second chambers, there are other principles of second chamber representation and / or roles they are playing. One of them is the expansion of the checks-and-balances system beyond the traditional executive -- legislative -- judicial triangle. The existence of two chambers also brings the check-and-balance principle inside the legislative branch itself. Second chambers are thus understood as certain guarantors of constitutionality and democracy. The article focuses on the role the second chambers in the Czech Republic and Poland have played in the process of preventing democratic backsliding, a recent phenomenon visible in CEE. The problem will be analyzed in the context of the compositional (in)congruence, the constitutional position and powers of both second chambers. It will also analyze whether the current Czech and Polish institutional frameworks allow for second chambers to act as guarantors of constitutionality and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the vast seam of scholarship on parliamentary history the evolution and role of select committees in the house of lords, particularly in relation to investigatory or policy‐focused committees, has been almost completely overlooked. They have been 'institutions ignored'. This gap in the existing research base is particularly stark when compared with the very large literature on the history of select committees in the house of commons. This article fills this gap by providing the first detailed historical account of the evolution of investigatory or policy‐focused committees in the house of lords. This account reveals the evolution of a distinctive 'scrutiny style' moulded around the notion of complementarity, a highly specialised approach and an understanding of the merits of self‐restraint. However, during 2018–21 a fundamental review of the investigatory committee system was undertaken within the house of lords which led to significant change in relation to both the structure and ambition of committees. The impact of this reform agenda is likely to ensure that select committees in the Lords are far more visible in the future, within and beyond the Palace of Westminster, than they were in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bicameral parliaments are especially apt to demonstrate how different environments and audiences affect political performance. During the Bourbon Restoration in France, the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers both had among their members such influential speakers as Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald or François-René de Chateaubriand, who belonged to the same conservative camp, but their character and style were highly different. Bonald is usually described as a man of abstract theories, for whom parliamentary politics has always remained alien, while Chateaubriand as a forerunner of Romantic literature is thought to have been more at home in political debates as an orator as well. The truth is, however, the exact opposite: Bonald seems to have been more successful in the lower house than Chateaubriand in the upper, which may be explained by their – however reluctant – adaptation to the different circumstances in which they were compelled to act. The first part of the paper describes the context: the chambers with their specific rules and practices as prescribed by the Constitutional Charter of 1814; the second part outlines the personal background of the speakers and their different attitudes towards the idea of parliamentarism based on their biographies and literary works; while the third part analyses their performance, using the transcriptions of their speeches in contemporary sources. The last part offers a brief overview of their later careers to show how their different attitudes towards parliamentary politics led to a more profound estrangement (especially on issues of freedom of speech and censorship), which, in their own judgement as well as in the eyes of the public, would ultimately separate them from each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does a government in a bicameral system strategically alter the length of the legislative process in the first chamber in anticipation of future majorities in the second chamber? Drawing on an existing formal model of dynamic policymaking, we argue that governing majorities strategically accelerate or delay their agenda when a potential majority change in the second chamber is imminent. If the government fears losing control over the second chamber, then the government accelerates their agenda. By contrast, if the government hopes to gain control over the second chamber, the government decelerates their agenda. We test our argument in Germany's symmetric and asymmetric bicameralism by analyzing 1,966 governmental bills from 1998 to 2013. The analyses confirm our expectations for symmetric bicameralism, thus suggesting that the synchronicity of election cycles should be taken into account both in the analysis of bicameral systems and in institutional design of such systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decree powers are common to presidential systems; they are rarely found in parliamentary ones. We analyze decree powers in one such rare setting: India. We show that bicameral minority governments in India systematically use ordinances to circumvent parliament and prosecute their legislative agendas. They promulgate more ordinances, enact less legislation, and often repromulgate lapsed ordinances. These patterns suggest that, with bicameral minority governments, the locus of lawmaking shifts to the executive branch. While both majority and minority governments invoke ordinances, the latter do so systematically to get around their parliamentary deficit. In the hands of minority governments, then, the mechanism effectively helps to defy the will of the parliamentary majority. This suggests that the ordinance mechanism, originally introduced in the Indian constitution for limited purposes, has blossomed into a distinct source of—and forum for—parliamentary lawmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the conventional view, presidents are largely bereft of influence with an opposition-controlled Congress. Congress sends them legislation with a "take it or leave it" choice that maximizes the preferences of the opposition majority while minimizing presidents' preferences. To extricate themselves