Bicameralism vs. Unicameralism in a lawfull state

In the following we will show two examples of unitary states, which have bicameral (The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)  and unicameral(Finland) parliaments. The UK  is the state in which parliamentarism, in it’s modern meaning was born. Even from the first forms of it’s existence, it’s bicameral structure was observed (House of Lords plays the role of the upper house, the House of Commons plays the role of the lower house).It is worth mentioning the fact that the evolution of the relations between the two houses has suffered majos changes, in the sense that the House of Commons has gained more ground in the detriment of the House of Lords. We will only look briefly at the evolution of the two houses of parliament, concentrating on the atributes they today have. The House of Lords slowly lost it’s hegemonical role in the brittish Parliament, one of the causes being the decline of the brittish nobility and aristocracy. Members of the House are recruited based on heredity. They are named by The Suveran at the proposal of The Prime Minister, and since 1958 women also have the right to be accepted. The componence of the House can be split into four categories: high priests (shows the atrong affiliation between State and Church), nobles, those ennobled by the Queen, lords. The House’s functions are: judiciary (plays the role of a Supreme Court of Appeal in penal and civil matter), deliberatory organ of the projects sent to them by the House of Commons (counting on the impartiality of the lords), legislative (it can exercise it’s absolute veto right, but only for a limited period of time), constitutional (serves the Monarch to make her opinion heard on the Government’s program, through the Throne’s message) and  the simbolic role in the development of the brittish constitutionalism. Through the method of selecting their members, the House of Lords has one of the most anachronical elective systems of our times. In contrast, the House of Commons has ascended continously from it’s founding until today. This is why today the whole legislative power is under it’s wing, also controling the Government. The House of Commons is chosen through majority vote, also known as „the winner takes all”. This type of election also helped to form a two-party system, where Labourers and Conservatives get most of the mandates.

Finland’s form of government is parlamentary republic, which has a unicameral legislative. The finnish parliament is the supreme representative organ of the people, ellected on a ballot list, by all the citizens with the right to vote over the age of 18. Exercises the legislative power. Bills are sent to this forum for debate and approval by the Government. These are presented to the Parliament in a plenary session, after that being sent to specialized parliamentary committees. The novelty of the finnish parliamentary system is in these committees. In total there are 14 (formed by 17 permanent members and 9 substitutes), constituted on the duration of the legislative. With the exception of constitutional laws, which require two-thirds of the deputies to be adopted, the other laws need simple majority of votes. The existence of a Constitutional Commission that ensures the role of constitutional control over the legislative initiative. By presenting these types of parliamentarisms, we wanted to evidentiate two models which imposed successfully in these states and influenced other states to adopt these types of systems.

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As opposed to other states, the begginings of a constitutional system in the Romanian Countries are linked to the editing and signing of the Organic Regulations, subsequently to the Treaty of Adrianople(Edirne) in 1829. In the first half of the 1850’s a group of romanian intelectuals who studied in the west (among them Ion Câmpineanu) began the editing of a constitutional model, but it was never put in practice. The Proclamation of Islaz from 1848 is considered as the first romanian constitution.
The spirit of the bicameral parliament first appeared after the Treaty of Paris, which led to the separation of the powers in the state, within it the legislative power being executed by the Prince and the Elective Assembly (deputies elected for a seven year period). The next step in parliamentarism is represented by „The Developer Statute of the Convention from Paris”, according to which the powers of a state were assigned to the ruler and the National Representative, the last one being formed by the Senate and the Deputees Meeting.
The Constitution of 1866 preserved the principal of bicameralism, although there were some (like I.C. Bratianu), who wanted unicameralism. This way, the legislators were the Prince and the National Representative(the inferior House having more power than the Senate, through the right to configure the state budget, following the brittish model, where the House of Commons had large atributes in financial and budgetary matters).

