ABSTRACT
We noted in the Introduction that, in his wide-ranging study in the 1970s, Michael Mezey inquired, ‘what are the basic questions to ask when seeking to compare legislatures?’ The response that animated much of his work was, ‘how much policy-making power does a legislature have?’ This is the ‘Mezey question’. True, Mezey uses twin-level criteria in his classificatory schema – policy-making power and the extent of support for the legislature at the elite and mass levels. 1 But this brings us face to face with the seemingly intractable semantic problems encountered when endeavouring to reduce multi-dimensional institutional analysis to simple, single-label characterisations. For example, does the category vulnerable legislature adequately capture the sense of a body which possesses strong policy-making powers, but a lower level of elite support than an active legislature? The ‘Mezey question’, and an attempt to measure ‘legislative performance’ in output terms, has been the point of departure for the contributors to this special issue. But there are other questions that have been asked when seeking to compare legislatures.
