Bicameral Legislature Research Articles

The Political Segregation of the United States

The federal bicameral legislature (House of Representatives and Senate; Congress) of the United States of America (U.S.; America) is currently dysfunctional, in that it is unable to pass legislation to address important issues such as immigration reform, student loan relief, minimum wage, budget reform, and economic development. This dysfunction is usually attributed to the intransigence of America’s two ruling political parties, the liberal-leaning Democratic Party and the conservative-leaning Republican Party. This intransigence has led to a situation in which most legislators refuse to compromise with legislators from other political parties.I show that dysfunctional government in the U.S. is largely a byproduct of “political segregation’: a phenomenon in which liberals tend to relocate to live in areas where liberal voters are in the majority, and conservatives tend to relocate to live in areas where conservative voters are in the majority. I analyze U.S. presidential election data by state from 1824-2012, and show that a shift occurred in voting behavior for key American states. I believe that this political shift began to occur after 1976, and I explore some of the reasons for these political trends. I review and discuss the psychological literature related to voting behavior.I hypothesize that individual U.S. federal legislators are following the wishes of the vast majority of voters in their districts, and that dysfunctional government is a byproduct of political segregation, and is not simply a function of the intransigence of individual legislators.Finally, I discuss my results and offer some suggestions for reducing political dysfunction in the United States.

Constitution reform for responsible government in Trinidad and Tobago

ABSTRACTIn Westminster-type parliamentary systems, critical checks and balances are placed upon the Government by parliamentary accountability (‘responsible government’), which lies at the core of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Trinidad and Tobago, a former British colony that became independent in 1962 and a constitutional Republic in 1976, has the Westminster system of government where the Executive is drawn from the Lower House and is dependent upon it for its authority. It has a bicameral legislature and its Parliament comprises the President, a nominated Senate and the House of Representatives. Constitutionally, like some Caribbean countries, the number of parliamentary members who can be made government Ministers is unlimited, which can prevent constitutional sanctions, such as a no-confidence vote, despite any abuse of government power. Amendments to the Constitution are proposed to strengthen parliamentary democracy: firstly, limiting the number of ministers; secondly, ensuring that the Government is not guaranteed a simple majority of votes in the Senate. Further, it is argued that if the Prime Minister recommends to the President such number of Ministers that, ab initio, would preclude either responsible government or a successful no-confidence vote in the Government, the President, in whom executive authority is vested, could use reserve/prerogative powers to refuse to make such appointments.

Bicameral Development: Second Houses in Developmental Perspective - Lessons Learned in Afghanistan

Legislatures are increasingly recognized as an important element in democratic governance deserving special attention and support by the international development community. Somewhat surprisingly, while stressing the importance of designing programs that take account of significant political and systemic features of the political landscape, there is little attention paid to the unique features of a bicameral legislature. This curious absence in the development literature is mirrored in the political sciences/comparative legislative studies arena as well. Yet while a majority of legislatures in the world (over 58% in the IPU Parline database) are unicameral, a significant percentage (42%) are bicameral. Moreover, they are not going away. While during much of the 20th century most changes in the number of legislative chambers have been from two to one, some have shifted from unicameral to bicameral (e.g. China, Hungary, Morocco, Poland, USSR-Russian Federation) or adopted a bicameral system in a new government (Afghanistan.) Kenya adopted a bicameral system as recently as 2012. Even if the trends were against bicameralism, the existence of such a significant number would still argue for coverage within the development literature.In a bicameral system, what distinguishes that legislature is the presence of a second or “upper” house. While differences exist between and among the various lower houses or house of representatives, those differences have been adequately addressed in the general literature on parliamentary development. Therefore, in this paper I will focus upon the unique characteristics shared by various upper houses and the relationship between the upper and lower house (representative role, selection process/criteria; tasks/legislative role; power differential; politically distinct entities; and administration) as it applies to parliamentary development. In doing so, I will use the work done by The State University of New York’s Center for International Development (SUNY/CID) with the parliament of Afghanistan through the course of the USAID funded Afghanistan Parliamentary Assistance Project (APAP) to provide an illustrative case study. While APAP does not illustrate all of the challenges presented by programming for an upper house, the Afghan parliament was restarted in 2005 virtually from scratch (after having been disbanded since the 1970s) and the project provided an extraordinary of technical support from the year preceding the first parliamentary elections up through 2012.