from this bind, presidents threaten vetoes. Past research suggests that their efforts largely fail, however, for two model-driven reasons: first, veto threats amount to minimally informative "cheap talk," and second, Congress is a unitary actor with firm control over its agenda. We relax both assumptions, bringing veto rhetoric into a setting more closely resembling real-world conditions. Presidents transmit credible veto threats to a heterogeneous, bicameral Congress where chamber rules enable the minority party to wield some influence over legislation. Examining the legislative histories of all veto-threatened bills passed between 1985 and 2016, we confirm that veto threats ward off about half of veto-targeted legislative provisions—a far greater share than for comparable unthreatened provisions. The House of Representatives is more likely to introduce and pass legislation objectionable to presidents and the Senate is more likely to accommodate presidents, findings consistent with the textbook description of the modern bicameral Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring relative legislative influence is notoriously difficult, particularly in bicameral systems where two chambers have similar formal powers. Recent changes to the Canadian legislature offer a unique opportunity to understand how an upper house liberated from party constraints impacts that houses' legislative influence. I leverage an original panel data set matching lobbyist activity to parliamentarian characteristics and responsibilities and, using a difference-in-differences design, compare Members of Parliament to Senators, both independent and partisan. I find that independent Senators receive disproportionately more attention from lobbyists both after the changes and as the independent composition of the Senate grows. This article offers a time-variant measure by which perceived influence can be evaluated and contributes to the extant literature on intercameral relationships, partisanship, the legislative process, and party discipline and cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case of Spain as part of a broader comparative study on parliamentary scrutiny of the quality of legislation, looking in particular at the role played by the Letrados de las Cortes Generales, the corps of high-ranking parliamentary civil servants, or clerks, of the Spanish bicameral legislature. As in many other countries, the Spanish political landscape has witnessed an increasing polarisation in the last decade which has led to the fragmentation of the Congreso de los Diputados, or Lower House, once dominated by a two-party system. This has severely affected the parliament´s legislative function. Fewer laws are passed, and there has been a shift in the origin of legislative initiative. Government bills are no longer so easily passed, whereas non-governmental bills have more chances now of becoming laws than before. Against this background, and given the lack of specific parliamentary bodies or guidelines for the scrutiny of the quality of legislation, the Letrados de las Cortes Generales seem essential in contributing to improving the quality of bills, whichever its origin, throughout the legislative procedure, until their passing into laws. This article explores at length their role and the different steps and ways in which they do this. It also analyses the progress in setting standards and bodies for Legislative Drafting by the Spanish Government since, in the absence of specific ones for parliament, Government's Guidelines are usually applied by the Letrados in their work. To illustrate the current debate on the quality of legislation, the evolution of the Spanish Constitutional Court's rulings on the matter is also briefly outlined. In conclusion, and though limited to legal and technical aspects, the Letrados de las Cortes Generaleś scrutiny of bills does contribute, to a large albeit imperfect extent, to improving the quality of legislation in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that opposition veto power in institutional arenas such as second chambers can foster a more consensual relationship between government and opposition parties in parliament. This theoretical claim is supported in the article using data on legislative voting behaviour in the German Bundestag. The statistical analysis shows that opposition and government parties are much more likely to vote the same way, if the opposition controls a majority in the second chamber and this chamber enjoys veto power. This pattern holds even when controlling for policy-area specific ideological distances between government and opposition parties and electoral signalling incentives. The article's findings suggest that government and opposition parties seek compromises early in the legislative process and that bicameral conflicts are often already resolved in the lower chamber. The results here support theoretical arguments on the absorption of institutional veto players and challenge the frequent claim that opposition veto power leads to more competitive behaviour and gridlock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together seven original contributions on actors involved in trilogue negotiations whose role has largely been neglecled: the Commission, the Council, the Court, the Ombudsman, national parliaments, organised interests and Eurosceptic groups. This introduction outlines the setup and work processes of trilogues, and highlights the key findings of the issue's contributions, namely how actors at the edge of the negotiations can shape power relations in trilogues and how micro-behaviour shapes macro-processes of inter-institutional bargaining. It also discusses the ongoing tension between transparency and efficiency, notably when it comes to institutional oversight mechanisms and the legitimacy of trilogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In bicameral parliaments, upper chambers amend the bills that have been passed by lower chambers, and sometimes bills that are passed in one chamber never become law and just 'die' in the other. Why does one chamber fail or refuse to anticipate what the other will do? What can lead the political actors in one chamber to 'waste' their time and resources on a bill that will be never approved as law? How can we explain the variations in the number of such 'useless' approvals? This article helps answer these questions