Legislatures 1

Legislatures
Retrieved from: Comparative%20government%20and%20politics%20an%20introduction%20by%20Hague,%20Rod%20Harrop,
%20Martin%20McCormick,%20John%20(z-lib.org).pdf

This reading material will not only supplement your knowledge about the forms of government that you acquired from PS 100
and PS 101 but will also challenge you to manifest your understanding of the institutional approach. Therefore, after reading the
excerpted material, you should be able to:
a. apply your understanding of the institutional approach
b. differentiate the legislatures under parliamentary and presidential governments

Key Concepts to Understand:

bicameral legislature committee committee-based legislature committee parliamentarism
conference committees debating legislature descriptive representation formalistic representation
oversight plenary session select committees staggered election
standing committees substantive representation symbolic representation term limit
unicameral legislature vote of confidence

Legislatures are symbols of popular representation in politics, and understanding the

way they work is central to institutional theory. They are not governing bodies; they do not take
major decisions and they do not even normally initiate proposals for laws. Yet, they remain a
foundation of both liberal and democratic politics. The words used to denote these bodies reflect
their original purpose: assemblies gather, congresses congregate, diets meet, dumas
deliberate, legislatures pass laws, and parliaments talk. Their significance arises from their
representative role; for Olson (1994: 1), they ‘join society to the legal structure of authority in the
state. Legislatures are representative bodies: they reflect the sentiments and opinions of the
citizens.’ As the English political theorist John Locke observed:
It is in their legislative, that the members of a commonwealth are united, and combined
together into one coherent living body. This is the soul that gives form, life, and unity, to
the commonwealth: from hence the several members have their mutual influence,
sympathy, and connexion: and, therefore, when the legislative is broken, or dissolved,
dissolution and death follows. (Locke, 1690: sec. 212)
Key Arguments:
a. Legislatures link society and state, making them an essential device in a representative
democracy.
b. Legislatures are not governing bodies, do not take major decisions, and do not even normally
initiate proposals for laws; but they provide the foundations of liberal democracy.
c. The issue of whether legislatures should have one chamber or two exposes contrasting
perspectives on how democracy should be conceived.
d. Oversight is an increasingly important function of nearly all legislatures in liberal
democracies.
e. Understanding this role means looking carefully at the work of legislative committees.
f. Legislatures are increasingly home to career politicians, who collectively constitute a political
class with a background and interests removed from the people it represents.
g. Legislatures are found in most authoritarian regimes, but they mainly provide only a fig leaf of
legitimacy, or ‘controlled institutional channels’ through which demands and concessions can
be made.
Representation. While this is undoubtedly the essence of the work of legislatures, it is
not always easy to judge whether, and how well, that function is fulfilled. The meaning of
representation should be obvious, and yet political science has been unable to develop a
 Legislatures 2

definition with which everyone can agree. Pitkin (1967) set the terms of the debate by outlining
four different ways of understanding representation:
• Formalistic: Concerned with the rules and arrangements for representation, asking
how representatives come to office, how they enforce their decisions, how they
respond to their constituents, and how they are held accountable by voters.
• Symbolic: Concerned with how representatives are perceived by their constituents.
For example, are they seen to be competent and concerned with the broad interests of
their district, or are they regarded as too partisan, captured by special interests, or
unapproachable?
• Descriptive: Suggests that a legislature should be society in miniature, literally ‘re-
presenting’ society and not simply acting on its behalf (Phillips, 1995). Thus, its members
would have the same balance of men and women, rich and poor, black and white,
straight and gay, educated and uneducated, as the general population. But how many
different segments of society should, or realistically could, be represented? With the
good, we would have to accept the bad, the incompetent, the corrupt, and the ignorant.
• Substantive: Concerned with how representatives respond to the needs of their voters.
While this may be the most important and obvious kind of representation, it raises the
question of the extent to which voters have well-developed political needs, or
understand all the options available to them. In most cases, levels of political interest
and knowledge are low, making it difficult for representatives to be fully responsive. A
given district will also contain a variety of interests, concerns, and values among its
population, requiring its representative to somehow achieve a balance among
competing demands.
A fifth option to add to Pitkin’s list is collective representation, which suggests that
members of a legislature should collectively represent the interests of all voters, not just those in
the districts they represent. The Irish-born politician Edmund Burke offered the classic account
of this position after being elected Member of Parliament for the English constituency of Bristol
in 1774. He admitted in his victory speech that he knew nothing about his constituency and had
played little part in the campaign, but, he continued:
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests [but is
instead] a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole;
where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good,
resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when
you have chosen him, he is not a member for Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.
(Burke, 1774)
In spite of these competing analyses, representation in practice operates in a somewhat
prosaic way: through political parties. Victorious candidates owe their election largely to their
party and they vote in the legislature largely according to the commands and expectations of the
party. This is particularly true of parliamentary systems, where representatives are expected to
toe the party line; in India, members of Parliament can even lose their seat if they vote against
their party, the theory being that they are deceiving the voters if they switch parties after their
election. Representatives are also assessed by voters in terms of party affiliation; a voter will
look on a representative as more approachable, responsive, and trustworthy if they are both
from the same party, and less so if they are not.
Deliberation. Many legislatures serve as a deliberative body, considering public matters
of national importance. The main contrast here is between a debating legislature and a
committee-based legislature. In the former, deliberation takes the form of general discussion in
the chamber, in what is sometimes known as a plenary session, or a meeting of the whole. In
the British House of Commons, for example, key issues eventually make their way to the floor of
the House of Commons where they are discussed with passion, partisanship, and sometimes
flair. Floor debate becomes the arena for national political discussion, forming part of a
 Legislatures 3

