Conclusion: Maintaining Legislative Democracy

This chapter provides the causal mechanism explaining the emergence of talking, working, and hybrid legislatures. Apart from anti-system obstruction, in order to be established, talking legislatures depend on two additional necessary conditions jointly sufficient for a centralization of agenda control: a critical juncture and followers’ surrender of inherited procedural privileges. Alternatively, followers’ demand for mega-seats on legislative committees triggers a development towards working legislatures. This chapter also emphasizes that legislative obstruction is subject to equifinality and argues that the procedural development of congresses in presidential systems is most likely susceptible to more multiple causation than that of parliaments. In conclusion, it appears that procedural reform in Western European legislatures over the last 150 years was primarily aimed at maintaining legislative democracy. The chapter closes with a discussion of the alleged decline of legislatures and addresses options for countering the dual threats to legislative democracy posed by autocrats and populists.