A proposal to change Maine’s state legislature from bicameral to unicameral has achieved “initial approval.” As Matt Yglesias comments, “We have fifty states, but in some ways remarkably little institutional diversity between them,” in spite of the fact that “nothing terrible seems to happen in unicameral Nebraska.”
(Thanks to my student, Will E. for the tip.)
Fruits and Votes 
Perhaps Capt Yglesias should look further afield, to other federations, and ask whether anything terrible has happened in Queensland after (and therefore arguably because) it abolished its upper house in 1922…
On the other hand, if one looks at Canada, it’s arguable that the other Q-region takes the prize for being most repressive (I mean… being fined for leaving out an accent mark in an English loan-word from the French?) despite being bicameral for longest.
But then, bicameral Bavaria in Germany, although probably the most socially conservative Land, is not unusually repressive and indeed had a better-than-average record resisting the Nazis.
I’m only a contingent bicameralist: what matters more is whether adding or abolishing chambers increases the number of MPs elected by PR. So I’d strongly oppose the abolition (on its own) of the NSW Legislative Council, but tepidly support the abolition of the Tasmanian, and give a big meh to the abolition of the (pre-2005) Victorian.
Besides, functionally, many (all?) US States aren’t really bi- but tri-“cameral” at present, if the (elected , executive) Governor has a strong veto power (ie, line-item and/or 60% plus to override). A single chamber for Maine is a different proposition than a single chamber for Manitoba, in terms of effective checks and balances.
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One might as well throw in Minas Gerais or Western Cape. The Bavarian Landrat was abolished in 2000. Outside the US and Australia, subnational second chambers are remarkably rare.
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My statement about Bavaria was past tense. Can’t find any data about Minas G or W Cape upper houses.
Interesting that Yglesias’ rationale (“Most people in the United States suffer from being represented by more elected officials than they can actually keep track of. Only a small minority of the population can actually name their two state representatives. Cut that down to one, and you make it somewhat easier for people to inform themselves about what’s going on. At a minimum if you hear that “the state legislature” has done something bad, you can go look up who represents you in the state legislature and complain”) is as much an argument for single-member electorates as for a single-house legislature. After all, several States (Utah and Hawai, I think) use multi-seat constituencies for their lower house. On the other hand, NSW has always been bicameral but before 1978, a NSW voter had only one representative to “keep track of” (whereas this jumped to 46 in 1978 and then 43 in 1991)…
Likewise, Canada is bicameral at federal level but voters there have only one representative they can hold accountable.
Given that legislative action (or inaction) is a function of the legislature and its houses corporately, rather than of legislators individually, I think Yglesias’ argument would make more sense if he focused on voters monitoring only one house rather than only one representative.
I suspect most sub-nations decided that an upper house wasn’t worth the cost and delay since the lower house no longer had unrestricted power. Once the colony/ province/ State concerned entered a federation or union, its legislature was subject to the national or federal Constitution and laws on a wide range of important matters. I do note though that a number of populous Indian states are bicameral.
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Via word of mouth: the state Senate has killed the bill.
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Of course the state Senate would kill the bill, why would they want to abolish themselves?
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Can be done, even from inside (eg, Queensland’s “suicide squad” of 1922). Much would depend on whether the lower house were expanded to add extra seats the Senators could run for. Someone at Yglesias suggested expanding the Lower as a temporary transitional measure. Something like this was also proposed in the mid-1980s when the Victorian Labor Govt of John Cain (son of John Cain Senior, but not Scots enough to be called John McCain) talked about abolishing the 44-seat Legislative Council. One suggestion was to add 40 seats to the 88-member Assembly (making 128), then gradually reduce this by four or five seats at each subsequent redistribution until the unicameral legislature reached 100 or so. Of course this got nowhere as Labor never had a working Council majority.
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… Of course, this won’t fly if unicameralism is being sold as a cost-cutting “small govt” measure (often equated, rather lazily, as Alan noted, with “fewer elected representatives”). So a lot would depend on whether the push for one chamber is driven from the top down (by a centralising executive that wants fewer checks and balances, as in Qld) or from the bottom up (by an annoyed electorate that wants “fewer politicians”, as in Nebraska). Does Maine have a workable initiative and referendum process?
