Engaging and Supporting Parliaments Worldwide

The European Commission is increasingly recognising the importance of parliaments in democratic governance as they play a central role in law-making, oversight of the executive and representation of the population. To help those working in this field, the EC has produced a new practical tool: ‘Engaging and Supporting Parliaments Worldwide’.

While there is no single ‘correct’ model of democracy, there is a growing consensus that effective parliaments are of fundamental importance to democratic systems. One of their most important roles is in holding a country’s leaders accountable for their actions.

“Parliaments are probably the single most important institution in any state for securing domestic accountability,” according to Greg Power, who co-authored Engaging and Supporting Parliaments Worldwide along with Dr Jonathan Murphy and with inputs from Jose Macuane.

“Parliaments provide the nerve-endings of the political system – MPs exist to represent the interests of their voters and they frequently have a lot of contact with their voters - so they have a better understanding of how government law, policy decisions and financial spending decisions are affecting those voters,” said Mr Power.

The EC is increasingly working with and supporting parliaments and this year held a special training workshop on the subject to present the new reference document and associated assessment framework to staffers and other development workers active in this field.

According to Mr Power, who developed the assessment framework, parliamentary support should better help parliaments to fulfil their four key functions:

• Scrutiny of legislation
• Oversight of government policy decisions
• Scrutiny of finance
• Representing the interests of voters in parliament

However, there are two key challenges to providing effective support. Firstly, parliaments frequently fall short of expectations and fail to adequately meet their state obligations. And secondly, in the past, many donor parliamentary support projects have failed to deliver results.

The assessment framework is designed to help programme designers meet these challenges.

“The assessment framework looks at the key functions of parliament,” said Mr Power, “and encourages people designing projects to think about the factors underlying any weakness in the parliament.”

To do this, the assessment framework is built around a checklist of five key questions:

1. Does the parliament have the necessary power within the constitution?
2. Are the rules of procedure clear and coherent?
3. Support to staff – are there enough and do they have the necessary skills to support MPs?
4. Do the politicians have enough experience to do their jobs correctly?
5. How do politics play out through the parliament?

“None of this is easy, and we don’t pretend that the framework assessment gives you all the answers,” said Mr Power. “But it should help parliamentary support programme designers to think about projects in a different way so it’s focused on the outcomes and getting better results for the public, the parliamentarians themselves, and for the donors.”