Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access published November 19, 2012
Parliamentary Affairs (2012) 1–17
doi:10.1093/pa/gss081
Bicameralism As a Form of Government
(Or: Why Australia and Japan Do Not Have a
Parliamentary System)
University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
*
Correspondence: [email protected]
The article analyses a certain type of bicameralism not merely as a form of
legislative organisation, but as a form of government—as a hybrid between
parliamentarism and presidentialism. A new typology of pure and hybrid
forms of government is proposed, which classifies bicameralism in Australia
and Japan as chamber-independent government. This type is systematically
compared with other forms of government, including hybrids like semipresidentialism, elected prime-ministerial government in Israel (from 1996 to
2002) and assembly-independent government in Switzerland. The article highlights how chamber-independent government has the potential to combine
different visions of democracy without leading to presidentialisation of political parties.
1.
Introduction
Bicameralism is typically analysed as a form of legislative organisation, and a
highly controversial one at that (Tsebelis and Money, 1997). Some authors highlight the desirable functions a second chamber can serve in a political system (e.g.
Riker, 1992; Lijphart, 1999; Russell, 2001). Others are sceptical, one important
reason being that powerful second chambers, like other legislative ‘veto points’,
tend to undermine the democratic principle of majority rule (e.g. McGann,
2006; Przeworski, 2010; Ganghof Forthcoming). My focus here is on a different
potential justification of second chambers. I argue that a particular type of bicameralism can be understood as a distinct form of government which mixes elements
of parliamentarism and presidentialism, and which has the potential to combine
different ‘visions’ of democracy (Powell, 2000; Shugart, 2001).
# The Author [2012]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
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Steffen Ganghof*
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The idea that certain forms of bicameralism may systematically change
executive– legislative relations is not new (Shugart and Carey, 1992, p. 1, n. 1;
Russell, 2001, p. 447). To my knowledge, though, it has not been analysed
systematically and comparatively. Major comparative studies on executive–
legislative relations ignore the issue of bicameralism (Cheibub, 2007; Samuels
and Shugart, 2010). Moreover, country experts are divided on whether or not
bicameralism changes the form of government. This divide has surfaced
particularly with respect to Australia. In his authoritative study of Australian bicameralism, published by the Department of the Senate, Bach (2003, p. 329)
states that ‘the legislative powers of the Senate simply cannot be reconciled
with the contention that Australia has a parliamentary form of government,
pure and simple’. Other scholars, however, find Bach’s contention ‘seriously
false’ and ‘badly mistaken’ (Stone, 2006, p. 184). Moreover, given the typological
state of the art, Bach (2003) is unable to provide an alternative classification of the
Australian case and treats it as unique and non-classifiable. This article supports
the idea that Australia does not have a parliamentary system, at least not a
pure one.
Based on the literature on executive– legislative relations, I propose a new typology that covers all major forms of government, pure and hybrid. I classify Australia and Japan as variants of chamber-independent government. This form of
government exists under three conditions. First, the second chamber’s democratic legitimacy is (roughly) as high as that of the first chamber and, secondly, it has
absolute veto on all (non-financial) legislation. If these two conditions are fulfilled, I speak of a ‘dual legislature’, in analogy to the ‘dual executive’ under semipresidentialism. For a dual legislature to change executive– legislative relations,
however, a third condition must be fulfilled: one chamber must have the
power to unilaterally dismiss the cabinet, whereas the other chamber lacks this
power.
I argue that chamber-independent government can strike a delicate but attractive balance between competing goals of democratic designs. This argument
is developed in a broad comparison between pure and hybrid forms of government. Among other things, I argue that chamber-independent government as
it exists in Australia can achieve some of the goals associated with direct executive
elections but without the concomitant ‘presidentialisation’ of partisan politics
(Samuels and Shugart, 2010).
The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 2 proposes a new typology of
forms of government. Section 3 introduces ‘chamber-independent government’
in Australian and Japan in more detail. Section 4 uses the comparative perspective
implied by the proposed typology to explore how chamber-independent government as it exists in Australia may mitigate trade-offs between competing goals in
democratic design. The section also raises some questions for more detailed
Bicameralism As a Form of Government
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comparisons between Australia and Japan. Section 5 summarises the main
argument and highlights its relevance for the literatures on bicameralism and
executive– legislative relations.