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Until 1978 the legislative council of New South Wales was arguably the best club in the world. The term was 12 years. A quarter retired every 3 years. Election was by a joint session of the legislative assembly and non-retiring MLCs using STV. Nevertheless, the appointed council did eventually vote itself to be replaced by a popularly elected chamber.
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Yes, but the 1978 Act (which went to referendum) included a schedule grandfathering nominatim two 15-member groups of the existing MLCs, who kept their seats until 1981 and 1984 respectively. I remember Johnno Johnson was one of those named. No idea how they chose individual names but there appeared to be some attempt to maintain proportionate party representation.
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Until 1910, Cape Colony had a second chamber (Legislative Council) elected by cumulative vote, to help the English minority against the Boer majority. (source: good old Enid Lakeman, How Democracies Vote)
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New Zealand had a legislative council until 1951. MLCs were originally appointed for life by the governor-in-council, but the term was reduced to 7 years in 1891. The Bolger government proposed a senate in 1990 as an alternative to PR for the house of representatives.
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Starr also mentions (p 168) that it was US Senator George W Norris (ie, not a State legislator) who promoted the 1934 (initiative/ petition) referendum that saw 60% of votes supporting a (non-partisan) one-chamber legislature.
Now… what about Minas Gerais?
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Speaking of US State Senates, this 31-31 standoff in New York is interesting – not only politically, but legally, in that it appears that the opposing sides are asking a judge to adjudicate the matter.
The relevant text – it seems: I could be wrong – is the State Senate’s own rules of order, not the NY State Constitution, which makes it puzzling that this would get as far as the Albany County Supreme Court without being struck out as a non-judiciable political question.
Courts in the common-law world will certainly review the validity of actions done within the legislature where necessary to determine if the resulting Bill/ Act conforms to constituional requirements, true – but issuing orders affirmatively directing a legislative chamber how to organise its internal procedures seems to contravene tradition and separation of powers principles.
Does NY State have an unusually relaxed doctrine of judiciability? Or has NY reset the Scalian clock even earlier, to 1687 instead of 1775?
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Thanks, Tom, for bringing up the NY Senate. I have not followed it closely, but it is quite a story in conflict between aggregate partisan election results and individual ambition.
An added twist (mentioned rather in passing in the item that Tom linked to) is that normally senate tie votes would be broken by the lieutenant governor. However, NY’s constitution is like Argentina’s: no provision to replace a vacancy in the vice/lieutenant executive position. Of course, the person who was elected lt. gov. is now the governor, due to Elliot Spitzer’s misdirected ambitions.
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Is this the place to mention the somewhat embarrassing attempt in the 1840s to impose a colonial aristocracy on New South Wales (which then included most of Australia and all of New Zealand) with a hereditary upper house. It was derided as a bunyip aristocracy and went down to ignominious defeat. Weirdly enough, the main promoter, William Charles Wentworth, was appointed to the legislative council and founded a dynasty anyway. At least one Wentworth, and sometimes more, sat in the colonial, state or federal parliaments continuously until 1977.
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Exactly four years ago, voters in Puerto Rico overwhelmingly supported the establishment of an unicameral legislature in a non-binding referendum; however, the referendum had the lowest-ever voter turnout rate in Puerto Rican history – 22.6% of registered voters (19.2% of the voting age population) – and opponents of unicameralism in Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives seized upon the low turnout to kill a binding referendum that was to be held two years ago.
For a detailed account of these events, see No Unicameralism Referendum on July 9, 2007 on my Elections in Puerto Rico website.
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I admit to being a bit conflicted about bicameralism. As I’ve said, to me the main need is that there be a powerful, PR-elected chamber with the ability to at least veto any new proposed law. Bicameralism is sometimes used, though – especially in parliamentary-executive systems – as an excuse to shunt PR off to the less powerful upper chamber.
On the other hand, I know quite a few PR supporters who are strongly unicameralist, and who argue that a single chamber with sufficient checks and balances can be equal or superior to two. For example, not only PR, but entrenched, judiciable requirements that a non-budget bill can only be enacted with (say) a super-majority, or a referendum, or some substantial delay between the second and third readings (say, twelve months). Denmark seems to approximate this situation.
Now, I agree that conferring blocking powers on a sizeable minority (25%, 33%, 40%) of a single chamber can work nearly as effectively – so far as obstructing unwise new decisions is concerned – as conferring those same blocking powers on 50% of a second chamber. However, it lacks one advantage of a bicameral system in that it is rare for a minority of a chamber to be given legal power to *initiate* new actions, particularly investigations. (In some cases, such powers do exist but are conferred by the standing orders, which exist by grace and favour of the majority block. Admittedly, in a PR system the majority may require several different parties to work together).