continuous election campaign. The mood of the House, as revealed in debate, is often more
significant than the vote which follows.
Debating legislature: One where floor debate is the central activity, through which
major issues are addressed and parties gain or lose ground.
Committee-based legislature: One where most work takes place in committees, where
members transform bills into laws, conducting hearings, and scrutinizing the executive.
Plenary session: A meeting of the entire legislature, as distinct from committee
meetings.
Appropriately, it was the nineteenth-century English political philosopher John Stuart Mill
who made the case for a debating assembly: I know not how a representative assembly can
more usefully employ itself than in talk, when the subject of talk is the great public interests of
the country, and every sentence of it represents the opinion either of some important body of
persons in the nation, or of an individual in whom such bodies have reposed their confidence.
(Mill, 1861: 353) In committee-based legislatures, by contrast (such as the US Congress and the
Scandinavian parliaments) deliberation is less theatrical, taking the form of policy discussion in
committees. The practical task is to assess the government’s proposals, while also providing
measured scrutiny of its actions. This deliberative style is less dramatic than a set-piece debate
but often more constructive.
Legislation. Legislatures are often alone in having the right to make laws, the
painstaking process for passing bills into law underlining the importance attached to government
by rules, rather than by individuals. The procedure is explicitly deliberative, involving several
readings (debates) as the bill moves from the floor to committee and back again xxx. In
bicameral legislatures, differences in the versions of the bill passed by each chamber must be
reconciled. But legislation is rarely the function in which ‘legislatures’ exert the greatest
influence, because effective control over legislation in most liberal democracies rests with the
government; bills pass through the assembly without being designed, or even transformed,
there.
In Britain, the governing party has historically dominated law-making. As Moran (2011: 157)
points out:
The House of Commons is misunderstood if viewed as a legislator. Virtually all
legislative proposals originate from, and are shaped by, the executive. Nor are the
Commons’ extensive debates on legislative proposals of great significance in shaping
the law: secure government majorities (which up to now have been the usual state of
affairs) mean that legislative proposals are hardly ever overturned wholesale, and
detailed amendments are usually the result of concessions by ministers.
In party-dominated Australia, the government treats the legislative function with virtual
contempt. On a single night in 1991 it tried to put 26 bills through the Senate in three hours.
Before New Zealand adopted proportional representation in 1996, one prime minister boasted
that if an idea came to him while shaving, he could have it on the statute book by the evening. In
the party-dominated parliaments of Britain and some of its ex-colonies, the legislative function is
reactive in the sense that it is reduced to quality control: patching up errors in bills prepared in
haste by ministers and bureaucrats.
By contrast, committee based legislatures in continental Europe play a more positive role
in law-making, with a combination of coalition governments, influential committees, and an elite
commitment to delivering laws acceptable to all sides.
In presidential systems such as the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, assemblies have
the most autonomy in law-making. Only members of Congress can formally introduce bills,
although executives can work around this by finding a friendly representative to initiate a bill on
its behalf. The separation of powers and personnel inherent in a presidential regime limits
executive influence over the legislature, an institutional separation that is often reinforced by
divided government (the president may come from a different party than the one that dominates
 Legislatures 4

