POLS 110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Huayan, Unicameralism, Parliamentary Immunity
20 Jul 2013
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Document Summary
Legislatures are crucial institutions in any political system, but above all in democracies. They act as checks upon the freedom of manoeuvre of the state executive, and without then the modern state would be highly concentrated and potentially oppressive. They can publicize attempts to subvert them and they can support the courts if the executive attempts to undermine or suspend them. There are two ways of presenting a comparative overview of legislatures, and one way is to focus upon the functions that they perform. The second way is to concentrate upon institutional arrangements that are common so as to show their similarities and differences: in this case debating chambers, standing committees, and so on. To be legitimate, they have to represent the people. A recent trend has been to seek to make the composition of legislators correspond more exactly to the basic structure of the population as a whole.