2.
An integrated typology of governmental forms
As a general proposition for the comparative study of politics, parliamentarism is not necessarily incompatible with bicameralism,
because we understand the former to mean that the government
must have a majority in the only house of Parliament that matters,
the only one that has the constitutional writ to approve or disprove
of the government’s legislation. In London and Ottawa, that means
only the House of Commons. But in Canberra, both houses matter,
and that fact matters for the argument that Australia has a parliamentary system of government. It does not. (Bach, 2003, p. 330; see also
p. 329)
The problem is that, while the legislative veto power of second chambers is
clearly important, the crucial question for classifying forms of government is
how the cabinet survives in office. There is broad consensus in the comparative literature that if we focus on one and only one question to distinguish between parliamentary and presidential systems, this question is whether or not a
parliamentary majority can dismiss the cabinet for political (rather than legal)
reasons (e.g. Strøm, 2000; Cheibub, 2007).1
Secondly, in the above quote Bach seems to also make the distinction between
different forms of government dependent upon the behavioural patterns of voting
and cabinet formation: if a cabinet is formed that controls a majority in both
chambers, there is a parliamentary system; otherwise there is something else.
The systems of government in Australia (or Japan) could thus alternate
between parliamentary and non-parliamentary phases. This typological mix of
1
There are, of course quasi-legal (impeachment) procedures for dismissing the executive in
presidential systems.
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This section proposes a new integrated typology of executive– legislative relations
which identifies bicameralism as Australia and Japan as chamber-independent
government. To clarify the typological approach pursued here, it is useful to
briefly discuss three shortcomings in Bach’s (2003) argument toward the conclusion that Australia does not have a (pure) parliamentary system. First, Bach seems
to argue that the government’s ability to enact its legislative program is a defining
feature of parliamentary government (cf. Stone, 2006, p. 184). For example, he
says:
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(1) fused versus separate survival of the executive;
(2) popular executive elections versus executives selected by the assembly;2
(3) single versus dual executives.
The first dimension is the most important one, as discussed above. The second
is highlighted in Samuels and Shugart’s (2010) substantive argument, which I
shall discuss in Section 4. The third one is meant to cover the important
hybrid of semi-presidentialism (Elgie, 2011).
To create an integrated typology, I depart from Samuels and Shugart’s approach in two ways. First, I generalise the third distinction in order to cover
not only dual executives but also dual legislatures, i.e. a parliament with two
powerful chambers (I shall specify below what I mean by powerful). Secondly,
I integrate this distinction into the first dimension by treating the survival of
the executive as a variable with three instead of two values. The executives’ political survival can be fully dependent on or fully independent of the assembly, but
it can also be partially dependent on the assembly. This can happen in two ways:
first, there can be a dual executive only one part of which, the president, survives
2
I speak of ‘popular’ rather than ‘direct’ elections, because the elections of the US president are popular
(voters are allowed to vote for presidential candidates), but due to the Electoral College they are not
direct (popular voting is not decisive and final). See Shugart (2004).
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fixed institutional features and variable behavioural patterns is well known from
the literature on semi-presidentialism, but it should be avoided; preferable is a
purely institutional approach which ‘defines the authority patterns of the executive and assembly and how they are constitutionally related to one another’
(Shugart, 2005, p. 327).
Thirdly, Bach only considers the two pure types, parliamentary and presidential government, and the well-known semi-presidential hybrid. Based on this classificatory set, he concludes that the Australia’s system cannot be classified but is
unique (Bach, 2003, p. 330). The problem is that he has not considered all hybrids
between presidential and parliamentary government as contrast foils for the Australian case. Semi-presidentialism is not the only option.
These three shortcomings imply three desiderata for the typology to be developed. We have to define a bicameral system’s departure from pure parliamentarism with respect to the core issue of the cabinet’s political survival in office; we
need to focus on institutional features rather than behavioural patterns; and
we need to take account of all major existing hybrids.
