Upper house
This article is about the type of a parliamentary chamber. For other meanings, see House of Lords (disambiguation); for the chamber of a court, see Chamber (court).
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In a bicameral system, the upper house (French chambre haute) is usually the chamber of a parliament in which the upper classes of a monarchist state, such as the estates, nobility and clergy, historically met. In the United Kingdom, this still exists today as the House of Lords.
In other English-speaking countries, it is often a representation of the constituent states or regions, also known as the Senate. The second part of the parliamentary representation is accordingly the lower house, in which the people's representation meets. The German and Austrian Bundesrat are not usually referred to as the upper house, although they fulfil similar functions.
Term
Historical
Historically, the House of Lords was the parliamentary chamber in which the nobility, clergy and universities were represented. The privileges of the nobility reflected in this arrangement are also reflected in the designation: just as the nobility stood above the common people in the conception of the time, the House of Lords was the upper chamber in which the "important" people were represented. Accordingly, the House of Lords was also referred to as the first chamber. In the Netherlands, the Senate is still referred to as the First Chamber, and the Representation of the People as the Second Chamber.
Political Science
In political science, however, a different (diametrically opposed) definition is sometimes used to describe modern bicameral systems: The type of parliamentary chamber described here is thereby referred to as a "second chamber", since the upper house is nowadays generally the less powerful chamber. In addition to the historical upper houses described above, the characteristics listed here are that this "second chamber" is usually more disproportionately staffed than the other chamber in order to represent certain interests more strongly. These are often regional or federal in nature. For this reason, bicameral systems exist primarily in territorial states.
Principles
In the bicameral system, the first chamber (in the above historical consideration) can realize the following principles:
- the feudal (monarchical or landlord) or clerical (ecclesiastical) principle;
- the federal (state-based) or munizipal (district- or municipality-based) principle;
- the professional and possessive or economic-social principle.