one or both chambers of the legislature), further reducing the legislature’s willingness to convert
the administration’s proposals into laws. xxx
Authorizing expenditure. This is one of the oldest functions of legislatures, and of the
lower house in particular. Its origins stem from the original purpose of European assemblies,
which was to review requests for funds from monarchs. But it has since – in many parliamentary
democracies – become nominal. What usually happens is that the executive prepares the
budget, which is then reported to the legislature but rarely modified there. For the legislature to
possess the power of the purse, suggests Wehner (2006), it must have the ability to amend the
budget (as opposed to simply being authorized to make cuts), an effective committee system, enough time to
consider the budget in detail, and access to background information underlying the budget. Few
countries meet all these conditions, and parliamentary approval is generally given after the fact,
serving to confirm compromises worked out between government departments. In many
democracies, the budget is a done deal once it reaches the assembly. If parliament began to
unpick any part of a complicated package, it would fall apart.
The United States is the clearest exception to the thesis of executive control of the
purse. Congress remains central to budget-making, since all money spent by executive
departments must be allocated under specific expenditure headings approved by Congress. As
Flammang et al. (1990: 422) wrote, ‘without the agreement of members of Congress, no money
can be doled out for foreign aid, salaries for army generals or paper clips for bureaucrats’. The
result is that the annual federal budget debate has become an elaborate game of chicken: the
president and Congress each hopes that the other side will accede to its own proposals before
the money runs out.
Making governments. Legislatures are a key part of government, in the sense not just
that they take care of government business but also that the abilities of executives to govern
depend in large part on the political make-up of legislatures.
In presidential systems such as Brazil, Mexico, or the United States, the president –
being separately elected – does not rely on sympathetic party members in the legislature to stay
in office. But those members play a critical role in determining the capacity of the executive to
lead; a supportive or sympathetic legislature provides a clearer path to effective leadership,
while one dominated by opposition parties will provide obstacles and road blocks.
In parliamentary systems, by contrast, the government is entirely dependent upon the
party make-up of the legislature; a party can neither take office, nor continue in power, without a
supporting majority (or, at least, a workable minority) in the legislature. Furthermore, the
strength of the ruling party or coalition in the legislature influences the government’s stability. A
government based on a single party with a legislative majority is likely to prove more stable than
a minority government. xxx
Oversight. The final function of legislatures is oversight (or scrutiny) of the executive. In
many countries, the oversight role has been growing in significance and value in recent
decades, helping compensate for the downgrading of the legislative and expenditure functions
of assemblies, and providing a new direction to their work.
Parliamentary systems offer several instruments with which to monitor the executive:
Questions can be posed to leaders and ministers, whether oral or written. In Britain, for
example, members of the House of Commons ask over 500 questions per day, keeping
many bureaucrats busy as they prepare answers for their ministerial masters (House of
Commons Procedure Committee, 2009).
Prime Minister’s Question Time, a weekly event, remains a theatrical joust
between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. In other legislatures,
however, questions are accorded lower status, with French ministers often failing to
answer them at all.
Interpellations are an alternative form of interrogation in some European
assemblies, including Finland, France, and Germany. A form of confidence motion, an
 Legislatures 5

interpellation is a substantial question demanding a prompt response which is followed

