Review article
https://doi.org/10.20901/an.18.10
Analysis of the Upper Houses in Electoral Democracies: The House of Counties (1993-2001) in Comparative Perspective
Ante Zrile
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Bicameral legislatures are part of the institutional set-up in seventy-nine countries. Bicameralism is one of the strongest institutional counterbalances to the executive. Due to their specificity, the upper houses are of interest to political scientists, so the question arises as to why they are rarely the subject of research. The paper seeks to fill the research gap by studying the institutional arrangements of the seventeen electoral democracies, which have bicameral legislatures. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the historical development of bicameralism. The second part of the paper presents contemporary bicameralism and presents in detail four ideal-typical examples of the upper houses – the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Poland. The third part presents the basic features of the other upper houses that are the subject of research. In the fourth part of the paper, a comparison of the seventeen upper houses is carried out to give an answer to the research question of what makes the upper house strong according to its formal powers. On the twentieth anniversary of its abolition, the last section analyzes the formal powers and democratic features of the election rules for the House of Counties of the Parliament of the Republic of Croatia (1993-2001).
Keywords
bicamerarlism; upper house; democracy; powers; House of the Counties; regionalization;
Hrčak ID:
266892
URI
Publication date:
13.12.2021.
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