by focusing on 'useless approvals' in the Italian parliament (1979–2018). Italy offers an ideal setting to analyse this phenomenon, with two houses holding the same powers but characterised by varying degrees of political incongruence over time. We found that differences in preference between the two chambers positively affect the chances of useless approvals, above all for private members' bills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority‐party‐dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority‐party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate's institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority‐party support in House committees predicts House and Senate passage. During unified party control of the chambers, an increase in Senate majority‐party seats results in lower minority‐party support for the legislation in the House committee, while during divided party control of Congress, the House majority passes more extreme bills as the chambers polarize. Even in the majority‐party‐dominated House, the minority's preferences are incorporated into legislation, and the Senate's institutional rules moderate bills to a significant degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disproportional electoral system of the House of Commons is increasingly contested, while the undemocratic composition of the House of Lords has been criticised for a century. I first argue that simultaneous reform of both chambers creates the opportunity for far more optimal outcomes than possible under attempts to reform just one chamber. I then argue that bicameralism should continue so that the UK can be represented in two, currently convoluted, ways: as a singular polity in partisan terms and as both an aggregate of constituencies and union of nations, in geographic terms. The former would best take place in a reformed House of Commons, responsible for government formation, and composed of around 300 MPs elected by 'pure' proportional representation. The latter would best take place in a reformed House of Lords of around 300 peers, elected by plurality voting from single‐member constituencies. Together, these reforms would improve governance, representation, legitimacy, accountability and the robustness of the union, while retaining celebrated facets of the status quo such as simplicity and the direct constituency link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of electoral systems is being introduced which seeks to combine single-member districts with a proportional allocation of seats according to parties' national vote shares. One such system, that differed in its key features from many others, was introduced in Romania in 2008 and used in that year's general elections, when it performed reasonably well. It did not at the next elections in 2012, when an unforeseen consequence of a coalition winning more than half of the votes cast was that a number of 'overhang' seats was allocated to each house in the bi-cameral parliament, representing some 20 per cent of the total number of elected members. The system was then abandoned and replaced by the previously-used proportional representation system. This paper describes the system and its operation at the two elections, discussing the reasons for its introduction and later abandonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the legal and political state of equal suffrage in Spain. The perspectives applied are fundamentally those of three well-differentiated subject areas: Political Philosophy, Constitutional Law and Political Science. In addition, the text also grounds on a more younger field, the Voting Theory. The conclusions reached are highly worrying: not only that Spain is the country with one of the highest verifiable incidence of inequality in its voting system, but also that its Constitution of 1978 is host to a legal antinomy that has impeded adequate constitutional protection to guarantee the fundamental right of its citizens to an equal vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on 25th edition of the Constitutional Thought magazine of bicentennial of the Republic of Peru. It mentions beginning of a serious political confrontation in the population itself, which embrace extreme positions that distance themselves more and more from constitutional democracy; and also mentions change of some constitutional provision, such as the prohibition of re-election of congressmen or the return to the bicamerality in Congress.

Legislatures appoint committees for different purposes. Both Houses of the UK Parliament separate legislative committees from non-legislative, or select, committees. Each is unusual in that it utilises select committees to engage in post-legislative scrutiny. We examine why each engages in this type of scrutiny, given competing demands for limited resources. Distributive and informational theories are utilised to explain the difference between the two chambers, identifying why the form of asymmetrical bicameralism to be found in the United Kingdom facilitates scrutiny that would otherwise not be undertaken. The genesis and impact of post-legislative scrutiny committees are considered, with a focus on the House of Lords and why the use of such committees plays to the strengths of the House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost half of the bicameral legislatures in the Commonwealth are located in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Why so many bicameral legislatures are located in a relatively small geographic region, which is composed of countries that manifest characteristics more usually associated with unicameralism—small size, a unitary state, and homogeneity—is puzzling. Scholars have offered two possible explanations. The first concerns the presumed wish of the region's political leaders upon independence to replicate the values and institutions of their colonial mentor, Britain. The second concerns the presumed need to prevent one-party dominance by guaranteeing the representation of opposition parties in the second chamber. This paper challenges both these explanations. By examining the origins of bicameralism in the region with the arrival of the first settlers in the seventeenth century, its demise during the era of crown colony rule in the nineteenth century, its renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s, and its survival in the post-independence