Unicameralism versus Bicameralism Revisited. The Case of Romania

(ProQuest: . denotes formulae omitted.)INTRODUCTIONA recurrent public debate topic in Romania, especially since the November 22, 2009 referendum, the uni- vs. bi-cameral antinomy represents not a mere technicality, but an integral part of a broader and consequential question rooted in political philosophy, a quest(ion) of how to design the state institutional architecture best suited to foster democracy, security, and prosperity. Hence not at all coincidentally, in the overwhelming majority of cases worldwide, the one- or two-Chamber structure of the legislature is codified constitutionally1, unlike other issues, considered of secondary importance and subsequently regulated by law, such as number of legislators, Parliament headquarters, or organization and procedures of the legislature's committees.Of additional importance for countries in transition, such as Romania, in an extensively shared acknowledgment "that an effective and representative legislature is critical to the long-term success of any democratization process"2, how many Chambers a "good" Parliament should have remains even today3 an extremely controversial issue in constitutional law and political science as well, as each of them - the unicameral model, and the bicameral one - presents even generically and theoretically, let alone in specific local realities, both strengths and weaknesses, both advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, it often happens that each debating side argues the superiority of its preferred model by the very same criteria employed by the other side, from for instance adequate representation4, to enhanced quality of the law-making process5, or how to best cope with the executive and bureaucratic dominance and subsequent pressure exerted on Legislatives in the age of globalization.Moreover, and not confined to Romania, the public (and sometimes even the academic) debate seems regrettably often biased by partisan positioning and abundant logical fallacies. To randomly begin with, much of the criticism directed prima facie against bicameralism in its entirety seems, at a closer look, rather a reproach against one aspect of one particular type of bicameralism, the latter's current variety worldwide being highly spectacular, as I will detail below. For instance, one of the most favoured arguments, i.e. unicameralism being clearly less expensive and as such preferable to the doubling of resources (e.g., money, time, energy, human resources) absorbed by bicameralism refers actually, partially recognizable already in the previously underlined word, to the - as I shall conceptually clarify below - congruent subtype of a two-Chamber Parliament and not to the bicameral generic model in toto. The same applies, although in a different direction, to Benjamin Franklin's widely quoted, despite (or exactly because of) its obvious logical fallacy, formulation that a "legislative body divided into two branches is like a carriage drawn by one horse in front and one behind pulling in opposite direction". Furthermore, some of the arguments promoting unicameralism are not so much in favour of unicameralism as rather critically directed against (and usually one particular subtype of) bicameralism and vice-versa, as visible for instance in the already negative construction of the argument that unicameralism bears no duplication, no divided accountability, and/or no redundancies, unlike, obviously, bicameralism.This does not mean that methodological debate flaws would be confined within the unicameralists' camp. Its opposite side perpetrates equally easy recognizable logical fallacies, ranging, for instance: from a combination of argumentum ad baculum and "slippery slope" with an odour of anecdotal evidence in rhetorical interrogations like "why not directly reduce everything to a 10-seat unicameral Parliament, so we don't have to worry anymore about costs? " to the dicto simpliciter type, as for example the repeatedly emphasized correlation between population size and the type of Parliament structure6 , conveniently omitting not only the world's largest state China, but also Indonesia, or, in Europe, countries like Ukraine or Turkey, all with unicameral Parliaments, despite their considerable population size7; or, from a blurring of the delineations between fundamental types of arguments8, when for instance arguing in a rather prescriptive manner the empirically undisputable strong covariance of a federal type of state structure and a bicameral Parliament structure9, to a pervasive form of argumentum ad naturam, in the analogy that two eyes, read parliamentary Chambers, see better than a single one. …