The 5 Properties of the Perfect Unitary State Legislature

This is a rewrite of a piece I posted a while back, and that was inadvertently deleted recently.

In this post I will list (what I believe to be) the properties of the ideal legislature for a unitary state.

1. The legislature should be elected via a system of proportional representation.

2. The membership of the legislature is limited to 100 members. When combined with the proportional representation system, resulting in a legislature where every seat reflects 1% of the popular vote.

3. The presiding officer of the legislative body is a full-time, non-elected, administrative position, separate and distinct from the elected legislative positions. Members should refer to the presiding officer simply as the "chair."

4. If the legislature is located in a unitary state, which does not have autonomous political divisions, then the legislature should have a standing committee for each political division (province, department, parish, or county, etc).

The rational being that unitary states that don't have autonomous polictical divisions, do not need quasi-legislative bodies (departmental councils, county commisions, etc) for these divisions.

The state legislature should be able to adequately serve the legislative needs of the unitary state, and these quasi-legislative bodies impose an unnecessary financial and bureaucratic burden on the citizenry.

Attribution: This content was originally published on the 2nd December, 2013. https://plus.google.com/+MikeHydes/posts/5gToMSTwGSk