The state of the art in classifying different forms of government from an institutional perspective is provided in the important book by Samuels and Shugart
(2010, p. 27). Their typological discussion is based on three analytical dimensions, which they do not combine into one integrated typology, however:
Bicameralism As a Form of Government
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Table 1. Forms of government
Executive survival
Fully dependent on
assembly
Not dependent on
assembly
[2] Semi-Presidential
(e.g. France)
[3] Presidential (e.g. USA)
[5] Chamber-Independent [6] Assembly-independent
(e.g. Australia)
(Switzerland)
Source: own composition.
independently from the legislature; and there can be a dual legislature, only one
part of which can dismiss the executive. This reasoning leads to the typology
shown in Table 1. The horizontal axis (columns) of Table 1 distinguishes the
degree to which the executive’s survival is independent from the legislature.
The vertical axis (rows) distinguishes forms of government based on whether
or not the executive originates through popular elections.
The typology covers the two pure types (parliamentary and presidential) and all
major hybrids. The upper row includes the three systems with popularly elected
executives: when an elected chief executive survives independently from the assembly, we have presidential government (cell 3); when he or she can be unilaterally
dismissed by an assembly majority, we have elected prime-ministerial government
(cell 1). This system does not currently exist, but was tried in Israel from 1996 –
2002. I shall say a bit more about it below. Finally, when there is a dual executive,
one part of which is popularly elected and serves fixed terms, whereas the other
depends on assembly confidence, we have semi-presidential government (cell 2).
The systems in the lower row lack popular executive elections. Hence, the
executive’s democratic legitimacy must derive from its selection by at least one
part of a popularly elected assembly. When executive selection by the assembly
combines with the need for assembly confidence, we have pure parliamentary government (cell 4). This is also true in a bicameral legislature, if the confidence relationship extends to the second chamber, as it does in Italy. When executive
election by the assembly does not combine with the need for assembly confidence,
we get assembly-independent government, which has existed in Switzerland for a
long time (cell 6). The Swiss seven-member executive, the Federal Council, is
elected by a bicameral parliament, but cannot be dismissed by either chamber
(Linder, 2002). The final form of government is the one that has so far been
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Executive origin
Popular
[1] Elected PrimeExecutive
Ministerial (Israel
Elections
1996–2002)
No Popular [4] Parliamentary
Executive
(e.g. Britain)
Elections
Partially dependent on
assembly
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3.
Chamber-independent government in Australia and Japan
We have defined chamber-independent government as a system in which the
cabinet originates from a ‘dual legislature’, i.e. a parliament with two powerful
chambers, but survives separately from only one of them. We now have to
specify what ‘powerful’ means. In rough analogy to a famous definition of
semi-presidentialism (Duverger, 1980), and in line with prominent discussions
of bicameralism (Lijphart, 1999), two conditions for a ‘dual legislature’ can be
specified: the second chamber must be popularly elected so as to have roughly
3
Note that the typology does not distinguish two variants of chamber-independent government:
(1) one in which the executive originates from both chambers, (2) one in which it originates only
from one chamber (the chamber on whose confidence it depends). This distinction would be
possible if the rows in Table 1 were constructed analogously to the columns, i.e. by distinguishing
between full, partial and no separation of executive origin. The resulting typology would be rather
complex; several of the nine resulting types would be empty, whereas others would include
sub-types. Here I opt for simplicity. In future research on chamber-independent government,
however, the distinction between the two variants might well be of great importance.
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neglected in systematic discussions of executive– legislative relations: the executive is selected by a dual legislature (by both chambers or by one of them), but
survives independently from one of these chambers. In analogy to
‘assembly-independent government’ I call this type chamber-independent government (cell 5).3
Before we move on, note that the six forms of government distinguished in the
typology are ideal types. Real-world examples are not necessarily perfect instantiations of the underlying principles. In Israel, for example, the executive was not
as dependent on assembly confidence as in an ideal-typical parliamentary system.