era this paper will offer a more multi-layered explanation This entails taking account of the complex relationship between these former colonies and their imperial past, the wide range of views expressed both locally and within the Colonial Office about the suitability of bicameralism in the debates that accompanied the transition from colonial rule to independence, and, finally, the very distinctive nature of Caribbean bicameralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main proposals to solve the 'asylum crisis' of 2015–2016 was to reform the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and, in particular, the Dublin regime. However, the European Council conclusion of June 2018 exposed the failure to find an agreement on the CEAS reform. This article examines the conditions for policy failure – focusing on how crises affect inter-institutional negotiations and the role played by the European Parliament (EP) in particular. It shows how the EP successfully managed to form a united position and frame the crisis as a failure of previous CEAS reforms, but that this was not sufficient to break the deadlock among member states. Therefore, it demonstrates how the 'shadow of hierarchy' cast by the European Council may be a sufficient condition to explain policy failure, which may potentially lead to the gradual disempowerment of the EP in EU policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arend Lijphart uses an average of five standardized variables – the executive-parties dimension (EPD) – to describe patterns of democracy and explain differences in democracies' performance. The article suggests ways to improve the descriptive part of the project. It argues that the EPD maps different approaches to achieving accountability and representation, rather than differences in consensus. This re-conceptualization leads to a more coherent and valid measurement. It is also argued that more systematic adjustments are needed for differences in constitutional structures (presidentialism and bicameralism). The article presents data on a revised EPD and its components for 36 democracies in the period from 1981 to 2010. As to the explanatory part of the project, we contend that the EPD often hinders adequate causal analysis rather than facilitating it. We show this by re-analysing democracies' performance with respect to turnout and capital punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of cross-institutional partisan links between the Council and the European Parliament is a key feature of bicameral law-making in the European Union. However, assessing the conditions under which national parties can and do influence ‘their’ Members of the European Parliament is complicated by a lack of measurements of the national interest at stake. Analysing the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals regulation, this article shows that national parties represented in the Council only seek to influence ‘their’ Members of the European Parliament when the national interest at stake is sufficiently large and, more importantly, when a legislative deal has been struck. These findings have implications for our understanding of legislative politics in the European Union and the relationship between Members of the European Parliament, European Parliamentary Groups and the Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bicameral university governance models often include a university senate coexisting in parallel to executive bodies. This paper analyses the functioning and performance of the tripartite 'participative' Senate of the University of Chile, which includes academics, students and non-academic staff. This paper reveals significant limitations in the functioning, performance and productivity of the Senate, consistent with the evidence reported by the related literature. Our study suggests that these deficiencies are associated with (i) the institutional design and organisation of the Senate, (ii) ambiguity (legal and practical) in respect of its authority, (iii) structural discord with other governing bodies of the university and (iv) lack of legitimacy and recognition of the Senate by other governing bodies and the university community in general, consistent with the observed lack of electoral support and representation of its members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a model of Parliamentary institutions in which a society makes three decisions behind the veil of ignorance: whether a Parliament should comprise one or two chambers, what the relative bargaining power of each chamber should be if the Parliament is bicameral, and how many legislators should sit in each chamber. We document empirical regularities across countries that are consistent with the predictions of our model. (JEL D71, D72) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 8 of the book "Consciousness and Loneliness: Theoria and Praxis" by author Ben Lazare Mijuskovic is presented. It discusses the context of the bicameral mind and presents a detailed description of it. It focuses on the concept of consciousness and also the darker elements of the subconscious mind which are supported through loneliness and aggression dynamics. It outlines the studies of authors Julius Jaynes, Jon Mills and Berthold Bonds regarding the matter.

Structural problems are examined with pairing two chambers, one selected by election and the other by sortition, into a traditional bicameral system. It is argued that an all-purpose legislative chamber modeled on existing elected chambers is a mismatch for sortition and that purported benefits of maintaining partisan elections alongside sortition are illusory. Alleged benefits of a hybrid bicameral system are shown to be outweighed by a variety of harmful effects. Furthermore, even if those harms are not substantiated, the continued existence of an elected chamber will likely result in the delimitation of the sortition chamber. Combining many different sorts of minipublics with different characteristics and functions is preferable, and a possible multibody sortition legislative system is presented. Finally, an alternative way forward for sortition is proposed by peeling away individual topic areas from elected bodies and transferring them to sortition bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of a hybrid bicameral system combining election and sortition is investigated. More