In other words, an upper house can usually probe and investigate matters, or refer matters to a committee. (When the decision goes beyond investigating some matter, and crosses into making new law or policy, it is rare for any constitution, statute or standing orders to vest this power of decision anywhere but in the majority of each chamber. Exceptions may exist where a constitution gives one chamber the power to initiate action independently of the other. Hayek famously proposed one chamber have unilateral power to debate government decisions and the other have unilateral power to revise the “lawyer’s law,” without any mutual veto: but real life models like this are rare. The power to confirm appointments, common to an upper house in a bicameral presidential system, is one of the few examples I can think of – and even then, the concurrence of the president or governor is required, even of the concurrence of the lower house is not).
So if I lived in a bicameral system and were voting on a proposal to move to a unicameral legislature, I would only vote yes if the proposal transferred to a minority in the single chamber not only the powers of an upper house majority to delay new legislation (for a reasonable time, until the wisdom of it has been deliberated) but also the powers of an upper house majority to initiate official, public investigations (armed with the necessary coercive powers, ie subpoenas, testimony under oath and, if needed, summary power to punish for contempt). Its decisions on such matters should be overrideable only by the courts, not by the majority of the single chamber.
This would also probably require explicit constitutional language making these powers judiciable and enforceable through the courts, since otherwise judges will assume that the traditional common law rule continues – ie, that courts will take cognizance only of what’s certified by the speaker and majority of a chamber as the will of that chamber. Perhaps there should be two or three co-speakers, elected by PR, so that any one of them can keep the matter on the agenda.
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“Bicameralism is sometimes used, though – especially in parliamentary-executive systems – as an excuse to shunt PR off to the less powerful upper chamber.” I think that’s a strange way of putting it, but that aside, I think the opposite is far more common – Poland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina all have PR for their lower house with a more majoritarian electoral system for the upper house.
Australia is the only case I can think of with a majoritarian lower house but PR ‘relegated’ to the upper house, but surely, that case conforms with your prescription “that there be a powerful, PR-elected chamber with the ability to at least veto any new proposed law”. It is a prescription I can only agree with, having put it that way myself in a recent conversation.
As to the arrangement of houses and their electoral systems, I think the Australian system makes a lot of sense, as it offers the combination of identifiability in the choice of government with the partisan vetoes, increased policy stability (relative to ‘regular’ Westminster) and true majority rule of PR, as well as a form of separation of powers but essentially without presidentialisation. Effectively, it is a hybrid combining different visions of democracy, as put by Steffen Ganghof and myself. A PR-based parliamentary system gains relatively little from a majoritarian upper house, which if it is allowed real veto power, could cause rather unattractive constraints on coalition formation (a government coalition faced with an opposition majority would be a recipe for disaster – contrast that with a one-party majority government faced with a chamber where no party has a majority, as in Australia). A parliamentary system with both houses (both of them powerful) elected by PR could reduce accountability even more when they’re incongruent, as currently in the Netherlands, where a two-party coalition government has had to compromise with four other parties in order to pass their programme in the upper house. (In a presidential system, meanwhile, things are of course different, considering that there’s no upper-lower house differentiation between the houses on the basis of where the government is formed, and that legislative coalitions tend to be more fluid in both houses under any electoral system).
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I did not even remember this thread. But this is why I (almost) always keep threads open: you never know when someone will have something new to say about an old topic…
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I disagree that bicanberralism (majoritarian assembly and PR senate) is all that good a model. It was an accident of history although it has since spread to all states except Queensland, which is unicameral, and Tasmania, which has a PR assembly and a majoritarian senate.
The Canberra model tends to boganocracy, a fact proved conclusively in the person of the last two prime ministers. More elegantly, the major parties seek to win assembly elections by focusing on marginal districts in a way alarmingly reminiscent of the focus on battleground states in a US presidential election and as Chris has shown previously the senate, despite an equal delegations from states rule, has more closely reflected the preferences of the electorate than the assembly. It does not help that the major parties believe that the median voter in the marginal districts is a bogan who lives in western Sydney and fears or hates foreigners, intellectuals, refugees, homosexuals and aborigines.