There was also an element of separate survival, because the Knesset could only
dismiss the prime minister unilaterally if a supermajority of 80 of 120 members
supported this motion. In contrast, a ‘normal’ vote of non-confidence with an
absolute majority (61 members) resulted in the re-election of both branches: parliament and the prime minister (Hazan, 2001). As Mainwaring and Shugart
(1997, p. 453) state: ‘as long as one branch cannot dismiss the other without
standing for reelection itself, the principle of separation of powers is still retained
to an extent not present in any variant of parliamentarism’. The Israeli rules were
somewhere between prime-ministerial government and a diluted form of presidentialism. This insight is important, because the real-world instances of
chamber-independent government, Australia and Japan, are also diluted along
various dimensions. It is to these cases that we now turn.
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4
There is no consensus on how to operationalize semi-presidential systems. Much of the recent
literature drops the requirement of the elected president being powerful (Elgie, 2011). However,
some authors argue that presidents that have no power at all over the cabinet or the legislature can
be discounted, e.g. those in Ireland and Finland (Cheibub, 2007).
5
I am not aware of public arguments in Japan that the legitimacy of the second chamber is weaker. It is,
however, characterized by a significant degree of malapportionment.
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the same legitimacy as the first chamber, and it must have an absolute veto on all
important (non-financial) legislation.4 The third condition for chamberindependent government follows from the typology: the second chamber majority must not have the power to unilaterally dismiss the cabinet for political
reasons.
So let us apply these three criteria to Japan and Australia in turn. The second
chamber of the Japanese parliament, the House of Councillors, clearly fulfils the
third criterion for chamber-independent government (cf. Harukata, 2010). It can
neither dismiss the government in a vote of non-confidence nor veto the budget
(Art. 60 and 67). Hence, the cabinet survives independently from the upper
house. Of course, an oppositional majority in the second chamber can threaten
to block an important piece of legislation in the hope of forcing the prime minister to resign and dissolve the lower house. This happened in August 2012: The
oppositional Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) endorsed a long-planned consumption tax increase in the upper house only after Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had publicly (but
vaguely) promised to dissolve the lower house ‘in the near term’ (BBC News,
10 August 2012). The details of this particular political bargain are complex;
the important point here is that the upper house does not have the constitutional
authority to dismiss the prime minister.
The House of Councillors also clearly fulfils one of the criteria for a dual legislature: it is popularly elected and its legitimacy is roughly as high as that of the
House of Representatives (Art. 43 of the Japanese Constitution).5 The second
criterion for a dual legislature is less clearly fulfilled, though: while the House
of Councillors does not have an absolute veto, a two-thirds majority in the
House of Representatives is needed to override its suspensory veto (Art. 59).
Unless the government does have a two-thirds majority in the first chamber,
therefore, the second chamber is a proper veto player on all legislation except
the budget. I conclude that Japan is a version of chamber-independent government, but since there is no absolute veto, it is a diluted version.
The Australian case is a bit more complex. Prima facie, Australian bicameralism fulfils all three criteria: the Senate is popularly elected, it has an absolute veto
on all legislation, and it cannot dismiss the cabinet through a vote of nonconfidence. ‘As a matter of constitutional principle, the Senate cannot require
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Having never fulfilled its intended role as the House of the States it
makes its presence felt only when it interferes with the government’s
ability to fulfil its electoral mandate and satisfy the will of the people.
A prime minister (Paul Keating) described Senators as ‘unrepresentative swill’ and for many years, one of the nation’s two major political
parties (the ALP [Australian Labor Party]) made the call for its abolition a regular part of its election manifesto.
On the other hand, Senate elections are more proportional than House elections, as the electoral systems are Single Transferable Vote and Alternative Vote,
respectively (Farrell and McAllister, 2006). The greater proportionality of
Senate elections implies more equal treatment of citizens along a different analytical dimension (Christiano, 1996; Van der Hout and McGann, 2009), which
serves to increase the legitimacy of the Senate.
The second dilution of chamber-independent government in Australia may
thus be more important. While the Senate cannot formally require the government to resign, it can indirectly do so by vetoing the budget and thus blocking
supply.7 This veto over the budget can be seen as a functional equivalent to a
vote of non-confidence, and this veto right triggered the most important constitutional crisis in Australian history in 1975 (Bach, 2003, Chapter 4). Yet details
are important here. While an opposition-controlled Senate can block supply in
the hope of making the government resign, it lacks the constitutional authority
to unilaterally require the government to resign. The reason is that the
6
On Samuels and Snyder’s (2001) malapportionment index, which goes from 0 (perfect equality) to
100 (perfect inequality), the authors put malapportionment in the Australian Senate at 30 percent in
the 1990s.
