Are Filibusters Used Outside the United States?

Lawmakers in Austin, Texas, stayed up late on Tuesday, thanks to State Representative Wendy Davis, who staged a filibuster to prevent a bill restricting abortion from passing before a midnight deadline expired.

Texas Republicans tried to push the bill through anyway, but eventually the bill missed that deadline.

Filibusters are pretty common here in the US but it’s a tradition that often strikes outsiders as strange.

We wanted to find out more about filibusters: Where do they come from and what other countries, if any, use them?

So we contacted Gerry Loewenberg, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.