Passing a law in the parliament takes time and resources. Once proposed, a bill must fit into the parliament’s busy schedule and go through a complex series of stages that involve various committees. The proposing legislators must put much effort into securing majority support in order for the bill to be approved. Things get twice as complicated in bicameral parliamentary systems. Once the bill is passed by the lower house, the whole process must start over in the upper house. Considerable resources are wasted if the lower house passes a bill that won’t be approved by the upper house and will never be enacted into law. Yet this is no rare occurrence in modern legislatures, including the Italian parliamentary system. In fact, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception – a puzzling circumstance that deserves careful consideration. One house of the Parliament passing a law that has no chance of being enacted into law may be seen as a sign of the inefficiency of the legislature as a whole. How can MPs be regularly passing bills to no avail? A study by the University of Milan examined the parliamentary procedure regarding the reading of bills approved by the lower house of the Italian Parliament between 1979 and 2018, meaning 5,600 draft bills in forty years of parliamentary history. The bicameral system and the different party composition of the two houses are the likely culprit of this complicated procedure. Let us see why.

Imperfect bicameralism : one in five bills passed by the lower house is not enacted into law by the upper house / A. Pedrazzani. - (2021 Apr 02).

Imperfect bicameralism : one in five bills passed by the lower house is not enacted into law by the upper house

A. Pedrazzani
2021

Abstract

Passing a law in the parliament takes time and resources. Once proposed, a bill must fit into the parliament’s busy schedule and go through a complex series of stages that involve various committees. The proposing legislators must put much effort into securing majority support in order for the bill to be approved. Things get twice as complicated in bicameral parliamentary systems. Once the bill is passed by the lower house, the whole process must start over in the upper house. Considerable resources are wasted if the lower house passes a bill that won’t be approved by the upper house and will never be enacted into law. Yet this is no rare occurrence in modern legislatures, including the Italian parliamentary system. In fact, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception – a puzzling circumstance that deserves careful consideration. One house of the Parliament passing a law that has no chance of being enacted into law may be seen as a sign of the inefficiency of the legislature as a whole. How can MPs be regularly passing bills to no avail? A study by the University of Milan examined the parliamentary procedure regarding the reading of bills approved by the lower house of the Italian Parliament between 1979 and 2018, meaning 5,600 draft bills in forty years of parliamentary history. The bicameral system and the different party composition of the two houses are the likely culprit of this complicated procedure. Let us see why.
Settore SPS/04 - Scienza Politica
Settore SPS/11 - Sociologia dei Fenomeni Politici
2-apr-2021
https://www.naspread.eu/en/contributions-en/articles-en/imperfect-bicameralism-one-in-five-bills-passed-by-the-lower-house-is-not-enacted-into-law-by-the-upper-house.html
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/831195
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