The way to force the major parties to take account of the nationwide median voter rather than the marginals only median voter is to make all seats in the assembly competitive and that means a PR assembly.
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“bicanberralism”. Nice!
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My major concern with the Australian system, beyond the marginal districts overstated power is that single member districts do not reflect what the population as a whole wants. Amongst the major issues that I see with the Australian House and state assemblies are, in no particular order: the Greens and Nationals receiving largely similar first preference totals but drastically different amounts of seats, the artificial landslides, as witnessed in the most recent federal and Queensland elections, the recent plurality reversal in South Australia, and, of course, the idea that being slightly more popular in a few extra random electorates gives someone a mandate to demand that the Senate bow to his wishes.
That’s my opinion. I could be wrong.
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Mark, your concern seems to be with (single-member) majoritarianism rather than with its combination with a powerful proportionally-elected upper house. Of course, if your starting point is that parties should always be represented ‘fairly’, and you aren’t concerned by the efficiency vs representativeness trade-off, your conclusion can only ever be PR under any circumstance. If one is more flexible about such principles and does see some benefits in the Westminster system’s electoral efficiency absent in PR-parliamentarism, one is more likely to view the combination on the whole as an elegant way of balancing the two.
It is very much in line with Shugart and Carey (1992): “The basic preference that has guided us in this book has been that accountability and identifiability in executive formation (which normally means an elected presidency) and for broadly representative assemblies (which normally means PR).” Thus, it is also a compromise between the usual separation of powers model and parliamentarism.
As to the shortcomings specific to single-member systems (reverse majorities and pandering to marginals), there are obviously ways to limit or eliminate them, without losing much identifiability, such as AV+ or bonus-adjusted PR.
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An PR federal parliamentary assembly but one could be structured to retain electoral efficiency in JD Mussel’s sense) and to also represent the actual country rather than a confected majority.
There is simply no comparison between the legislative performance of the Australian senate and the house of representatives. The house of representatives backbench is widely known as the mushroom club because they are kept in the dark and fed, well, a certain substance that mushrooms are fed and one otherwise hesitates to mention in a forum as elevated as this one.
The house is essentially a parliamentary theatre that indulges in set piece debates where the only contest is who can make the nastiest allegations against the other side, punctuated only by claims from both government and opposition that all this tomfoolery amounts to a mandate to override the senate. The last occasion that the house actually passed a vote of no confidence was in 1975 (it was ignored by the governor-general who accepted Malcolm Fraser’s advice to dissolve) and the occasion before that was in 1941 when the government resigned after the budget was reduced by one pound. The senate, by contrast, is an actual deliberative body.
In NSW the legislative assembly is lovingly known as the bear pit.
In 2013 the Nationals received 4.29% of the popular vote and 9 MHRs. The Greens received 8.6% and 1 seat. There is simply no good reason why the electoral system should so favour those electors who vote for one party over another. That is not a marginal, but a fundamental issue of fairness.
There is just no obvious reason why one chamber should be wasted on a body that defines itself by cheerleading for the prime minister or the opposition leader.
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To Alan below (above? most recent at time of posting), I agree with you that more actual legislative work happens in the Senate. However, (and this is a problem that affects both houses) Senators are effectively chosen by parties. In order for any meaningful changes to the party ticket, many, many people need to number every box below the line. Also, too little scrutiny is applied to individual Senate candidates. This applies for both major and minor parties. The only serious scrutiny of Senate candidates was at the Western Australian re-election, where Joe Bullock’s ‘controversial’ outbursts tore the party apart, and ruined their chances of two seats (the ABC has a decent outline here:http://tinyurl.com/ky88cgr).
The lack of reporting on minor party candidates is understandable, given that no-one really expected people like Ricky Muir or Jacquie Lambie to win seats. As a result, it is only the minor party Senators (who get elected from tiny shares of the vote) saying crazy things purely to get noticed or Senate elections (with bozo major party candidates) that take place without a House of Representatives election to distract voters, that really get the upper house any real attention. After all, the ‘bear pit’ looks great on TV, while actual legislative work doesn’t really fit into the 1 minute timeslot for politics on commercial news (after the water-skiing puppies).
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To Henry at 1:19 am,
I could not agree more about the shonky methods all parties use to pre-select senators. There is a clear case to pre-select candidates by internal primary.