Of Monarchs and Majorities: Thomas Paine's Problematic and Prescient Critique of the U.S. Constitution

The goal of this article is to examine Thomas Paine's critique of the American Constitution, which depends largely on his rejection of the American executive and bicameral legislature. I contend that Paine's dim view of the American Constitution is consistent with his stated faith in human beings’ capacity for reasonable self-government, a faith that outstrips that of the Founders. While scholars usually attribute Paine's eventual alienation from the Founders to his participation in the French Revolution or his anti-Christian deism, this examination of Paine's thought reveals their substantive politico-theoretical disagreements and helps to explain his break with his American revolutionary brethren. I seek to adumbrate these theoretical differences to clarify Paine's contribution as a prescient—if problematic—critic of the American Constitution. The article closes by considering what modern readers might learn from Paine's critique of the U.S. Constitution.

The Judicial Bookshelf

The Judicial Bookshelf DONALD GRIER STEPHENSON, JR. The absence of a national judiciary, declared Justice Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, “was one of the vital defects of the confeder­ ation. And every government must, in essence, be unsafe and unfit for a free people, where such a department does not exist.” Without courts, he continued, “the govern­ ment must either perish by its own imbecility, or the other departments of government must usurp powers, for the purpose ofcommanding disobedience, to the destruction of liberty. The will of those who govern, will become, under such circumstances, absolute and despotic; and it is immaterial, whether power is vested in a single tyrant, or in an assembly of tyrants. In every well organized govern­ ment, therefore, with reference to the security both of public rights and private right, it is indispensable that there should be a judicial department to ascertain, and to decide rights, to punish crimes, to administerjustice, and to protect the innocent from injury and usurpa­ tion.”1 Thus, the provision within the Consti­ tution for a system of national courts was intended, Story maintained, to serve two objectives “of paramount importance” and “fundamental to a free government.” The first is “a due execution of the powers of the government; and the second is a uniformity in the interpretation and operation of those powers, and of the laws enacted in pursuance of them.”2 In service of those objectives, the “universal sense of America has decided that, in the last resort, the judiciary must decide upon the constitutionality ofthe acts and laws ofthe general and state governments, so far as they are capable ofbeing made the subject of judicial controversy.”3 Story’s suggestion that inclusion of a national judiciary was practically a foregone outcome at the Philadelphia Convention anticipated Justice Robert H. Jackson’s much later but similar claim about the commerce power denied Congress under the Articles of Confederation but then given to Congress at the federal Convention in 1787: “The desire of the Forefathers to federalize regulation of foreign and interstate commerce stands in sharp contrast to their jealous preservation of the State’s power over its internal affairs. No other federal power was so universally assumed to be necessary. No other state power was so readily relinquished.”4 THE JUDICIAL BOOKSHELF 445 Story’s view was similarly echoed in thoughts that Justice Stephen J. Field expressed in 1897, toward the end of his then record­ setting High Court tenure ofnearly thirty-five years.5 For him, in the judiciary’s power to declare the law “is found the safeguard which keeps the whole mighty fabric of government from rushing to destruction. This negative power, the power of resistance, is the only safety of a popular government.”6 Yet determination to institutionalize a system of national courts also required a decision on how judges would be selected. The method chosen—nomination by the President coupled with confirmation by the Senate—yielded blended responsibility and was the outgrowth ofthe competing proposals at Philadelphia. There the Virginia Plan called for selection ofjudges by the lower house ofa bicameral legislature, and the New Jersey Plan called for a unicameral legislature (as did the Articles of Confederation) and assigned judicial selection to the executive.7 As one study has argued, many of the “framers did not want the power of appointment to be vested solely in the hands of the president. Their colonial experience cautioned them against such an institutional arrangement because royal governors had abused their appointment power by giving offices to personal supporters, and because judges so appointed had felt no connection with the people whose law they were entrusted with administering.” Similarly, experience after 1776 had taught them that placing selection solely in legislative hands “was equally troublesome, as battles ensued over patronage and no clear lines of responsibility were drawn.”8 Or, as Delaware delegate John Dickinson advised at Philadelphia, “Experi­ ence must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us.”9 Still, the widely held expecta­ tion that George Washington would be the new nation’s first chiefexecutive surely eased formation of the eventual consensus toward placing such significant appointing authority...

