The Case for Unicameralism

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Let me start out by saying that I am a strong supporter of bicameralism in principle, and that obviously the people of each state should decide for themselves whether they should be unicameral, bicameral, tricameral, etc. I am not proposing abolishing the federal United States Senate in anyway. Also, for the purpose of this poll and discussion, "upper house" shall refer to either house being abolished; for instance, Nebraska abolished their legislature's lower house, but kept their state's upper house.

What I am wondering is what purpose bicameralism serves in most U.S. states, as it is currently set up? I'm not sure about other states, but it appears to me that the Missouri Senate is not much different than the Missouri House of Representatives, other than the fact that the Missouri Senate has fewer members and said members represent slightly larger constituencies. Personally I have been contemplating the idea of abolishing my state's upper house and increasing the size of my state's lower house, to give local communities more representation and bridging the gap between representatives and their constituents. A potential downside of abolishing one of the houses is that it will be easier for bills to be passed, thus eliminating a check on government's power.

An alternative to abolishing such upper houses would be to reform them. For instance, instead of representing larger constituencies, a state's upper house could represent experts from various industries and fields? Or perhaps the upper house could be comprised of professors from various colleges and universities within the state? Or perhaps the upper house could be comprised of farmers, thus giving the legislature a lean towards rural and agrarian interests and eliminating the urban bias that many state legislatures have?

 

Queensland (Australia) hasn't had a senate/upper house since 1921, it's also seen ridiculous corruption and abuses of power in the last 50 odd years, gerrymandering by Joh Bjelke-petersen kept his party in office long after it should have been, fortunately the worst of it came to an end with the Fitzgerald inquiry (The inquiry resulted in the deposition of a premier, two by-elections, the jailing of three former ministers and a police commissioner who was jailed and lost his knighthood. It also led directly to the end of the National Party of Australia's 32-year run as the government of Queensland.). The Dead Kennedys also put out a brutally honest tour report back in 83 when they were in QLD (Joh lost office in 89) to give you a glimpse of life under Joh:

"The last city we'll deal with is up north, and is Brisbane, capital of Queensland. It's the state that's referred to, in other parts of Australia, in hushed tones, because it's so openly racist and repressive. It's run by a state dictator, a kind of Huey Long, named Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His National Party hardly holds any power anywhere else in Australia because they're considered the right-wing lunatic fringe. But at home he's been able to keep in power by outrageous forms of gerrymandering, and is widely rumored to have rigged every election. He has beefed up the police force, and given them carte blanche to do what they want to keep people from questioning things. In Australia, there is no constitution and no laws about search and seizure, so the cops can, and do, kick in your door, and smash up your house, if they want. They've been known to break up conversations on the streets involving three or more people, cause they didn't want any assembly on the street. I met many people in Sydney who had fled Brisbane because they were being pulled over and detained for a half hour or so every day. I met a lot of very warm people there, very radical in the head, but very afraid to talk. I felt safer walking around on the streets of East Berlin than I did in Brisbane.

Brisbane is also where Darren, our drummer, was picked out of a crowd of about 15 white people, and arrested for drinking in public, even though his can of beer was unopened. When Ray, our guitarist, tried to intervene, he was thrown in another police car and taken away. Also, Bjelke-Petersen's people are trying to take away the Aborigine's right to vote and own land, claiming they "haven't gotten that far up the evolutionary scale." And still, his party is kept in office. Some of his cronies, in fact the head of the Chamber of Commerce, wants to enact forced sterilization laws to kill off the Aborigines."

We're still without a senate/upper house 30 years later and we still lose an elected official every month or two on average to corruption/conflicts of interest. I'd love to see the inner workings of QLD politics because it seems there must be a culture of corruption. But anyway, that's my experience of a government with no upper house/senate.

 

Interesting, I had no idea about Queensland's experience with this. That sounds terrible, that sounds more like a case of corruption gone unchecked than the failings of unicameralism, to me anyway. From what I've seen, most states tend to have a single party in complete control of both houses of a state's legislature in most states.

The original idea of having upper houses in most states seems to be to give regions a larger say, rather than populations, however this doesn't seem to be the case in my neighboring state, Illinois. The politics of Illinois have been dominated by Chicago, the second largest city in the entire federation. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of Illinois is rural farmland and largely conservative, even though the Illinois Senate is supposed to stop urban areas from having too much power. I haven't looked into the exact reasons that this happened in Illinois, but it may very well have to do with gerrymandering.

