The Chambers of 'Second Looks'

Around the world, every country has their own laws, and despite the anarchy I suggested in my previous post, their are principles of governance which are less riotous than anarchism. But how are these laws created and then verified? And what are the advantages and disadvantages of unicameral and bicameral legislatures? Lets investigate.

The easiest way to explain this matter is to use case studies. So lets use the respective Parliaments of the UK, Finland (Eduskunta), and the National People's Congress of China.

The UK has two 'chambers of government', the House of Commons and the House of Lords. As in most bicameral legislatures, the lower house is where new laws and amendments are debated and drafted. If the elected government has a majority of elected MPs in the house then the law will be moved onto the House of Lords. This is where the fundamentals of bicameralism remain but with British weirdness thrown in for good measure. Here, the legislation is 'looked over', it is inspected and debated among experts. Afterwards, the bill will then either be rejected with a request for an amendment to the law and sent back for debating in the Commons, or approved and sent for Her Majesty's assent. Now though things get awkward. Unusually, the Upper House is larger than the Lower House and even more oddly, is unelected but rather Lords are nominated by the Prime Minister in the Commons. This is contrary with other upper houses around the world. It also means that maintaining a majority is extremely difficult as each prime ministers can nominate new lords to gain their support for legislature. In addition, the Lords only withdraw bills from law in limited circumstances, meaning the Lords only act as a 'proof reader' and suggesting improvements. The real power lies in the elected Commoners.

British madness aside, the bicameral system offers a chance to debate and check over laws drafted in the lower house and prevents a party with a majority claiming overwhelming power and causing havoc to the country (see previous article).

Unicameralism comes in two forms, hence my two case studies.  

Finland has only one chamber and any piece of legislation can be initiated by an MP or the 

government. If the bill is passed then it goes to the President for assent. However the President acts only as a proof-reader and the bill can be passed without his permission. This sounds simple and it is incredibly efficient. 

The overriding risk with unicameralism is that the party in power can easily pass laws without proof-reading, it therefore runs risks of becoming too powerful and not being 'kept in check'. However, there are three key ways this doesn't happen.

• District Proportional Representation - This means that the elected MPs remain from the local region while using proportional representation to more accurately reflect the people's demands e.g. making sure the Tories don't get a lot of seats because lots of rich people live in Devon, or letting Labour take many seats in NE England due to the falling shipping industry.
• Fixed election dates - This forces the government to keep to mandates and promises made when campaigning. When you have an electorate to appeal to, the incentive to be true to the people is as great as it could be.
• Coalitions - The electoral districts make it incredibly difficult for one party to form a government alone. The current government is a 3-party coalition and that is small. The prior government featured 6-parties. And to think the British Tabloids labelled our coalition 'a marriage of convenience'. The overall outcome is that no one party can dominate the government. The disadvantage of this though, is that the aforementioned mandates to the electorate are rarely kept to their full extent, and compromises are often made.

Consider the above an successful implementation of unicameralism.

The People's Republic works a little differently. For a start this is a one-party state, which automatically makes the governmental workings a little different. The unicameral Congress meets for once a year, for 10 days. The UK Parliament is sitting for around 142 days in a session (approximately a year). This is because China is a dictatorship, and President Xi has assembled a group of close communist allies to advise and aid his decisions. Realistically, the congress only acts as a rubber stamp of their decisions and because of the overwhelming communist majority, the ink doesn't run dry. Elections are every 5 years and use approval voting, distinctly reminiscent of Mr Hitler and his mate Mussolini. The ultimate result of all this is what can only be described  as a Western unicameral dystopia, one party in overwhelming power with no opposition to question them or any mandate to stick to. 

So where does that leave us?

Ultimately, the unicameral government is much simpler and cheaper as legislation can be implemented easily, however the voting must be clean and credible and pose an array of choice to the electorate so they can voice their opinions away from anarchism. Not only that, but the voting system must accurately reflect all opinions in society and elections must be frequent. If any of these can't be obtained, then the bicameral legislature is worth the cost to act as a proof-reader but again that would need more powers than just a rubber stamp.  But if that is the case, the upper house must be elected.  There should be an equal balance of people across all spectrums in the country to create a better world for everyone. That would be a start.

FACT of the IPOT:  This diagram explains how a bill is passed much better than my words...