It is common for a democratic parliamentary system to have a bicameral legislature, with a directly elected lower chamber and a second, revising chamber. The United Kingdom is unusual in that its second chamber is largely nominated rather than elected, and those that are not nominated are drawn from the hereditary aristocracy.
There has been much recent debate about how the House of Lords should be reformed – with the expulsion of most of the hereditaries a notable change – but the British system is still archaic compared with most other countries.
Articles
You can find the archive of Federal Union articles on reform of the House of Lords here.
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Illegitimate comments
Jack Straw has published at last his proposals on reform of the House of Lords. (You can read about them here). The reform debate has been going on a long […]
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Review of 2005
By Richard Laming 2005 will be remembered as a bad year for federalism. There have been bad years before and there no doubt will be bad years again, so there […]
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Connect political power to votes cast
By Richard Laming Published in EUobserver, 23 March 2004 The United Kingdom is caught up in not one but twoconstitutional debates at the moment, and there is an interesting link between […]