From my understanding at least 45% of Australians support republicanism. Have your experiences with this style of corruption and tyrannical government prompted you to consider supporting federal republicanism, and as thus, a written constitution to limit the powers of government?

 

You didn't mention oversight, the full name of the upper house/senate over here is the "upper house of review", and to borrow a certain famous exchange from US history...
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George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were breakfasting when Jefferson asked why Washington had agreed to include such a house - the US Senate - in Congress.

"Why," retorted Washington, "did you just now pour that tea into your saucer before drinking it?"

"To cool it," said Jefferson.

Washington replied: "we pour our legislation into the Senatorial saucer to cool it."
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It was actually what is now the current center-left party (Labor) that abolished the senate back in 1921, it voted itself out of existence. After Joh was dethroned, and the conservatives spent more than a generation in political exile, a frequent topic the conservatives floated was putting the idea of bringing back a senate/upper house to a referendum. When the conservatives won in a landslide at the last election, the idea went away again. It's safe to say that neither party wants to give up the absolute power that a unicameral system gives and bring back the upper house, at least until the ruling party is in opposition. Which in my mind, is reason enough to bring the upper house back.

There has always been decent support for becoming a Republic (not wanting to be cannon fodder in the Queen's wars was the most popular reason for a long time), and I voted for Australia to become a Republic the last time it was put to a referendum, but I changed my mind after I studied law. I think I said something to a similar effect a few months back, that our national system overall is very good, the elected government can carry out the will of the people that elected it, the opposition can't play sour grapes and filibuster, the opposition can instead do what it was created to do, hold the government accountable, and the upper houses are there for oversight. Except in QLD where a newly elected government is essentially given a blank cheque. The center-left governments that followed the Joh government also had a few ridiculous abuses of power. The best example would be the Traveston dam, the government decided it would build a dam, bought up the 500 or so homes/businesses on the land it needed despite the uproar it caused, before it was even sure it was legal, turned out the whole thing wasn't legal, and the plan was dumped, then the land had to be put up for auction. Anyway I'm getting a bit long-winded here, but wanted to give an example of the absolute power the government of the day in QLD rules with. And again, both sides of politics love the idea of an upper house when they're out of government, but never put it to a referendum when they get elected, which is ample reason for me to bring back the upper house.

 

I think the poll should have been split for votes from people in “Europe”, vs. “Asia/Other”.

OK, seriously though, I didn’t vote, but I can say that in Canada, our second chamber (the senate) is as useless as mammaries on a bull.

Our senate is supposedly there to represent the interests of the provinces, and provide a “sober second thought” to legislation passed by the House of Commons. However, members to the Senate are appointed by government rather than being elected by the population, and the result is that Senate positions are doled out as political rewards. The Senate almost never overturns legislation passed by the House, so it is really just a rubber stamp. There are no term limits for Senators, and it is very difficult to have them removed, so accountability is minimal. Having said that, currently the poop is hitting the fan with allegations of falsified expense claims. This last point is actually quite the scandal in Canada right now, and while nobody is naïve enough to think that this is the first time this has gone on, at least now the greedy bastards have finally got their filthy hands caught in the cookie jar (yes, I have been taking lessons from LKD; thanks for asking ).

There has been talk over the years of Senate reform; maybe the current scandal will actually give the movement some traction. Either make it an elected body, or (less likely) abolish it completely.

 

Oversight is an important check on the power of the lower house and one which I had downplayed in my original post. Unfortunately, in my state at least, the current way in which state senate seats are elected is rather useless. State senate constituencies are almost the exact same as state house constituents, only slightly larger. In other words, there is no real difference between the two houses, both in terms of composition and in who they represent. Though this is more of an argument for reform than abolition.

 

I thought a unicamel was a bactrian.

 

I do not know why state legislatures feature a Senate and House. I've also never stopped to wonder about it before now. The reason for it across the US is obvious - by having a House and a Senate you have one body where the actual population of the state matters, and one where it does not. It was an obvious compromise necessary to get the buy in from the smaller states. We don't need that within a state though...