All upper chambers possess constitutional standing, suggesting that they should have influence within the legislative process. The literature on parliaments until recently has disregarded the role of upper chambers in parliamentary democracies as practically non-existent. These arguments have centered on both the composition and the institutional weakness of the upper chamber vis-a- vis the lower chamber. Recent work in the area of formal modeling has suggested, however, that policy outcomes are different under bicameral institutions than under unicameral institutions, despite the variations in bicameral institutional arrangements. Yet the circumstances under which upper chambers use their authority, and its ultimate effect on policy outcomes remains understudied, as current research either, does not test their models against the empirical record, or relies primarily on one case. This project expands on current research by examining not only institutional factors which may explain upper house assertion in the legislative process, but also the impact of party factors (such as party discipline) and policy preferences of the median legislator in the upper chamber in four parliamentary democracies (Belgium, Ireland, Germany, and the United Kingdom). NSF support will be used to travel to each capital for one month to access parliamentary debate records, archival information, and interviews where necessary. Investigation based on these sources is essential to understanding the circumstances under which upper chambers use their authority to intervene in the policy making process. The presence of an upper chamber has been hypothesized to affect not only policy outcomes in stable democracies, but has also been a significant area of debate within developing democracies and the literature on how deeply divided societies should be governed. In addition to their effect on policy outcomes, it has been noted that even those upper chambers that are viewed as institutionally weak, have recently become more assertive in dealing with governments in the lower house. In many cases, this increase in upper chamber assertion has required governments to amend or drop bills altogether, which suggests that blanket rejections of upper house influence are misleading. This project expands on current research in comparative parliamentary studies to examine how institutional effects can shape the costs of overriding the upper chamber, as well as examine the role of party discipline and policy preferences of the upper chamber in determining when to use institutional authority strategically to obtain their desired outcome. Existing data and newly collected and operationalized data will be used in this analysis. Broader Impact NSF funding for this research project will provide the co-PI the resources to collect and code relevant data on upper chamber assertion within the legislative process in a more systematic manner and for a wider range of cases than is currently offered by the literature. Data collected by this project will be made publicly available for academic, research, and noncommercial purposes, and will be of useful for scholarship in the area of comparative legislative studies, as well as the affects of bicameral institutional structures on parliamentary systems, and institutional engineering in developing democracies.