二院制における多元的民意の反映

The National Diet of Japan is composed of two chambers: House of Representatives (HR) and House of Councilors (HC). One of the reason why bicameral system has been sustained in Japan after World War II is to pluralistically reflect ‘the will of the people’ on policy making process. If so, does Japanese electorate positively evaluate the spirit of bicameralism? Do those who expect a pluralistic representation connect the expectation with their voting behavior? By analyzing Web survey data collected at 2013 HC election, this paper demonstrates that those who positively evaluate the spirit of bicameral legislature tend to vote for opposition party in HC election. This result means that these electorates try to realize a pluralistic representation under bicameralism by differentiating partisan distribution of seats between HR and HC.

The Abolition of the Legislative Council of Nova Scotia, 1925-1928

From 1758 to 1928, Nova Scotia had a bicameral Legislature made up of the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council. In the period following Confederation, the Legislative Council came under increasing fire as unnecessary, expensive, and anachronistic. Yet, for a period of half a century, all efforts to abolish it failed. Following the landslide Conservative victory in the provincial election of 1925, however, incoming Premier Edgar Nelson Rhodes led a crusade to abolish the Legislative Council once and for all, a crusade that ultimately led to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Westminster. Armed with a Privy Council opinion permitting him to dismiss existing members of the Legislative Council and appoint an unlimited number of replacements, on February 24, 1928, Rhodes was able to push through an abolition bill. At the end of the 1928 session, the Legislative Council ceased to exist, its powers devolved upon the House of Assembly and Lieutenant-Governor. This thesis examines the history of this battle, including the nature of the Nova Scotia constitution, Rhodes’ initial push for abolition, his appeal to Ottawa when that proved unsuccessful, the litigation before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the final abolition of the Legislative Council.

“A Genuine Republican”:

“A Genuine Republican”:

John Adams, Constitution Monger

John Adams never ceased defending his work as “Constitution monger.” As author of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, he had successfully devised a governmental structure of separated powers and fixed, express limitations that became an enduring model for modern American constitutionalism. Even so, he continued to believe this structure – resting on a bicameral legislature, a strong executive, and an independent judiciary – to be in constant danger. The threat, he feared, began with human nature itself, which he viewed as prone to irrationality and disorder. Men in the abstract might be trusted and their sovereignty acknowledged, but in reality it was necessary to create a “government of laws, and not of men.” This essay examines his experience in the tumultuous world of Massachusetts politics and his efforts to embody the will of the people and simultaneously to protect it from itself

Bicameral bargaining and federation formation

This paper takes a political economy approach to fiscal centralisation through federation formation. We analyse a two-region model of federalism with inter-regional policy spillovers. Departing from a state of independence with decentralised provision of public policy, we analyse the proposed formation of a federation to internalise the spillovers. We consider equilibrium allocations under alternative institutional environments involving: simple majority voting, a restriction of uniform taxation, and regional bargaining through a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism facilitates federation formation for the largest set of parameter values of the model, which is consistent with the observation that bicameralism and federalism often appear together.

