Acceso usuarios
Sean Mueller, Adrian Vatter, Sereina Dick
Second chambers frequently form part of national institutional configurations,but their impact on policy making can vary from negligible to all-important vetoplayers. The standard approach is to assess their importance via twodimensions: formal powers and compositional differences vis-à-vis thefirstchamber. In this paper, we conceptualise a third dimension: the legitimacy ofsecond chambers. We subsequently measure the strength of secondchambers in 14 countries and develop a new index of bicameralism. Runningseveral quantitative analyses with a total sample of 29 OECD countries, weshow how this index is significantly correlated to lower state intervention inthe economy and greater regional autonomy