7
Note that one important comparative treatment of bicameralism incorrectly states that the Senate
does not have an absolute veto on financial legislation (Tsebelis and Money, 1997, p. 64).
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the government to resign’. (Bach, 2003, p. 5) On closer inspection, however,
chamber-independent government in Australia is also diluted in two ways.
First, there is significant ‘malapportionment’ in the Senate, which reduces its
legitimacy. Since the Senate was originally justified as an agent of territorial representation—a role it fulfils only to a very limited extent (Swenden, 2004)—each
state has the same number of Senators. Since 1984 this number has been 12; in
addition, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory have two
Senators each. The resulting malapportionment implies that the votes of citizens
in larger states count less than those in smaller ones, which violates the ‘one
person, one vote’ principle.6 This fact has been used to publicly denigrate the
democratic legitimacy of the Senate. As Bach (2003, p. 247) summarises:
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8
The double dissolution procedure in Australia is part of a set of procedures to resolve bicameral
deadlocks. This set also includes the possibility of a joint sitting of both houses: if after the
re-election of both houses the very same deadlock occurs for a third time, the Governor-General
may convene the two houses in a joint sitting. At the joint sitting, there are to be votes on the bill
and on any amendments that one house has approved and the other has not. An absolute of the
membership of both houses is required to approve any amendment and to pass the bill, if and as
amended. The number of members in the House is required (by the ‘nexus’ provision of sec. 24 of
the constitution) to be twice the number of the senators. Joint sittings, however, are extremely rare
events (Bach, 2003, p. 30), and what interests us here is not so much the relationship between the
two houses but that between the Senate (as the true legislature) and the cabinet.
9
Note also that according to sec. 57 a double dissolution must not take place within six months of the
end of the three-year elected term of the House.
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government can opt for a double dissolution, rather than resignation, in order to
break the deadlock. According to section 57 of the Australian constitution, if the
Senate blocks the same House proposal twice (including financial bills), the
cabinet can ask the Governor-General to dissolve both houses. This leads to
new elections for all seats in both the House and the Senate (Bach, 2003,
pp. 25 – 30).8 As in the Japanese case, an oppositional Senate majority may of
course hope that the cabinet responds to legislative deadlock by resigning and dissolving only the House of Representatives, but the Senate cannot unilaterally
dismiss the government.
The detailed requirements of sec. 57 may make it difficult for a government to
respond to deadlock with a double dissolution. For when the two houses reach
deadlock over a bill, the same result must be reached a second time after an interval of at least three months following the point at which deadlock was reached.
Only after the second deadlock over the same proposal may the GovernorGeneral, acting at the request of the government, dissolve both houses simultaneously.9 It is important to note, however, that a government can work around
these requirements. As Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice explains: ‘By putting
up a bill which is certain of rejection by the Senate on two occasions, a ministry,
early in its life, can thus give itself the option of simultaneous dissolutions as an
alternative to an early election for the House of Representatives’ (Evans and
Laing, 2012, p. 740). In 1974, for instance, the Senate deferred action on a
supply bill and the opposition leader stated that the debate would not be
resumed before the government announced early House elections. The government, however, responded with asking the Governor-General to grant a double
dissolution of both houses, which he did. This double dissolution was not
based on the Senate’s failure to pass the appropriation bill, which the Senate
had not even rejected once, but on six other bills that had satisfied the requirements of sec. 57 (Bach, 2003, pp. 84 –86).
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4.
Chamber-independent government in comparative perspective
Typologies are no ends in themselves, but tools of scientific discovery. They help
to organise our thinking and formulate testable hypotheses. In this section, I want
to show that the proposed typology is useful for these purposes. I shall first
compare chamber-independent government in Australia to other forms of government, and then briefly consider the comparison between Australia and Japan.
