Spinoff from this thread. I say a one-party legislature is better than a two-party legislature because unicameralism makes the legislature stronger as against the executive. (I’m thinking in the context of separation-of-powers or presidential systems, not parliamentary systems.) Because it is easier and much faster for one house to get a bill out, than when two houses have to agree on every clause. And that’s important. The Founding Fathers apparently feared abuses of power from the legislative branch, that’s why they thought it a good idea to weaken it by division – and there were many such abuses, or at least things Publius saw as abuses, in the colonial and Articles of Confederation periods – but their fear was misplaced. After all, from which branch have most arguable abuses of power come in the past century?
Sorry, I meant a one-house legislature, not a one-party legislature. Mods, can you change the title?
Hmm, I’m not sure either way myself, but it’s an interesting issue. It depends on what you want the legislature to do and you wisely narrow your set to presidential rather than parliamentary systems.
Personally I like a bicameral system but dislike having both Houses having equal powers and/or electoral legitimacy. One should be superior to the other and able to overrule it, but the weaker House is able to flag up problems that might slip the lower House by.
Done. In the future, please report the post since we’re more likely to see it if you do.
Can’t work in the US, unless you want the Congress to be only the Senate. States aren’t going to give up their power of representation as states.
Your claim about what the Founders was doing may be accurate, as far as it goes, but that wasn’t the only reason we have 2 houses. The main reason is to give representation by the people and by the states. We are not a country that just happens to be divided up into states.
Bad idea, but keep trying!
While Jefferson addressed the DOI to King George, the things that the Framers were really angry about and almost all of the abuses were acts of Parliament promulgated by a few different PMs. Some of the framers even saw the King as moderately benign but being mislead and his country improperly governed by his prime ministers.
It does seem certain people are coming out in force against the Senate right now, is there some part of the news cycle I’m unaware of that has prompted all of this? It’s almost reminiscent of all the anti-EC stuff back when Bush won in 2000.
Anyway, from a political science, non-American centric point of view, I think there can be some value in making the legislature better able to act as a branch of government.
I wouldn’t go so far as to ever advocate true unicameralism, though. I’d be more inclined towards a system with a strong lower house that operates efficiently and an upper house that is undemocratically appointed to long terms and that serves as an advisory body capable of blocking certain legislation.
That’s in theory, in practice there is no good argument for getting rid of the Senate in the United States. The big argument I’m seeing is “how can you justify someone in Arkansas receiving a better Constituent-to-Representative ratio than someone in California or New York!” Well, it’s easy to justify because nowhere in our Constitution or our national history has it even been suggested a goal or even a desired situation in American government is for representation on a constituent-to-representative basis be equalized across all fifty states.
Yes, if you think that metric, which has no real practical value and certainly no special theoretical value, is be-all-end-all then you’d obviously support abolishing the Senate, but I don’t see why that concern should override everything else.
With the dramatic expansion of the Commerce Clause powers I would actually argue that the Senate and State’s rights are more important now than at any point in American history.
Local government is intrinsically better at a lot of things than a big national government. Local governments that are locally elected and administered will always be more accountable to the local population, and will also be more familiar with the concerns specific to that location. For that reason, even taking a step away from our State’s legal sovereignty, there is genuine value just in having good local government.
Even traditionally centralized states like the United Kingdom are introducing more “home rule” and such these days, and ceding power to localities from the central government.
If our States had strongly protected powers, and were protected from the encroaching advances of the Federal government maybe the small states wouldn’t need Senators and all that. But the way our government works now, natural gas drillers in West Virginia are subject to regulations and rules that West Virginians don’t support but liberal Democrats in New York and California do. Why should that be? This isn’t an air quality issue where the air pollution in one State will naturally affect other states, stuff like natural gas drilling is far more localized and regulations should almost exclusively be local. But instead, it matters to a coal company in Virginia what a Californian thinks the environmental regulations of mining should be, even if Virginians disagree.
Different debate, not relevant here. I’m arguing in terms that apply with exactly equal force at the state level.
But completely irrelevant to this debate. This is about bicameralism vs. unicameralism, not federal vs. unitary or decentralized vs. centralized government.
So why are you invoking the Founders? 
Because their argument, that the legislature needs to be weakened by division, applies at all levels.
If the people decide they want the Senate to be abolished, who are the states going to ask to assert their rights?
As I said in the other thread about this subject… if pigs had wings, they could fly.
Well, the thread you referenced was about the US Congress, and that’s the one we’re all going to want to talk about. I don’t see any reason to talk about all Legislatures except the one that is arguably the most important in the world.
This thread is about all legislatures (in separation-of-powers systems). I think the states could gain by abolishing their senates.
Not really. The US Congress had ceded much of it’s power and authority to the president. This hasn’t happened at the state level.
Still, why does any state legislature need two houses? The thinking behind the “Great Compromise” does not apply.
Speak for yourself. 
Do any of our political institutions make less sense than our 49 bicameral state legislatures? I mean, we know why the Senate is the way it is, and that we’re stuck with it, even if it makes absolutely no sense in post-Civil War America.
But no state senate was formed in order to achieve some state-level great compromise to reach an agreement that there be a state. They’re just there, apparently, as an echo of the Federal bicameral legislature - not only completely unnecessary in the present day, but never necessary at any point in the past.
Having two houses of the legislature in each state is, AFAICT, nothing more than a way for state legislators to keep score of where they are along the political career track.
More like an echo of the Westminster Parliament; AFAIK, the colonies all had two-house legislatures. (Does anybody know different?)