precisely, the article imagines how an elected and a sortition chamber would interact, taking into account their public perception and their competing legitimacies. The article draws on a survey of a representative sample of the Belgian population and Belgian members of parliament assessing their views about sortition in political representation. Findings are combined with theoretical reflections on election’s and sortition’s respective sources of legitimacy. The possibility of conflicting legitimacies and mutually detrimental interactions leads to considerations of the effects of different possible distributions of power between the chambers as a crucial determinant of their interactions and perceived legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we review the intrinsic democratic flaws in electoral representation, lay out a set of principles that should guide the construction of a sortition chamber, and argue for the virtue of a bicameral system that combines sortition and elections. We show how sortition could prove inclusive, give citizens greater control of the political agenda, and make their participation more deliberative and influential. We consider various design challenges, such as the sampling method, legislative training, and deliberative procedures. We explain why pairing sortition with an elected chamber could enhance its virtues while dampening its potential vices. In our conclusion, we identify ideal settings for experimenting with sortition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of bicameralism in the world is increasingly an authoritarian phenomenon: while the percentage of bicameral democracies is in decline, there has been a steady increase in bicameral non-democracies. What makes non-democracies turn to bicameralism? We argue that bicameralism may serve as a means of post-conflict reconciliation or control of the legislature when the opposition gains seats in the lower chamber. We also propose a novel explanation whereby the introduction of bicameralism helps to mask a set of more controversial constitutional reforms. Drawing on a new dataset on second chambers from 1945 to 2016, we find that bicameralism is more likely to be adopted during years when formal presidential term limits are in place or when leaders are in their last term. This is because bicameralism is often a by-product of broad institutional reform that assists in justifying and legitimating the need for constitutional revision and in masking the extension of presidential term limits. The findings improve our understanding of institutions and institutional origins in dictatorships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commenting on ‘Australian Bicameralism as Semi-Parliamentarianism’, this paper reconstructs the underlying justification of the issue-by-issue median as a rule of collective choice, a rule central to the theory of complex majoritarianism. In semi-parliamentary systems, this rule is institutionalised in parliamentary chambers that make law and policy by issue specific majorities. The comment questions whether it is necessary to balance the vision of complex majoritarianism with the principle of simple majoritarianism, arguing that the values of identifiability, clarity of responsibility and stability are instrumental rather than intrinsic values. It notes further problems with semi-parliamentarianism as a two-chamber system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to four commentaries on the concept of semi-parliamentary government and its application to Australian bicameralism. It highlights four main points: (1) Our preferred typology is not more ‘normative’ than existing approaches, but applies the criterion of ‘direct election’ equally to executive and legislature; (2) While the evolution of semi-parliamentary government had contingent elements, it plausibly also reflects the ‘equilibrium’ nature of certain institutional configurations; (3) The idea that a pure parliamentary system with pure proportional representation has absolute normative priority over ‘instrumentalist’ concerns about cabinet stability, identifiability and responsibility is questionable; and (4) The reforms we discuss may be unlikely to occur in Australia, but deserve consideration by scholars and institutional reformers in other democratic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system - a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government - which we call ‘semi-parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two-dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Semi‐parliamentary government is a distinct executive‐legislative system that mirrors semi‐presidentialism. It exists when the legislature is divided into two equally legitimate parts, only one of which can dismiss the prime minister in a no‐confidence vote. This system has distinct advantages over pure parliamentary and presidential systems: it establishes a branch‐based separation of powers and can balance the ‘majoritarian’ and ‘proportional’ visions of democracy without concentrating executive power in a single individual. This article analyses bicameral versions of semi‐parliamentary government in Australia and Japan, and compares empirical patterns of democracy in the Australian Commonwealth as well as New South Wales to 20 advanced parliamentary and semi‐presidential systems. It discusses new semi‐parliamentary designs, some of which do not require formal bicameralism, and pays special attention to semi‐parliamentary options for democratising the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there are many studies that focus on the changing power of the European Parliament (EP), the shifting relationships between European Union (EU) institutions has received far less attention. Few consider the impact of the transformation of the EP on the other core EU institutions, particularly the Commission and Council. Together these three institutions determine the policy outcomes of the EU, but how they work together and the changing balance of power between them is largely a mystery. This research seeks to fill this lacuna by examining the relative policy influence of these institutions through the lens of policy preference congruence and inter-institutional policy coalitions. Utilizing the DEU II dataset to measure institutional policy preferences and policy outcomes it is possible to discern patterns of policy