Legislatures and Lawmaking

The term legislature was first applied to Parliament in the late sevententh and early eighteenth centuries in England, thereby attributing lawmaking power to an institution that had existed since the twelfth century. Medieval parliaments were assemblies of the principal status groups in society convened irregularly by monarchs for consultation. Referring to Parliament as a legislature became momentarily widespread in Oliver Cromwell's (1599–1658) England, then in postrevolutionary France, and most widely in revolutionary America. Today, the use of the term legislature to designate the representative assembly is standard in the United States and in most of Latin America. Elsewhere, the representative assembly is most often called parliament, although there is a great deal of linguistic variation among the more than 250 representative assemblies in 185 countries for which the Inter-Parliamentary Union has data. Nearly two-fifths of these assemblies exist in bicameral systems.

Legislatures, by whatever name, exist in nearly all independent states. Their size is related imperfectly to the size of the populations of their countries. Countries with low populations may have parliaments as small as the fourteen-member Congress of Micronesia, and large countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy may have parliaments of over 600 members. The U.S. House of Representatives, with 435 members, is toward the high end in terms of size, as is the Senate, with 100 members, because upper chambers in bicameral systems tend to be small.

Not all bodies called legislatures are by any means significant lawmaking bodies. In the United States, at both the national and state levels, legislatures play a more important part in lawmaking than in any other country. However, even in the United States, the executive branch has increasingly drafted important legislation, even though a great many bills are introduced by individual members and the final enactment of all bills, wherever drafted, is significantly influenced by the legislature. By contrast, Latin American legislatures were historically subordinated to powerful executives. The consolidation of democracy beginning in the 1990s, however, has tended to transform these legislatures into institutions that insert themselves variously into the policy-making process, depending on electoral systems, constitutional powers, and members' career ambitions.

Just as those institutions that are called legislatures vary in the role they play in lawmaking, institutions going by other names may have significant influence on lawmaking through their more general influence on government policy. European parliaments are influential in the policy-making process in countries with coalition governments, notably Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the Scandinavian countries, and Switzerland. In these countries, strong legislative committees, coupled with the need for negotiation among the coalition parties, make parliament the locus for achieving compromises on the government's bills.

In parliamentary systems, the legislature usually participates in the selection of the chief executives. In most countries, they are chosen from among leaders of the dominant party or parties in the legislature. Legislatures supervise the executive branch in various ways. As the capacity of legislatures to initiate laws and budgets has receded, this oversight function has gained importance. At a minimum, all legislatures are public forums for the discussion of major issues; this is an important function in a democracy and a matter of at least some importance even in authoritarian states.

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