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Introduction: Legislators in the Steel-Hard Casing

This chapter identifies the problem of legislative democracy. As a response to growing pressures to increase procedural efficiency in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the advent of more inclusive suffrage formulae, legislators face two procedural alternatives: to centralize control over the legislative agenda, to create powerful committees. Talking legislatures combine centralized agenda control and weak committees, working ones decentralized agenda control and powerful committees, and hybrid ones centralized agenda control and powerful committees. According to the dynamic partisan perspective adopted in this book, a centralization of agenda control only occurs as a response to anti-system obstruction. Given legislators’ demand for mega-seats, the creation of powerful committees is the default way to rationalize legislative procedures. If, however, legislators fail to procedurally respond to anti-system obstruction they risk a breakdown of legislative procedures. This is why this book ultimately focuses on legislative democracy rather than legislative organization.