by a short debate and usually a vote on whether the government’s answer is considered
acceptable.
Emergency debates are a higher-profile means of calling executives to account.
Typically, a minimum number of members, together with the presiding officer (Speaker),
must approve a proposal for an emergency debate. The discussion usually ends with a
government win; the significance lies in the debate itself and the fact of its having been
called. An emergency debate creates publicity and demands a considered response
from the government’s spokesperson.
Without question, though, the most important means by which legislatures can hold
executives accountable is through a vote of confidence or a censure motion. The former is a
vote that – if it goes against the government – leads to compulsory resignation, while the latter
indicates disapproval of a specific minister for a stated reason. Confidence votes are not so
much a form of detailed oversight as a decision on whether the government can continue at all.
Even though such votes are rare, they can determine the fate of the executive, with the potential
to lead to a change of leadership and even new elections. In the British Parliament, a
government can be brought down by losing a vote of confidence or by losing a vote on a matter
of policy that has been described as a ‘matter of confidence’. In France and Sweden, a majority
of all members (not only those voting) is required to confirm a legislature’s loss of confidence. In
other countries, a confidence motion is not specifically designated but is simply any vote on
which the government would feel obliged to resign if defeated. Defeat on a motion to approve
the budget would be a typical example. In some countries, again including Sweden, votes of
confidence can be directed against individual ministers as well as the government as a whole.
Structure. While the functions of legislatures (and the dynamics of those functions) vary
from one to another, on matters of structure the options are more limited. First, almost every
legislature has either one or two chambers, the number being determined by a combination of
history and political need. Second, most legislatures operate through specialist committees
where much of the work of law-making is actually done, with plenary sessions playing only a
formal role in the legislative process.
Chambers. For most countries, a single-chambered (or unicameral) legislature is
enough to represent the interests of the population and to manage its responsibilities; hence
about 60 per cent of the world’s legislatures have just one chamber (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2015).
Their number increased in the second half of the twentieth century as several smaller
democracies – including Sweden (1971) and Iceland (1991) – abolished their second chamber,
and many smaller post-colonial and post-communist states also opted for a single chamber. For
reasons of history, politics, or practical need, the rest have bicameral (double-chambered)
legislatures. South Africa even went so far between 1984 and 1994 as to have a tricameral
legislature, with each chamber representing a different race.
In the case of bicameral legislatures, one is usually known as the first (or lower) chamber
and the other as the second (or upper) chamber. Perhaps counterintuitively, the lower chamber
is usually the bigger and the more powerful; while some upper chambers have near-equal
powers with their lower partners, most are both smaller and weaker. The lower chamber is
almost always the originator of new proposals for legislation (bills), with the second chamber
playing the role of taking a second look, and the lower chamber often has sole or dominating
control over budgetary matters. The origins of the lower/upper designation are unclear, but they
probably trace back to the manner in which the British Parliament was divided between
aristocrats and commoners, with the ‘Lords Spiritual and Temporal’ comprising the more historic
and exclusive ‘upper’ chamber.
The choice between one and two chambers reflects contrasting visions of democracy.
Unicameral legislatures are justified by a majoritarian reading of popular control, the idea being
that an assembly based on direct popular election reflects the popular will and should not be
 Legislatures 6

obstructed. The radical French cleric Abbé Sieyès (1748–1836) put the point well: ‘if a second
chamber dissents from the first, it is mischievous; and if it agrees, it is superfluous’ (Lively, 1991).
Also, a single chamber is more accountable, economical, and decisive; it lacks the petty point-
scoring which becomes possible with two houses representing distinct interests.
But the defenders of bicameral legislatures reject both the majoritarian logic of the Abbé
and the penny pinching of accountants. Bicameralists stress the liberal element of democracy,
arguing that the upper chamber offers checks and balances, provides more considered debate
because its members usually have longer terms in office, it can be more collegial because it is
usually smaller, and it can defend individual and group interests against a potentially oppressive
majority in the lower house. Bicameral legislatures are most often found in larger countries and
in democracies, and they are universal in federations, where the second chamber typically
represents the component states.
The second chamber can also share the workload of the lower chamber, and serve as a
house of review, revising bills, examining constitutional amendments, and eliminating
intemperate legislation. In short, it can be a second chamber for second thoughts. James
Madison, one of America’s founding fathers, suggested that an upper house afforded protection
against ‘an excess of law-making’ (Hamilton, 1788c). As such, it can offer a modern approximation
to the traditional idea of a council of elders, often debating in a less partisan style than the lower
house. Or to adopt the terms used by Edmund Burke (quoted earlier in this chapter), the upper house
can be a ‘deliberative assembly of one nation’, rather than a mere ‘congress of ambassadors’.
Where legislatures consist of two chambers, the question arises of the relationship
between them. Usually, the lower chamber dominates in an arrangement known as weak
bicameralism. In this system, which is typical of parliamentary governments in unitary systems,
the government’s survival depends on maintaining the assembly’s support, and for clarity one
chamber must (or should) become the focus of such accountability. The task of sustaining or
voting down the government falls naturally to the lower house, with its popular mandate.
Weak bicameralism: This arises when the lower chamber dominates the upper,
providing the primary focus for government accountability.
Strong bicameralism: This occurs when the two chambers are more balanced, as in
federations with presidential executives. The dominance of the lower chamber can also
be seen in other ways: xxx
In presidential systems, where presidents are directly elected and their continuation in
office does not depend on the confidence of the legislature, there is no need for the executive’s
accountability to focus on a single chamber. Strong bicameralism can emerge in these
conditions, especially when combined with federalism. The US Congress is the best illustration
of this more balanced arrangement. With its constitutional position as representative of the
states, the Senate plays a full part in the country’s governance.
Selection of the upper chamber. There is not much point in a bicameral legislature
unless the two chambers represent public interests differently; if they are the same size, are
elected in the same way, and have the same powers, they will simply replicate one another.
One means of avoiding this duplication is to select the chambers in different ways, to which end
there are three main options: direct election, indirect election, or appointment.
An example of indirect election can be found in France, where members of the Senate
are elected by members of electoral colleges in each of France’s départements (counties).
These colleges are made up of regional councillors, mayors, city councillors, and members of
the National Assembly from the area, with a weighting towards rural areas that has helped keep
the Senate politically conservative, and prevented the socialists from winning a majority until
2011.
An example of appointment can be found in Canada, where all 105 members of the
Senate are appointed by the governor general (representative of the British monarch) on the
recommendation of the prime minister. This might make the Senate seem as undemocratic as
 Legislatures 7

