Alternatives for a bicameral system to organize representation in federal states

As federal constitutions divide the people into peoples (Benz & Sonnicksen 2017), federal systems tend to have two venues of representation to ensure that both the nation as a whole (‘people’ or ‘demos’) and the constituent units (‘statespeoples’ or ‘demoi’) are represented at the upper level (Bursens & Meier 2021). Most federal states therefore organize representation in a bicameral way, often with a first chamber representing the constituent units and a second representing the people as a whole. This double representation is easily put forward as a basic (normative) feature of federal systems, and can be found in as different (federal) systems as (in alphabetical order) Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico, the US. However, for several years now, politicians in Belgium propagate the abolishment of the Senate, which serves as locus of representation of the language groups or constituent units (i.e. the statespeoples or the demoi), thereby referring to a panoply of arguments, such as the lack of power of that institution, especially in relation to its costs, and its particracy facilitating incentives. While part of those arguments mainly serve political – public opinion constituting and agenda setting – purposes, they all tend to ignore the representative function of the Senate and of a bicameral system in a federal state. If at all, the argument runs that the Belgian Chamber of Representatives could also fulfil the functions of the Senate. It is true that over time Belgian constitutional and political dynamics have made the organisation of political representation in the Chamber of Representatives reflect the constituent units at the disadvantage of rendering the voice of the people, which seems to make the Senate obsolete. But does it? What costs would there be when it comes to the representation of the constituent units and that of the people if the Belgian federal system were to become unicameral? What other parliamentary functions of a bicameral system would be lost? We take this Belgian debate as a starting point to explore alternatives for a bicameral system so as to organize political representation and the parliamentary functions in federal states. To that end, the paper is divided into four sections. In a first section we discuss the scenario of the abolition of the Belgian Senate so as to sketch what representational costs and parliamentary functions this would hamper. Subsequently, we discuss the recent literature rethinking the concept of representative democracy and democratic political representation to establish possible alternative scenarios for a bicameral system in federal states. In the third section we analyse specific existing mechanisms in federal states meant to complement or replace the bicameral system. In the final section we evaluate the empirical examples against the theoretical ideas regarding representation. The conclusion wraps up the main findings and sketches possible options for the Belgian case.