Unicameral and Bicameral Legislature: Meaning, Characteristics, Differences

The formation of states, governments, and legislature is no piece of cake. A complex structural organization is therefore required to set such guidelines, and one of them is the structure of the parliament. The parliamentary structure or legislatures can be of two types; Unicameral or Bicameral Legislatures. The main difference between the two arises on the basis of the number of chambers or units constituting the legislature. 

The legislature consists of deliberately elected people who make laws for a society. Now whether this power of devising laws is concentrated with one central body or divided into two separate parliamentary houses decides if the legislature is unicameral or bicameral. Let’s explore the two in detail. 

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Unicameral Legislature

An arrangement where there is only one house to make and implement laws for the state or country is called a Unicameral Legislature. It can operate individually on the National or State level. A unicameral legislature is considered to be more efficient due to the centralization of legislative powers but it has disadvantages of its own. 

Countries With Unicameral Legislature 

There are various countries having a single house at the centre to control the laws, budget and every major decision of the country level. Some of these countries are listed below. 

1. Iran
2. Norway
3. Sweden
4. Hungary
5. Denmark
6. Finland
7. Israel
8. New Zealand

Indian States With Unicameral Legislature 

Though India has two chambers at its centre, there are some Indian states that follow a unicameral legislature system at the state government level. These states are mentioned below. 

Arunachal Pradesh	West Bengal	Uttarakhand
Tripura	Punjab	Puducherry
Tamil Nadu	Nagaland	Odisha
Sikkim	Mizoram	Manipur
Rajasthan	Meghalaya	Madhya Pradesh
Kerala	Jharkhand	Goa
Himachal Pradesh	Haryana	Gujarat
Chhattisgarh	Delhi	Assam

Bicameral Legislature

Understandably, the legislative body comprising two houses is a bicameral legislature. The roles of functioning and administration of a state or nation in this set-up are distributed among two houses. These two houses are interconnected yet exclusive. They may also differ in the number of seats, voting procedures, distribution of power and so on. 

Countries With a Bicameral Legislature

There are many countries that follow the bicameral system of legislature. This reduces the abuse of power and allows discussions to take place in the parliament at different levels and with different perspectives. Here are some countries that follow the Bicameral legislature system. 

1. India
2. Canada
3. Japan
4. Spain
5. Italy
6. United Kingdom

Indian States With a Bicameral Legislature

Indian states and Union territories that follow a bicameral legislature system are given below. 

1. Andhra Pradesh
2. Bihar
3. Karnataka
4. Maharashtra
5. Telangana
6. Uttar Pradesh

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Differences Between Unicameral and Bicameral Legislature

Apart from the fundamental differences of formation, there are also some other more functional differences between the Unicameral and Bicameral legislatures. The differences are elaborated below. 

Feature	Unicameral Legislature	Bicameral Legislature
House	One	Two
Government System	Unitary	Federal
Decision Making	Efficient & Flexible	Elaborate and Time-consuming
Deadlock	Least or Never	Common as both houses can disagree
Responsibilities	Concentrated to one	Divided among the houses
Efficient in	Smaller countries	Larger countries
Expedites	Decision making	Diversity of opinion

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