preference congruence between these institutions and assess their relative influence over policy outcomes. This research finds that previous expectations of a stable policy coalition between the two “supranational” actors are no longer accurate. Increasingly the EP and the Council share policy congruence and form effective policy coalitions. Moreover, the historical dependence of the EP on the support of the Commission has diminished, while the Council continues to exert largely independent policy influence [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In bicameral legislatures, the protection of small states often motivates the malapportionment of the upper house. Using a legislative bargaining model, I show that malapportionment may produce the opposite effect. Under unicameralism, same‐state legislators are shown to not inherently be coordinated to cooperate, diminishing the fear of a big‐state conspiracy. By contrast, under bicameralism, preference complementarities enable upper‐house legislators to effectively coordinate their state delegations, and this skews the expected allocation in favor of big states. Hence, unless bicameralism significantly increases their agenda power, small states will fare even worse under bicameralism whenever they are disadvantaged under unicameralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on three bills of constitutional reform submitted to Congress such as: the bill of reform, the bill 267/2016-CR that proposes to expressly incorporate the recognition of a secular state, and the draft law 1740/2017-CR that proposes to restore the bicameral system. It also analyzes its content and its success in the task of carrying out a political reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature finds evidence that the presence of strong institutional veto players correlates with policy gridlocks. In recent years, in several European countries the rationale of parliamentary second chambers as veto players has been called into question. With regard to Italy, in 2016 the parliament approved a broad constitutional reform, later rejected by a referendum. According to the proponents, this reform would have made Italian institutions more functional in a comparative perspective. Did voters actually block some sort of functionality? To answer this question, this article presents a systematic comparison of second chambers in the European Union. The theoretical framework is based on three dimensions of strength, operationalized by means of quantitative indicators and a comprehensive index of strength. The article ends with a discussion of the findings and a proposal for further research outlooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For too long, scholars have studied coalitions under presidential regimes as they did under parliamentarism: assuming that the executive needed to look for allies in only one chamber. However, symmetric bicameralism has made such assumption untenable. As a matter of fact, bicameralism, particularly symmetrical bicameralism, as it operates under presidential regimes, may entail significant constraints for policymaking and coalition duration. Indeed, controlling one of the two chambers may not be sufficient for the president to ensure policy approvals. This article focuses on the 28 coalition cabinets with a bicameral framework in Latin America since the return of democracy. I show that bicameralism dramatically affects the composition of the coalitions as the absence of a majority in both chambers engenders a post-electoral agreement round. Moreover, I show that when a coalition holds some kind of majority in both houses, the coalition agreement lasts longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the moment that liberal revolutions attributed sovereign power to the nation and constituted representative government as the only way to organize the exercise of political power, bicameralism and, in particular, the Senate will become a much discussed institution in comparative law. The extension of suffrage and the assumption of the democratic principle of popular sovereignty will further enhance the contradiction between the single popular will and its double expression. According to this idea, the twentieth century has shown a clear downward trend of bicameralism in the unitary states; not so in federal states. This paper analyzes the trend of bicameralism at the beginning of the 21st century, as well as the most recent debates around the Senate in both unitary and federal states. We will see how, despite the initial impression, the reduction of Senate power is widespread in contemporary democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrenchment is fundamental to law. Grand documents like the U.S. Constitution, and mundane ones like city and corporate charters, entrench themselves against change through supermajority rules and other mechanisms. Entrenchment frustrates responsiveness, but it promotes stability, a rule of law virtue extolled for centuries. It does so through a straightforward channel: Entrenched law is difficult to change. Scholars have long understood this idea, which can be called the first status quo bias of entrenchment. This Article shows that a second bias lurks: Entrenchment makes changes that do take place incremental. As entrenchment deepens, the scope of potential change to law collapses on the status quo. To restate the idea, when we entrench law, we prevent change, at least for a time, and we confine any changes that do take place to small steps. This has implications for constitutional law, especially the debate about Article V and the separation of powers, both of which shield the Constitution from change more than scholars realize. It also illuminates several questions, especially in comparative constitutional law, such as why constitutions remain unpopular after amendment. Finally, it generates a theory of constitutional failure. When voters' preferences evolve consistently in one direction, entrenched law eventually becomes as unstable as ordinary law, only less popular. Thus, entrenchment buys neither stability nor responsiveness. Because entrenchment confines legal change to incremental steps, amendment cannot correct the problem. This recasts questions of legal design in new light, and it may explain why some constitutions endure while others collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]