The nexus of bicameralism: Rapporteurs’ impact on decision outcomes in the European Union

When the chambers of a bicameral legislature must negotiate to reach a decision outcome, the bargaining strength of each side is affected by the composition of its negotiating delegations. We examine some of the implications of this proposition for legislative negotiations between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers. We develop and test hypotheses on how the bargaining success of the EP is affected by the choice of its chief negotiator, the rapporteur. Our findings support the argument that negotiators in a bicameral setting play a ‘two-level game’, where bargaining strength is shaped by the degree to which negotiators can credibly claim to be constrained by their parent chamber.

Balancing in the U.S. States, 1978–2009

AbstractSince the Civil War, the president's party has lost seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in all but three midterm election cycles. Many attribute this pattern to “balancing” by moderate voters who prefer a Democratic Congress when Republicans control the White House, and vice versa. Although a number of scholars have tested the balancing hypothesis, the debate remains unsettled. We argue that the U.S. states provide an excellent way to analyze the issue further. Similar to the national government, states feature an executive and (in most cases) a bicameral legislature whose members come up for election in both gubernatorial and state midterm years. If voters balance, one should observe such behavior in state elections when an executive's partisanship is known and a legislative choice is necessary. We examine state legislative elections from 1978 to 2009 and find evidence consistent with the balancing hypothesis.

Approximating Democracy: A Proposal for Proportional Representation in the California Legislature

The State of California elects a bicameral legislature through a first-past-the-post electoral system. Beginning in 2012, the election of California state legislators will be through an open primary, two-round system. Neither of these electoral systems provides for proportional representation in the legislature. Accordingly, neither system leads to a truly representative democracy. The author recommends that the state adopt a proportional representation electoral system – specifically, a mixed-member system – as a more democratic alternative plurality/majority systems now in place or projected to be implemented in 2012. In addition, the author explains why the state legislature should be unicameral and increased in size from the current 120 legislators to 320.

Where Does Confucian Virtuous Leadership Stand?

For over decade Daniel Bell has been pioneer in study of democracy and human rights in an East Asian context. His remarkable book Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context elevates his research to new level. This new volume offers critical examination of uniquely parochial Western liberal democracy, which has been promoted in various parts of world as universally valid regardless of local conditions. Based on his years of firsthand experience and personal knowledge of East Asian societies, Bell proposes rather ambitious alternative model of democracy that would be suitable to cultural setting where there is long history of Confucian influence. Chapter 6, Taking Elitism Seriously: Democracy with Confucian Characteristics/' is probably most exciting and provocative part of book. In it Bell argues for taking seriously not just one but two important values, namely democracy and political elitism. Confucian political elitism is defined as rule of wise. It exemplifies ideal that the best and brightest should exert more influence in order to build good society. On one hand, this kind of political elitism may be particularly appropriate for today's societies; on other, Bell argues, there is an equally profound need to institutionalize democratic virtues of accountability, transparency, and equal political participation. Balancing these two considerations leads Bell to propose his version of modern Confucian democracy. Specifically, this would involve establishment of a bicameral legislature, with democratically elected lower house and 'Confucian' upper house composed of representatives selected on basis of competitive examinations (pp. 1 65-166). The upper house would decide on policies by means of majority vote following open and public deliberation. When upper and lower houses disagree, Bell seems uncommitted as to which house should have final word. Anticipating obvious challenge, he proposes that deputies from upper house be selected through an examination mechanism rooted in Chinese culture. Such an examination would be designed to single out most desired traits in candidate. This idea of bicameral legislature is intriguing, to say least. It is arguable that if United States had such system, Congress might not have given its approval to disastrous war in Iraq. As Phil Donahue's recent film Body of War shows, when call to war in Iraq was brought to vote on floor of Congress, Bush administration timed debate so that vote would take place just prior to November election (the vote in U.S. Senate took place on October 11, 2002). Facing very angry post-9/1 1 nation, both houses were under tremendous pressure to support war. It can be argued that if members of Congress in one of two chambers had been selected through knowledge-based examination process rather than by popular vote, these members would have been less likely to