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Henry:
‘… [Qld ALP Right Senator Chris] Ketter’s uncertain position… may depend on how the [Victorian Left ALP Senator Gavin] Marshall situation plays out, with Bill Shorten’s request to the national executive to endorse all sitting MPs not being seen to include Senators. “Senators are always a bit different, because it is all factional,” a senior Labor source said. “Senate preselections have always been more of a chessboard.”…’
Amy Remeikis, “Victorian Labor senator’s dumping could have ramifications in Queensland: Gavin Marshall expected to be a casualty of a factional shake-up before Labor contests next election”, The Guardian (23 July 2018), https://theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/23/victorian-labor-senators-dumping-could-have-ramifications-in-queensland
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‘… In speaking of his political ambitions, [right-wing Victorian Liberal power-broker Marcus] Bastiaan said: “My preference much strongly is the Senate. I’d like to have a seat where I didn’t have to deal with constituent problems but I could continue to run the faction, so I could fill Parliament, both state and federal, with good people.”…’
John Hewson, “Leaders must respond to ‘cancerous’ branch stacking”, Sydney Morning Herald (25 August 2020),
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/leaders-must-respond-to-cancerous-branch-stacking-20200825-p55p4f.html
Hewson FYI is a former federal Liberal leader who lost the (considered unloseable) 1993 election. He is very economically “dry” but socially liberal – ie, deregulationist in both boardroom and bedroom,. A bit Herbert Hoover, a bit Barry Goldwater, you might say.
Would like to forward this to the NZ Royal Commission on the Electoral System but they disbanded and went their separate ways in 1987.
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Alaska has a somewhat unusual version of bicameralism that comes very close to actual tricameralism. The executive functions, (confirmations, veto overrides, etc etc) are vested in both houses sitting and voting together. Impeachments are brought by 2/3 vote of the senate and tried by the house with a 2/3 vote to convict.. It would be interesting to know how this happened.
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Now that’s an interesting arrangement. Personally, I’d let either house plus the president/ governor approve an appointment if it’s an at-pleasure appointment; both houses (or a joint sitting) if it’s a tenured position, for life or for any term that extends past the next general election. If it’s unicameral, replace with “40% of the members” and “60% of the members” respectively.
Always a bit risky judging a political structure by one’s admiration or lack thereof for the politicians who succeed under it, but they do say that Sarah Palin was widely considered a pragmatic, effective moderate when she was governor of Alaska, ie before she decided it was less appealing to be an American Sallyanne Atkinson than an American Jacquie Lambie.
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What if there was a country that used PR for the Assembly and a SMD Majoritarian System for the Senate, if the upper house blocks a law three times in the Senate, a joint sitting is called to consider the bill with amendments, and if the bill fails to pass in the joint sitting three times, then both chambers are dissolved, this is reverse of the Australian Federal Parliament deadlock provision. Would something like this work?
I like the Alaska joint sitting veto override procedure, I am surprise that such a feature doesn’t catch on in more states and countries.
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I think JD offers an elegant defense of the balance of majoritarian and proportional principles in his comment (14/09/2014 at 4:08 am), extending the Shugart and Carey argument on presidentialism. (Note that saying it is elegant and having written something similar on a different institutional design is not the same as favoring said designs.) It should be recognized that the first chamber’s alleged “cheerleading” for the PM rather than deliberating, and the fact that it essentially never passes votes of no-confidence, are the patterns to be expected under majoritarian parliamentarism. If one does not like such patterns then one probably and logically prefers either PR-parliamentarism (i.e. PR in both or a sole chamber), or possibly some models of presidentialism.
Regarding the Alaska model of bicameralism (of which I was not aware of before Alan’s comment on 11/09/2014 at 7:48 am), there are similar joint-sitting rules in Brazil and Uruguay, if I recall correctly. Also India uses joint sittings to deal with disagreements between the chambers. I am sure there are other cases.
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Thank you, Matthew, for your kind words.
I think the more unwholesome effects of majoritarian parliamentarism described with some cynicism above could well be mitigated with some institutions with the potential to diffuse power in the legislative process, such as proportional allocation (and secret ballot election) of committee chairmanships, and others that could lower party discipline, such as fixed terms and allowing only clean confidence votes which are not attached to some bill. I would usually not suggest going as far as mandating primaries of any kind, but seeing as they have already been suggested above (for what are effectively closed-list elections, of which single-member districts are the M=1 version of), why not.
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