Democratic Legitimacy or Regional Representation: Support for Upper Chamber Reform in Scotland and Quebec

• Autores: Mike Medeiros, Damien Bol, Richard Nadeau
• Localización: Parliamentary affairs: A journal of representative politics, ISSN 0031-2290, Vol. 71, Nº 4, 2018, págs. 738-759
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article studies support for upper chamber reforms in multinational countries. In his seminal work on the topic, Lijphart argues that the upper chamber can be used to accommodate minority groups. However, to date, we still know very little about the perception of minority populations of this institution. We explore this topic building upon an original survey experiment conducted in Scotland and Quebec, where there has been a recent debate about reforming the upper chamber. The results demonstrate that the national minorities in the UK and Canada strongly support a reform of the upper chamber. Also, we find that a reform that would increase the democratic legitimacy of the institution is more popular than one that would foster the regional representation of the minority group, even among respondents who report a strong regional identity.