The structural situation of the legislative power was not changed with the appearance of the Constitution of 1923, but the constitution enforced by king Carl II. in 1938 disrupted the ballance between the Monarch and the National Representative, in the sense that the legislative forum had limited powers in comparison with the Suveran. By the Decree law nr. 2278 from July 1946, unicameral parlamentarism is introduced, a system perfected by the enactment of the Constitution of 1948, which changed the structure as well as the name of the supreme legislative authority: Grand National Assembly. Unicameralism lasted until the compiling and enactment of the Decree-Law nr.92 in March of 1990, which is a legislation concerning the election of the Parliament and the President of Romania, when after a long gap, there is a return to the bicameral tradition of the romanian legislative forum(the two houses being named the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies).
Without a doubt at the time when the 1991 Constitution was adopted, the romanian society was not ready to assign the whole legislative power to the Parliament formed by a single chamber, fearing the come back of a new form o dictatorship. The members of the constituent power at the time had reached the conclusion that the optimum solution is a bicameral parliament. Still, in the next years, especially after the enforcement of the revised Constitution in 2003, there were discussions about the abolishment of the bicameral system, in favor of the unicameral one.

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The Romanian Parliament, in it’s bicameral form, surely has some advantages, some even motivating the choice of the constituent assembly in 1991. First of all, the concentration of the power in the Parliament can be avoided by splitting it between the two Chambers, and because of their similarity, these two Chambers prevent eachother from imposing their will authoritatively. Other than in a bicameral parliament, in which one of the chambers can impose it’s will in detriment of the other, the egalitarian bicameralism in Romania proposes to achieve a balance between the two chambers.
Secondly, the quality of the norm voted by the Parliament increases thanks to confering on it successively in the two chambers (double examination). Practicly, „a useful complication is prefered to a harmful simplicity”
Thirdly, the separation of powers in a state is better assured by a bicameral Parliament. This aspect can be concluded from the definition of the bicameral parliament itself, which starts on the premise that the legislative power of the state is „separated” into two chambers. This aspect is not without consequence, the control over the executive, for example, is more efficient through two chamber than one. On the other hand, bicameralism has a lot of disadvantages when it comes to working out and adopting laws. The bicameral system in Romania hardens the legislative process, because of all the complicated procedures that they have to go through to adopt laws, each proposal having to go through each chamber of Parliament. This aspect doesn’t answer to the needs of a society in the process of globalization, which requires the quick adoption of laws, and also doesn’t help when laws need to be adopted in order to solve problems which can not be postponed. For example, the solutions for the economic crisis in legislative matter have to be adopted without any delay.
On another note, the absence of actual differences in attributions between the two Chambers makes it so that the effect of weighting desired by the constituent legislature be reduced and almost inexistent,thus the organic separation of the Parliament being artificial.
From this point of view, the Romanian Parliament has a bicameral structure but only formally, in essence it functions as a parliament with one chamber.
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As we mentioned previously, the question of unicameralism was raised by many romanian politicians, arguing for it invoking it’s simplity and justifying it’s full applicability in a unitary state such as Romania. While bicameralism is inherent to federal states (for example the U.S.A., Germany of Switzerland), applying it in a unitary state seems useless and it’s advantages are beat by the functionality of unicameralism. In Romania, some specialists say that bicameralism is distorted and hibrid because of these two reasons: although to be able to talk about clasic bicameralism each chamber needs to have it’s own atributions, and their election has to be based on separate criteria, according to the countrie’s Constitution, neither of these differecences are kept. In spite of the fact that some people vehemently support the positive characteristics of bicameralism in this local context (avoiding the concentration of power in the hands of one political pole, improving the quality of the legislative process and an efficient control over the executive), they ignore the lack of concrete differences between the two Chamber, which incline their activity toward an egalitarian and costly bicameralism. The elite nature of the „Upper House”, present in every state with a bicameral parliament is inexistent in Romania, and the conflicting notes between the two Chambers of Parliament are almost elusive: the Senate is much smaller in numbers than the Chamber of Deputys; there is a difference in the minimum age requirement needed to become a senator (33 years) and a deputy (23 years). To simulate the unruffled functionality of bicameralism, art. 75 of the Constitution distributes the matters they are allowed to regulate to the two Chambers, as well as an unexpected division of debating and adopting bills or proposals with a „first”, and a „second” lecture.
Theoretically, they are looking to speed up the legislative process and to remove the complicated process of mediation which might occur when the two Chambers don’t agree. At a closer inspection, it can be seen that these distinctive powers lead to some yieldings which are hard to accept. For example the functional mechanism permits the Chamber that was first informed for lecturing to decide in 45 days; if they surpass this time, the bill or proposal is considered adopted by that Chamber, and is sent to the second Chamber which decides definitively. In this case, one of the Chambers’ will is not expressed, the Parliament functioning as if it were unicameral. An other oximoron of bicameralism still is granting an equal protection both to deputys and senators, in the sphere of incompatibilities and parliamentary immunity.
The question of hopelessnes/utility of bicameralism in a state which holds on to it because of it’s anachronistic bicameral system,which was preserved in every Constitution adopted until 1948, is not in vain. The communist period is one the arguments of the politicians who are against the restoring of unicameralism. The fact that countries like Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, Finnland, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, Ukraine, Iceland, Serbia, Peru, Venezuela, New Zeeland or China have all chosen the unicameral parliamentary system is not to be ignored. The arguments for this kind of system are the indivisibility of sovereignty and the preponderance of the legislative over the executive – especially, revoking the possibility of the executive to be supported by one of the legislative chambers to counteract the resistance put forth by the other chamber. Of course, to these the obvious reduction of costs, the quickness of the legislative process and the transparency of the decisions can be added.
Last but not least, Romania is not confronted with a massively heterogen population, the issue which claimed bicameralism in states like Belgium or Switzerland. Evidently, both systems have advantages and disadvantages and every state chooses what is best for it. As followers of the tradition of the bicameral system, we are an exception in south-east Europe, a sublime one in a theoretical point of view, but sadly without foundation.

