The EconomistJuly 27th 2019 511B
ritain’s mps were debating tax reform
in April when water from a broken pipe
started pouring into the House of Com-
mons. This was unsurprising. The Palace of
Westminster, a mostly neo-Gothic build-
ing that was completed in 1870, had for
years endured rusty plumbing, crumbling
stonework and sparking electrics. mps
gamely continued the debate. But Justin
Madders, a Labour mp, saw in the deluge a
symbol, suggesting how “many people
view Parliament as broken”.
In a few years’ time mps will have to re-
locate as the building is patched up, joining
a long list of politicians in temporary digs.
Earlier this year Canadian legislators
moved out of the central parliamentary
block for about ten years. Austrian mps are
meeting in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna
while their building is renovated. Dutch
politicians are preparing to vacate the 13th-
century Binnenhof complex in the Hague.
Parliamentarians in Egypt, Jamaica, Thai-
land and Uganda are all getting new homes.
That should take care of the plumbing.
And the new parliaments will be superior
in other ways. Austria’s will have muchmore space available for public use. Jamai-
ca’s new circular complex evokes an athlet-
ics stadium—a note of prestige in a sport-
mad country. Members of Thailand’s
House of Representatives will sit in a vaul-
ted chamber named after the Buddhist Sun
god. The “celestial ambience” will aid “vi-
sion, imagination and relaxation”, ex-
plains the government, hopefully.
But the changes are much less striking
than the similarities. With the possible ex-
ception of Jamaica, the new debating
chambers will be arranged almost exactly
like the old ones. Even the temporary
homes are reassuringly familiar. Canada’s
mps are still sitting on their old benches;
Britain’s temporary chamber will be in a
different building, but as similar to the old
one as possible. Andy Williamson of the In-
ter-Parliamentary Union, an organisation
of parliaments, believes British politicians
would create exactly the same chamber if
they had to start again from scratch—
“down to the colour of the panelling”.
These countries are missing an oppor-
tunity to change how politics is done. Com-
paring parliamentary buildings around theworld suggests that, though form does not
determine function, it does influence it.
Build a particular sort of debating chamber,
seat people in a certain way, and you will
encourage a political style.
Two architects, Max Cohen de Lara and
David Mulder van der Vegt, have divided
the world’s parliamentary chambers into
five types (see illustration on next page).
The House of Commons has opposing
benches, as do former British colonies
such as Jamaica and Uganda. American and
most European politicians sit in a fan
shape, known as a hemicycle. A third
shape, which the architects call a horse-
shoe but which often looks more like the
letter u, blends the first two shapes; Ireland
and Kenya use it. A fourth type, the circle, is
rarer, but used in the German state of North
Rhine-Westphalia and the Welsh Senedd.
China and Russia use a fifth layout, which
looks like a theatre or a giant old-fashioned
classroom (and can feel like both).Preaching to the choir
Neither of the first two shapes was origi-
nally created for politics. The House of
Commons is, in essence, a chapel. In the
mid-16th century mps started sitting in St
Stephen’s Chapel. The nave became the
parliamentary lobby and the choir stalls
the benches; the Speaker sat where the altar
had been. They kept the layout when they
got a proper building in the 19th century.
The most influential hemicycle is the
French National Assembly, which began
sitting in the Palais Bourbon in 1798. It wasParliamentary chambersBetter politics by design
BANGKOK AND OTTAWA
We shape our parliamentary buildings and then our buildings shape usInternational