Chapter 4 - Debating the Two-Chamber System

Summary

Chapter 4 analyses Hegel’s reasons for choosing the bicameral system at a time when it was anything but widespread and in fact hotly contested. It reconstructs the arguments advanced then, both in favour of a two-chamber system and in opposition to it, and argues that Hegel’s acceptance of bicameralism must be understood as taking a deliberate stance in the constitutional debate of post-Napoleonic Germany. Essentially, he advances two arguments for the institution of two chambers. First, the division of the Estates Assembly into two chambers will lead to improved decision-making and second, there will be less direct opposition between the Estates and the government. The contextualisation of these two arguments reveals that Hegel distils only the main arguments of one side in a heated controversy while excluding counter-arguments and ideas of alternative mechanisms in circulation at the time. In the process, this chapter especially explores arguments about the role and composition of the first chamber, which corresponds to what is nowadays conventionally called the second chamber and often dubbed a ‘house of review’. Important questions about the social implications of the bicameral system are also raised in this context.