Government, Press, and Subversion in Russia, 1906–19171

Government, Press, and Subversion in Russia, 1906–1917¹

The Dynamics of Lawmaking in a Bicameral Legislature

This article analyzes legislative performance in a nascent presidential bicameral democracy, taking Brazil as a case. The author argues that the timing and outcomes of legislative production are functions of bicameral incongruence, types of bicameralism, sequence of examination, and legislative bargaining. These hypotheses are tested using a new legislative data set from Brazil that covers over 3,000 bills submitted to the National Congress since 1988. Event history analyses of these bills show that presidential bicameral (coalitional) majorities, presidential elections, initiation by the lower house, and bills proposing provisional changes raise the chances of a bill's approval. The results also indicate that the effects of many of these variables are time dependent. In contrast, bicameral incongruence, symmetric bicameralism, and legislative elections either raise the risks of a bill's rejection or delay the timing of its approval. Economic crises increase legislative activities in general in both approving and rejecting bills.

Targeting Corporate Political Strategy: Theory and Evidence from the U.S. Accounting Industry

By analyzing the interaction between a business firm and multiple government institutions (including a regulatory agency, an executive and a bicameral legislature), we develop predictions about how firms target their political strategies at different branches of government when seeking more favorable public policies. The core of our argument is that firms will target their resources at the institution that is ‘pivotal’ in the policy-making process. We develop a simple framework, drawing on the political science literature, which identifies pivotal institutions in different types of political environments. We find empirical support for our thesis in an analysis of how U.S. accounting firms shifted their political campaign contributions between the House and Senate in response to the threat of new regulations governing auditor independence during the 1990s.

Liberia: Study of Liberian Government and its Relationship to American Government

The Republic of Liberia derives its name from the Latin word liber, meaning free. Liberia is unique among African nations – it was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves and unlike, many African nations, it never was a colony of another country. This small nation is located on the West Coast of Africa and is approximately the size of the state of Mississippi. The basis of this research is to understand the similarities and differences of Liberian and American government. The country’s earliest constitution modeled that of the United States but denied the majority of the population many of the constitutional rights that should have been extended to all inhabitants. This constitution served as the basis and ideal of government in Liberia during the tenure of the first Republic for over one hundred thirty years (Liebenow, 1987). Despite Liberia's strong ties with the U.S., it does not have a conventional colonial history. However the indigenous groups considered the returning slaves as colonizers. The Liberian government is divided into federal and state components, and embodies three branches of federal government: executive, legislative and judiciary. The Liberian constitution state's that the branches are “Consistent with the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances”. According to the United States State Department, Liberia has a bicameral legislature consisting of 66 representatives and 30 senators. Historically, the executive branch greatly influences the legislature and judicial systems, the latter being largely dysfunctional for now. Because Liberian founders considered Liberia as one state, the fifteen counties in Liberia are equivalent to the fifty states in the United States of America.