the Federation Council of Russia xxx, where appointments are controlled by the president.
However, Canadian prime ministers are sensitive to regional considerations and will appoint
independents and members of the opposition in addition to members of their own party. In any
case, the Senate rarely goes against the will of the lower House of Commons, and has a
tradition of being less partisan than the House.
Even when upper chambers are directly elected, a contrast with the lower house is still
normally achieved by offering members of the upper house a longer tenure: typically five or six
years compared with four or five in the lower chamber xxx. To sharpen the contrast further, the
election cycle is often staggered; hence federal senators in the United States serve six-year
terms, with one-third of the seats up for election every two years, while senators in France serve
three-year terms with half the seats up for election every three years. xxx
Committees. Committees are the workhorses of effective legislatures, offering detailed
examination of matters of national interest, including executive and legislative proposals. A
legislative committee is a small working group of legislators, created to cope with the volume
and detail of legislative business, particularly in larger and busier lower chambers. Committees
come in three different forms:
• Standing committees are permanent, and grouped by policy specialties; so there will
usually be separate committees dealing with foreign affairs, economic affairs, budgets,
health, education, the environment, and so on. They offer line-by-line examination of bills
in their particular areas of policy responsibility.
• Select committees monitor the main executive departments or are set up temporarily
to hold hearings on matters of public concern.
• Conference committees reconcile differences in bicameral legislatures in the wording
of bills.
Whatever the committee type, members are usually allocated in proportion to overall
party strength. In operation, however, partisanship is often held in check, yielding a more
cooperative outlook than on the floor.
Committee: A group of legislators assigned to examine new bills, monitor executive
departments or hold hearings on matters of public concern.
The US Congress is the classic example of a committee-based legislature. Although not
mentioned in the constitution, committees rapidly became vital to the work of Congress.
‘Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee rooms is
Congress at work’, wrote Woodrow Wilson (1885: 79). In the 114th Congress (2015–17), there
were 21 standing committees in the House, 18 in the Senate, and multiple subcommittees in
both chambers. Their most important role is in deciding the shape and fate of bills.
Committee hearings allow interest groups to express their views, while committee
members take care not only of the interests of their constituents, but also of those groups
offering support, including campaign contributions, to the legislator. But party leaders are
important, and we should not overestimate committee autonomy. Committees are generally less
influential in the more party-dominated legislatures found in most parliamentary systems. In
Britain’s House of Commons, for instance, government bills are examined by standing
committees which largely replicate party combat on the floor of the chamber. These committees
do not challenge executive dominance in framing legislation, and they tend to be unpopular,
unspecialized, and under-resourced. However, like many other legislatures, the Commons has
expanded its system of select committees; these shadow all the main government departments,
probing government policy and monitoring its implementation. Their reports contribute to
governance and sometimes attract wider interest. In 2011, for example, a committee
interrogation of the media magnate Rupert Murdoch in the wake of a phone-hacking scandal
attracted international attention.
Scandinavia provides cases of influential committees operating in the context of both
strong parties and parliamentary government. Scandinavia’s main governing style, sometimes
 Legislatures 8

known as ‘committee parliamentarianism’, is one in which influential standing committees

