AbstractsEconomics

The question of Second Chambers is one of the few problems in political science on which we have received no direct guidance from the Greeks. Indeed, historically the idea of the bicameral legislation is rooted in the stratified society of the Middle Ages, in which the different classes of nobility, clergy, and townsmen composed politically independent estates. When emergency arose, each estate met separately in a "states general" to determine the amount of its contribution to the King’s revenues. "It was largely by accident," says Shepard, “that in England the several social orders came to sit in two Houses.”