Is the state legislative apparatus in the Czech Republic oversized compared to the United States, given the respective population of each country? No, that's not true: The United States has a federal government and the U.S. Congress, the legislature of the U.S. federal government. Single states also have their own local governments and legislatures, which reflect the structure and perform similar functions to those carried out at the federal level. It is, therefore, incorrect to compare the size of just the U.S. federal bodies with their equivalent in the Czech Republic.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on December 28, 2024. The video shows a screenshot listing the number of U.S. Congress members compared side by side with the number of Czech lawmakers. It adds that the U.S. has a population over 30 times larger than the Czech Republic.
A statement in Czech, which is part of the picture shown in the TikTok, reads, translated into English by Lead Stories staff:
If the USA followed the same model, it would have to have 6,160 MPs and 2,494 Senators. Do you see where the mistake is yet?
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jan 22 10:17:13 2025 UTC)
The argument used in the TikTok is flawed because it leaves out that in addition to federal bodies, there is also a state-level apparatus that runs the U.S. on a local level. Some of the figures shown in the TikTok are also wrong. To begin with, the Czech Republic had a population of 10.9 million people (archived here) at the end of 2023, according to the Czech Statistical Office data, not 10 million as claimed in the video. The U.S. population was expected to exceed 341 million people (archived here) on January 1, 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and is not 308 million as claimed in the post. The U.S. Congress is a bicameral legislative body with 435 members (archived here) in the House of Representatives - not 440 as shown in the TikTok - with each state having at least one representative, based on population. There are also 100 members of the Senate, with each state represented by two senators. So, Congress has 535 members.
The Czech Parliament also consists of two chambers, the lower one and the upper one, called the Senate. The lower chamber has 200 lawmakers (archived here) and 81 members in the Senate (archived here).
The TikTok only focuses on the federal-level structure in the U.S., comparing it to the Czech Republic to suggest the latter has a disproportionate number of lawmakers in relation to its population. Since the United States is a federal union of 50 states (archived here), each state has its local executive, legislative, and judicial branches, constituting the backbone of the state-level governance.
There are 50 states´ governments (archived here) with their own legislatures, or assemblies (archived here), typically bicameral, like the Congress is, apart from Nebraska (archived here), which has only a single legislative chamber. The state legislatures (archived here) discuss and enact laws on issues, including education, health care, or criminal justice, to be applied within the state borders. At the same time, the U.S. Congress operates on a federal level and has powers outlined by the U.S. Constitution.
Each U.S. state also has its governor (archived here), and the power is shared between the federal government and the state authorities. For example, the Texas Legislature (archived here) has 181 members, out of which 31 are senators representing separate geographical districts in the state. In Colorado, the General Assembly (archived here) consists of 100 members, 35 senators and 65 representatives.