Live from the Sports Bar

Live from the Sports Bar Brendan Cooney (bio) When I was a kid, I could measure out my life in Washington Redskins football games. My dad was a Skins fan, so I absorbed a thrill for one o'clock Sunday from the time I was old enough to know what day it was when I woke up. My week would build to a slow climax until the frenzy of Sunday morning, when I would hop around the house, bouncing off furniture and walls in slow-motion as if they could never tackle me – "look at him, he just won't go down!" – until at 12:30 the sounds of that retrospectively strange creature known as Brent Musberger would come on the screen and say something like, "You are looking live at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia," and I would start slapping my football in excitement. I remember sitting in government class on a Friday in ninth grade unable to focus on a single word of Mr. Baulsir's lecture about a bicameral legislature, because I couldn't stop thinking about how we'd fare against the mighty Cowboys that week. When Sunday morning finally arrived, it was little different from waking up on Christmas, except where the trees and toys would be was a television on a table, and on the sofa where the guests would gather Dec. 24th were my pops and me, eating Fritos and yelling for our team. A big loss was enough to depress me all Sunday night, so that homework was unthinkable. Sometimes I'd cry after a big game, one that, say, knocked us out of the playoffs. When we finally and suddenly became a good team in 1982, I lived in a kind of perpetual suspicion as to why the universe had suddenly decided to smile on me. I kept thinking it was a cruel joke, that I'd wake up one day and the papers would explain that the whole season was an exhibition. My dad somehow got one ticket for the championship game against the Cowboys, and he gave it to me. I remember riding the subway to the game with acute fear. For my whole life, the Cowboys [End Page 165] had loomed as unbeatable, lords over our ragtag bunch of vassals. Just say the names, even to this day, and I shudder at how they ruled us over the years: Preston Pearson, Too Tall Jones, Harvey Martin, Tony Dorsett. I cringed at the coming slaughter, which would have been one thing through the filter of television, quite another to witness in person. But again, the magnetic fields had inexplicably shifted, and I stood there at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium with fifty-five thousand strangers, high-fiving the black woman on my left and the white man on my right, all of us yelling in shock that we were deposing the kings, giving in to savage Roman glee when Dexter Manley knocked Danny White unconscious, jumping up and down uncontrollably for an hour after the last snap. Then, two weeks later, when we beat the Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII, I ran into the street and tilted my head to the sky and yelled, as if my entire life had been surging toward this pinnacle. Now, as an adult, with the house sold and my father gone and all the friends and me scattered around the country, there's only one place to go to feel even a faint shudder of football magic: the sports bar. It used to be that when you moved away, the only way to keep tabs on the old team was to check the box score in the paper. Now you can go to large rooms with dozens of TVs and you can pretend you're right back there in your living room. Sports bars subscribe to a satellite link called "NFL Sunday Ticket" that allows them to show all the games they want. It is a temptation I cannot pass up. From the gigantic ESPN Zone in Times Square to a joint in Chicago called Joe's, I have managed to find a little slice of home wherever I am. There's one problem...

Balancing the Constitution: Bicameralism in Post-revolutionary France, 1814–31

After the defeat of Napoleon, representative institutions were introduced in many European states. In France, as in other countries, this new institution was modelled on the English example: a bicameral legislature with an elective and a hereditary chamber. However, the Chamber of Peers failed to live up to its model: it soon became clear that it did not behave as an independent, aristocratic chamber capable of holding the balance between the king and the popular Chamber. Restoration liberals concluded on the basis of this failure that the English political model was simply unsuitable for a levelled society such as that in post-revolutionary France. In 1831, the hereditary Chamber of Peers was abolished. The experience of the French with the Chamber of Peers therefore seems to confirm the idea of a French ‘Sonderweg’ developed by historians such as François Furet and Pierre Rosanvallon. However, it should be noted that even after 1831 the idea of a balance as such did not disappear from French political culture. French publicists suggested that the balanced constitution of the English could be imitated in France in different ways, without necessitating the creation of an aristocratic institution. Thus, the example of the French Chamber of Peers shows that institutional transfers had an important impact on French political culture. résumé: Après la défaite de Napoléon, des institutions représentatives furent introduites dans beaucoup d'états européens. En France comme dans d'autres pays, la nouvelle institution fut modelée sur le modèle britannique du bicaméralisme avec une chambre élue et une chambre héréditaire. Cependant la chambre des pairs ne réussit pas à imiter son modèle. Il devint rapidement évident qu'elle ne représentait pas une aristocratie indépendante capable de servir de lien entre la chambre et le roi. Les libéraux de la restauration conclurent de cet échec que le modèle britannique ne correspondait pas à une société nivelée comme la France post-révolutionnaire. En 1831 la chambre des pairs hereditaire fut abolie. Cette expérience de la chambre des pairs semble confirmer l'idée d'une exception française telle que François Furet et Pierre Rosanvallon la décrive. Cependant l'idée ne disparut pas et cette notion d'équilibre resta dans le discours politique français. Les publicistes Français suggérèrent qu'une constitution équilibrée puisse être imitée sans une institution aristocratique. Cet exemple montre à quel point les transferts institutionnels eurent un impact dans la culture politique française.