My main thesis is that chamber-independent government has the potential to
balance a number of competing goals in the design of democracy. I begin by focussing on Australia, where this potential is more visible. My argument partly resembles Bach’s, who claims that the Australian system strikes a ‘delicate balance’
(p. 354) between competing goals. However, Bach (2003, p. 352) focuses mainly
10
On a rather stretched understanding of ‘chamber-independent government’, the German Bundesrat
might also be put into this category. This classification would involve stretching because the Bundesrat
is not de jure a second chamber of a bicameral parliament and it is not directly elected but represents
the executives of the German states (Patzelt, 1999). Hence, the Bundesrat’s legitimacy is clearly not as
high as that of the Bundestag. However, due to the nature of German federalism and the fact that the
Bundesrat clearly is a successful institution of territorial representation, its perceived legitimacy is
quite high. Conceptual stretching would also be involved because the absolute veto of the
Bundesrat only applies to legislation concerning the states—which is, however, most of the
important legislation. The third criterion of chamber-independent government is clearly fulfilled by
the Bundesrat: it cannot veto the federal budget and it cannot dismiss the federal government in a
vote of non-confidence.
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That the Senate can only ‘dismiss’ the government by way of a double dissolution is an important element of power separation, as we noted in Section 2 for
the Israeli system. Indeed, there is a non-obvious but important similarity
between the constitutional rules in Australia and the Israeli version of elected
prime-ministerial government. To see this, we have to view the cabinet and its
majority (if it has one) in the House of Representative together as the ‘executive
branch’ and the Senate as the true ‘legislative branch’. This analytical move brings
out the similarity: in both cases an absolute majority in the actual ‘legislature’ is
insufficient to unilaterally dismiss the cabinet, but this majority can achieve a
simultaneous re-election of both ‘branches’. In Israel, the fact that an absolute legislative majority could only dismiss the prime minister by way of a simultaneous
re-election of prime minister and parliament moved the Israeli system somewhat
in the direction of presidentialism. Conversely, the fact that a double dissolution
is possible at all moves the Australian system somewhat in the direction of parliamentarism. The analytical similarity between the two hybrids is also important
for understanding the attractiveness of chamber-independent government in
Australia, which is the topic of the next section.10
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on the problem of executive dominance and on the juxtaposition of the Westminster and Washington ideal types (see also Thompson, 1980). He highlights the fact
that the Senate can be more effective than the House in evaluating, amending and
sometimes vetoing government legislation. Here I attempt a broader comparison
of democratic designs and conflicting goals.
Let us begin with pure parliamentary systems. They present institutional
designers with a tough choice between two broad visions of democracy (Lijphart,
1999; Powell, 2000; Shugart, 2001). The proportional vision, based on a proportional electoral system, achieves fair representation, whereas the majoritarian
vision, based on plurality or majority rule, offers the hope of more identifiable
and responsible governments. One way to at least mitigate this trade-off in a
purely parliamentary system is minority cabinets, especially one-party minority
cabinets. Such cabinets can be identifiable and responsible to some extent, but
they must build more inclusive coalitions in the legislature. This not only
reduces executive dominance, but may have the additional advantage of what I
call coalitional ‘flexibility’. As Ward and Weale (2010) have argued, coalitions
that change from issue to issue can be desirable from a democratic point of
view, if they move legislation closer to the issue-specific median position in the
parliament. In contrast, if there is a stable coalition in which each party is a
‘veto player’ in the entire policy space, it might be impossible to change the legislative status quo towards the median on some issues (Tsebelis, 2002).
But minority cabinets have downsides, of course. A crucial one is the risk of
cabinet instability. Separating the survival of the cabinet from the legislature
can be analysed as a response to this problem. By separating survival, democracies
can reduce executive dominance and allow for flexible, median-oriented legislative coalition-building without making cabinets unstable. One way to do this is
the Swiss example of assembly-independent government. Since the cabinet is
not accountable to either chamber of the legislature, coalition-building in the legislature can be very flexible, as neither party nor coalition discipline is necessary.
