Exploring the Relationship between Federal Reform and the Representation of the People: The Case of the Belgian House of Representatives

Abstract Federal systems tend to have two venues of representation to ensure that both the people as a whole and the constituent units are represented at the federal level. While this double representation is put forward as a basic (normative) feature of federal systems, little to no empirical research has been conducted on this issue. This contribution therefore studies the representation of the people as a whole and of the constituent units in the Belgian House of Representatives by means of a representative claims analysis of 4,757 oral parliamentary questions. As federal systems tend to be... Mehr ...