Unequal Seats, Unsteady Trust : Inequality of Representation and Confidence in Parliament in Bicameral Systems

Abstract: The number of countries with bicameral systems declined enormously throughout the 20th century, as countries like Sweden and Denmark abolished their upper houses, and numerous other countries weakened the formal powers of their upper chambers. Existing research suggests that legitimacy is a critical factor in the survival of bicameralism, but scholarship on legitimacy in bicameral systems is limited. Inequality of representation has been identified as a reason why bicameral systems may lack legitimacy. This thesis aims to capture how inequality of representation affects the social legitimacy of bicameral systems. Through the analysis of how seats are apportioned in upper houses and data on individual confidence in legislative institutions from the European/World Values Survey joint dataset, an OLS-regressions model shows that while an overall increase in inequality of representation decreases an individual’s confidence in parliament, individual factors such as residency in a rural area, political identity, and sex may not have any impact on confidence in parliament given an increase in inequality of representation. This research contributes to prior attempts to understand how legitimacy contributes to bicameralism.