Even though, since 1959, all four major Swiss parties have elected members into
the cabinet, this cabinet does not function like an oversised coalition in parliamentary systems. Instead, flexible legislation coalitions are formed on an issuespecific basis that often exclude cabinet parties (Schwarz et al., 2011). Swiss
policy coalitions can be centre-left or centre-right minimal winning coalitions,
depending on the location of the status quo and the median location in the
parliament.
A major downside of the Swiss model, though, is that ‘responsible’ cabinets
hardly exist at all, at least in the current behavioural equilibrium (which is also
influenced by the rules for direct democracy). Voters have no choice between
competing options for government. Instead, a sort of seven-headed, collective
president, the Federal Council, is constructed by the four main parties in the
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11
Samuels and Shugart (2010) also apply the presidentialization thesis to semi-presidential system,
especially presidential-parliamentary regimes, but they note important exceptions such as Austria.
Given the large recent literature on semi-presidentialism I do not want to say much about it here.
See Elgie (2011) for an excellent discussion.
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parliament. Since voters have very little influence on cabinet formation, Switzerland also has one of the lowest levels of voter turnout among all developed democracies (Franklin, 2002).
Pure presidentialism (and, to a lesser extent elected prime-ministerial government) can be interpreted as a way to mitigate the trade-offs discussed so far. As in
the case of assembly-independent government, the executive is stable by design,
but in contrast to Switzerland, voters can directly choose between clearly identifiable cabinet options and they can hold the executive accountable (within
limits). At the same time, when the legislative branch is elected under proportional rules, it may reduce executive dominance and achieve the goals of fair representation and flexible, median-oriented legislative coalition-building (Colomer and
Negretto, 2005). Systems with a unified, popularly elected executive may thus
combine elements of different ‘visions’ of democracy (see also Hazan, 2001;
Samuels and Shugart, 2010).
Presidentialism and elected prime-ministerial government have other downsides, though. An important one is highlighted by Samuels and Shugart
(2010). They show that popular executive elections of a unified executive
tend to reverse the principal-agent relationship between the party and ‘its’
chief executive and thus lead to a fundamental transformation of political
parties. They call this transformation ‘presidentialisation’. An important aspect
of presidentialiation is the weakening of parties’ programmatic clarity and
coherence.11
This trade-off discussion gives us a clearer view of the potential advantages of
the Australian system. Recall the similarity between Australia and the failed Israeli
system. If we view the cabinet and its partisan support in the House of Representative together as the ‘executive branch’ and the Senate as the true ‘legislative
branch’, we see that the Australian system has the potential to balance a
number of conflicting goals. On the one hand, the majoritarian House elections
can be seen as a quasi-direct choice between two competing cabinet alternatives;
the House is to some extent an ‘electoral college’ for the Prime Minister (Bach,
2003, p. 245). The two-party system in the House thus allows voters to identify
competing cabinet alternatives, provide them with mandates and hold them accountable (cf. Powell, 2000; Shugart, 2001). Moreover, cabinet stability is high,
due to the electoral and party systems in the House and the constitutional
design of the Senate. On the other hand, the Senate increases the proportionality
Bicameralism As a Form of Government
Page 13 of 17
12
For the idea that Australian bicameralism exploits the advantages of both proportional
representation and single-member districts, see also Brennan (1999).
13
This cabinet formation is thus a confirming instance of the so-called ‘Lijphart-Sjölin conjecture’,
according to which certain legislative veto points increase the likelihood of oversized coalitions. See
Volden and Carruba (2004) and Ganghof (2010) for useful discussions.
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of representation and it allows for more flexible legislative coalition building.12
And, finally, the Australian system achieves this balancing of different visions
of democracy without a presidentialisation of parties (Samuels and Shugart,
2010). The governing parties have high programmatic coherence and discipline,
and they remain in control of their prime ministers. Julia Gillard’s leadership
challenge that forced Kevin Rudd to resign as Australia’s Prime Minister and
leader of the ALP in June 2010 illustrates this fact. To push a well-known metaphor to the extreme, the Australian system promises to achieve the ‘best of all
worlds’: presidentialism and parliamentarism, majoritarian and proportional
democracy, stable cabinets and flexible legislative coalitions.