negotiate the policies and bills on which the whole parliament later votes. In Sweden, for
instance, committees modify about one in three government proposals and have the right to put
their own proposals (including bills) to the assembly as a whole. Parliamentary committees are
partners in a remarkably deliberative lawmaking process. xxx
The pros and cons of term limits. Unless representatives are also faced with a term
limit, they will often seek to stay in office as long as their energy and the tolerance of voters will
last. Generally, re-election is the norm in liberal democracies, and most sitting legislators return
for a new term. Defining the ideal level of turnover is not easy. On the one hand, the return rate
should be high enough to sustain professionalism, allowing the development of experience and
expertise. On the other hand, it should not be so high as to sustain corruption or create the
‘three As’ which Jackson (1994) associated with a surfeit of incumbency: arrogance, apathy, and
atrophy.
Turnover is greater in countries using party list proportional representation, which allows
party leaders to ensure at least a trickle of fresh blood. In countries using plurality elections,
turnover is mainly lower, the extreme case being the United States, where – between 1982 and
2014 – re-election rates never fell below 85 per cent in the House and 75 per cent in the Senate
(Bardes et al., 2014: table 12.4). In contrast, Mexico does not allow members of Congress to serve more
than one term at a time, so deputies must step down after three years and senators after six
years, returning only at the next election (assuming they win).

Arguments in favour Arguments against

Prevents the development of career Term limits can prevent the best legislators
politicians and a political class, and reduces from staying on and working in the national
the likelihood of corruption. interest.

The longer legislators stay in office, the Makes it more difficult for legislators to
greater the chances of their losing touch with develop long term relationships with their
the needs of voters. districts and constituents.

Brings new perspectives and generations to Prevents voters from benefiting from the
bear, which can be more important than accumulated experience of longer-term
keeping experienced legislators in office. legislators.

Term limits provide a check on the
accumulation of power by individual
legislators.
Creates lame duck legislators, who cannot
plan beyond the date of the next election.
Turnover can be encouraged by levelling the
playing field between incumbents and
challengers, not by banning experienced
players.
 Legislatures 9

Enhancement Activity 1:
You can now do a self-evaluation of your understanding of the Legislatures under the
different forms of government by defining the following:

1. Oversight

2. Committee

3. Plenary session

4. Vote of confidence

5. Staggered election

6. Committee parliamentarianism

Enhancement Activity 2:
Enjoy debating with yourself and answer the following:

1. Give your justifications for:

a. unicameral legislatures

b. bicameral legislatures

2. In the bicameral legislature of a parliamentary system, why is the lower house the more
powerful of the two chambers?

3. Which of the principles governing legislatures (under parliamentary and presidential

systems) are observed in the Philippines?

4. In what way does term limit affect the performance of legislators?

 Legislatures 10

ASSIGNMENT
Legislatures

Individual Work: Complete the given comparison matrix (see next

page). Use the information from the material that you just read and be guided by the
bases that are written in the first column of the matrix. Entries can be key words or
key phrases. Don’t just copy a phrase from the material. The key words or phrase that
you write as your entries must be responsive to the bases given in the first column.
Copy and save the worksheet in a separate file. The filename should be (Family
name_Legislatures) and that will be the filename when you email your output. You
can print first the worksheet and use the printed copy for your draft. Or, you can use
any paper for your draft and then encode your final answers before sending your
output via email.
If you did not yet receive your uc-bcf.edu.ph email address, you can use your
personal email address when you send your output. The reason why I want you to
send the first assignment through your uc-bcf.edu.ph email address is not only to
determine if your enrolment was already confirmed but also to use that address to
send quizzes.
The module (which includes the assignment) is intended for 2.5 hours; however,
considering that not all of you study the module at the same time, you can submit the
assignment on or before 9:00 PM, June 19, 2020. Best to submit immediately after
you are done.

NO EXCUSES!
Name: ___________________________________________
PS 103 Assignment - Legislatures

LEGISLATURES IN PARLIAMETNARY AND PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENTS

BASES PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENTS PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENTS

(Britain, Canada, India, Australia, New (USA, Mexico, Brazil …)
Zealand …)
Proponents of
bills

Proponents of
budgetary or
appropriations
bills

Means of
Legislative
Oversight or
Scrutiny

Means by which
the Legislature
can Remove
Executive
Officials

Method of
Selecting
Members of the
Lower Chamber

Method of
Selecting
Members of the
Upper Chamber

Degree of
Legislative
Committees’
Influence on
Draft Laws