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The parliamentarist models presented at the beginning of this writing have some distinct features which helped implement them with success and to cathegorize them as models of parliamentarism. On the other hand, in England we can talk about a long history of bicameralism, which confered a remarcable prestige to the country, but also about the intelectual abilities and capabilities of some remarcable people to lead. Although a relatively young state, Finnland succesfully implemented a unicameral system in which guverning is carried out by very capable statesmen, acknowledged by specialized studies for the competence and respectability they have proven. The question to which we tried answering in our study is: which parliamentary system is the closest to the Romanian one? Before we answer we should mention that the Romanian parliamentary system is very close to what some authors call „unicameral bicameralism”.
Our point of view is that Romania should head towards a classic bicameralism, well-defined (chambers elected differently, which benefit from distinctive attributions, different criteria at choosing the members of the two chambers), or a unicameralist model (similar to the finnish one in which the special committees have an important role), as other european states, in which the unicameral parliament is funtioning perfectly. Of course, for either one of these models to work well in Romania it is necessary that a prerequisite be made: molding it to the specific forms of romanian guverning, as well as reevaluating the portrait of the candidates eligible for a place in Parliament – it is necessary that these people be great politicians and with great moral standards so that they can achieve a truthful progress in representative organ of the romanian state. We strongly believe that in a system in which the statesmen have a high political, civic and moral awareness, also the necessary training, the implementation of one of these models has a chance to be successful from the start.

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1.Constanta Calinoiu, Victor Duculescu, Georgeta Duculescu -Drept constitutional comparat – Tratat , ed. Lumina Lex
2. Deleanu Ion – Institutii si proceduri constitutionale ,ed. C.H.Beck
3. Ionescu Cristian – Tratat de drept constitutional ,editia 2, ed. C.H.Beck
4. Muraru Ioan – Drept constitutional si institutii politice, ed. C.H.Beck, 2006
5. Draganu Tudor -Drept constitutional si institutii politice, ed. Lumina Lex
6. Ionescu Cristian – Drept constitutional comparat, ed. C.H.Beck

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