Of course, we have to be careful here. I do not wish to claim that Australian
bicameralism does actually achieve all of the goals mentioned, but that it has
the potential to mitigate the trade-offs. And like every constitutional design, the
Australian one involves risks. The most important risk is probably the one
shared with virtually all forms of government other than pure parliamentarism:
legislative deadlock. More empirical analysis is needed before we can come to a
firm conclusion about the performance of the Australian system. My purpose
here has merely been to suggest that the proposed typology can be helpful in
guiding a comparative analysis.
This brings me to my final point. One interesting path for further empirical
work would be the systematic comparison of different variants of chamberindependent government, especially of Australia and Japan. For example, consider the question of how cabinet formation responds to the need for legislative
majorities in the second chamber. In Japan, there is frequently an effort to build
‘oversized’ cabinets in the first chamber in order to increase the cabinet’s seat
share in the House of Councillors. In 2009, for instance, the DPJ formed a coalition cabinet with two smaller parties (SDP and PNP) ‘for the sole purpose of securing a majority in that chamber’ (Harukata, 2010, p. 2).13 In Australia, in
contrast, no minor Senate party has ever been included in the cabinet in order
to gain a Senate majority (cf. Bach, 2003, pp. 50– 51; Ganghof and Bräuninger,
2006, pp. 533 –534). A systematic explanation of this difference might lead us
to deeper insights into these two different versions of chamber-independent government. One factor that is likely to figure prominently in such an explanation is
the structure of the party system. We know that the party system is generally
crucial for the behavioural equilibria that emerge in separation-of-power
Page 14 of 17
Parliamentary Affairs
5.
Conclusion
This article has analysed a certain type of bicameralism as a form of government.
It proposes a new and simple typology of executive– legislative relations and classifies bicameralism in Australia and Japan as chamber-independent government. I
have also argued that this form of government may strike a delicate but potentially attractive balance between different goals in democratic designs and hence different models of democracy.
These arguments merit consideration in the literatures on executive – legislative relations and bicameralism. In the former, there is a strong focus on
hybrids between parliamentarism and presidentialism based on popular executive
elections, especially semi-presidentialism. Yet given how deeply such elections
tend to transform the nature of partisan politics (Samuels and Shugart, 2010),
the hybrids that can do without them should receive greater attention. Chamberindependent government is one of them.
In the literature on bicameralism, one problem is that many prominent justifications of second chambers are not comparative in a theoretical sense, i.e. they
do not analyse whether bicameralism is better suited to serve some desirable function than the best institutional alternative. I argue elsewhere that many attempts
to justify bicameralism fail once it is compared with the best institutional alternative (Ganghof 2012). This problem is also obvious in the Australian case.
One prominent argument for a proportionally elected second chamber is that
it increases the representativeness of the overall system (Russell, 2001, p. 446;
Bach, 2003, p. 73). If this were the only goal, though, a simpler and more straightforward alternative would be to institute a proportional electoral system in a unicameral (parliamentary) system (cf. Przeworski, 2010, pp. 144 – 5, n. 10). I have
suggested that there might in fact be a successful comparative justification of
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systems, be it pure presidentialism (Mainwaring and Shugart, 1997), elected
prime-ministerial government (Hazan, 2001), semi-presidentialism (Skach,
2007) or assembly-independent government (Linder, 2002). Chamberindependent government is not different.
In fact, Japan’s movement towards a two-party system is one of the reasons
why some country experts see Japanese politics in a situation that bears some resemblance to Australia in the crisis-prone mid-1970s. The problem is the dominance of two large parties, the LDP and the DPJ, one of which has a majority (but
no super-majority) in the first chamber but frequently not in the second. It is thus
no surprise that one reform proposal is to move in the Australian direction. If
second chamber elections became more proportional and increased the effective
number of parties in the House of Councillors, some of the benefits of the Australian model might also be realised in Japan (Harukata, 2010, p. 8).
Bicameralism As a Form of Government
Page 15 of 17
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stanley Bach, Sebastian Eppner, Johannes Freudenreich,
Katja Heeß, André Kaiser, Christian Stecker and Parliamentary Affairs’ anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.
Funding
This paper is part of a project supported by the German Research Foundation
(DFG), grant no. GA 1696/2-1.
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