ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the way in which countries discussed and positioned the senate between the executive - either the monarch or the government - and the people's assembly. In the nineteenth century, bicameralism appeared to be the norm for nation states that were gradually transferring away from the traditional division of power between a monarch and estates to more democratic forms that left room for a novel idea - representation of 'the people'. The book explains the period after the Revolution of 1848 and the 1860s until well into the early twentieth century, when nationalism and universal suffrage threatened or disrupted the existing order. In a time when countries in the Western world were gradually becoming more democratic, senates gained more prominence as chambres de réflexion to counter overly revolutionary or centripetal tendencies.
