House of Commons

In a bicameral parliament of a Westminster System, the House of Commons has historically been the name of the elected lower house. The Commons generally holds much more power than the upper house (the senate or House of Lords). The leader of the majority party in the House of Commons usually becomes the prime minister.

The term is taken from the name of the institution in Westminster, London, in the south east of what is now the United Kingdom. Those states that use it now and have used it in the past based their democratic systems upon that institution (it is thus occasionally called "the mother of parliaments"). Many such places were part of they British Empire, and are now part of the Commonwealth of Nations. In distancing themselves from the rule of empire, they have often renamed that part of their government (or abolished it, e.g. in favour of a military dictatorship).

Historically, the Commons were an estate in a traditional pre-Enlightenment European government which typically divided the governance of an area between "estates" of society. Such systems existed (and some still exist) in the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Sweden. Other estates included the clergy, nobles, merchants and knights. The word "commons" has at times been confused with the word "commoner", but they are very different in this context.

Most Westminster-system nations have since changed the name of their lower house to "the House of Representatives." There are only two existing Houses of Commons. These are the:

British House of Commons (at the Palace of Westminster, London)
Canadian House of Commons (on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa)

The House of Commons was also the lower house of the Parliament of Ireland, before its abolition under the 1801 Act of Union, and the short-lived Parliament of Southern Ireland in 1920, which was subsequently superseded by the Dáil of the Irish Free State. Similarly, the House of Commons was the lower house of the Parliament of Northern Ireland before its abolition in 1972.

House of Commons

See also