NDI Programs to Strengthen Newly Democratizing Legislatures
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs is conducting
a broad range of programs to strengthen emerging, democratic
legislatures throughout the world. While variations in constitutional and
electoral systems provide different foundations for legislatures, NDI's
programs are designed to suit local political and legal situations.
NDI's programs provide technical assistance to support the
development of representative, accountable and transparent legislatures
that are responsive to the electorate, participate in the drafting of
legislation and oversee the executive branch. Invariably, NDI conducts
legislative development programs that attempt to "level the playing field"
in countries that have recently experienced democratic elections but
have a legacy of executive branch rule.
NDI's legislative strengthening projects are generally implemented by
in-country expert staff who provide ongoing advice and information on
democratic legislative practices to legislative leaders. The projects
include periodic workshops at which legislators from other, relevant
systems lead discussions and share information on topics of concern
to in-country legislators.
Technical Assistance to Members
While NDI designs its programs to address the specific needs of a
given legislature, developing legislatures often face similar
developmental hurdles. NDI provides technical assistance to legislators
on a range of topics such as:
committees;
constituency relations;
executive-legislative relations;
legislative drafting;
party caucus organization; and
rules of procedure.
NDI has also conducted general orientation programs for newly-elected
legislators.
Assistance with Legal Reform
NDI also assists legislators to participate effectively in the development
of laws central to democratic transitions. Thus, for example, if the
legislature is reviewing a draft election law, or a draft law that regulates
public access to government information, the Institute has assisted
with the development of a process that ensures public consultation and
debate.
This assistance - usually implemented in partnership with the relevant
legislative committee - has included the solicitation of expert opinion
from around the world about relevant democratic norms. NDI's goal is to
provide a menu of democratic options and to demonstrate generically
how laws can be made -- how expert research, political objectives and
the public interest are reconciled in the context of important structural
issues.
In this manner, NDI has assisted in the development not only of
election and access to information laws, but also to the adoption of
ethics rules (imposing financial disclosure requirements on elected and
appointed officials) and constitutions.
Institutional Assistance
NDI legislative programs also aim at strengthening the institution per
se. These programs include training legislative staff, improving research
facilities, assisting the legislature in developing materials to educate
the public (such as member directories or a pamphlet on "how a bill
becomes a law"), and helping to modernize the institution's information
technology.
NDI has conducted legislative programs in numerous countries, including:
Bangladesh, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kosovo,
Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine and Yemen.
NDI's Legislative Development Capacity
Having worked with legislative development for more than 10 years, NDI
is today recognized as one of the premier organizations in the world
engaged in providing advisory assistance to developing legislatures.
1. The Objectives of NDI's Legislative Development Programs
Countries that have recently experienced their first multiparty elections
usually do not have a history of democratic legislatures. Newly elected
legislators thus are not often fully apprised of the role of a democratic
legislature and, if familiar with some model of what that institution might
be, are likely ill-equipped to implement that vision. However, a freely
elected legislature must fulfill three important functions -- representing
the electorate, participating in the law-making, and overseeing the
executive branch -- if democracy is to be established and to flourish. In
order to perform those three roles, and thereby effectively participate in
democratic governance, the legislature must develop into a competent,
accountable, transparent, and responsive institution.
NDI's legislative programs, directed towards the goal of enhancing the
capacity of newly elected legislatures to perform all three of these
functions, are designed to address the specific needs of a given
legislature. At the same time, from over a decade of legislative assistance
work in more than 35 countries, NDI has learned that developing
legislatures often face similar developmental issues and obstacles. NDI
thus provides technical assistance to new legislatures engaged in the
institution-building process on a range of these issues, such as:
committees; constituency relations; executive-legislative relations;
legislative drafting; legislative transparency; political parties in the
legislature; and rules of procedure (plenary organization). NDI also
conducts general orientation programs for newly-elected legislators as
well as training programs for legislative staff.
For example, NDI has found that new legislatures invariably need to
organize a committee system and that the delegation of responsibility
to such committees is a necessary prerequisite to building an effective
institution with the capacity to participate in lawmaking and to oversee
the executive. This need is reflected in NDI's recent programming;
NDI has organized workshops on the role of
committees in legislatures across NDI's regions. Another issue of
ongoing concern to newly democratic legislators is the need to
communicate with the public at large, and NDI has responded to that
need over the last four years by organizing numerous public outreach
programs to encourage legislators to communicate with, and enhance
their communications with, the electorate.
In addition to the programs that address "procedural" issues, such as
the development and implementation of a rational and effective
committee system, NDI programs increasingly assist legislatures in
addressing issues of legal reform central to democratic transitions such
as laws regulating access to government information, election laws,
ethics rules (including financial disclosure obligations of elected and
appointed officials) and the reorganization of local government or the
establishment of an independent judiciary. Another significant
component of NDI's substantive work with legislatures has been in the
area of constitutional development, focusing particularly on the role of
the legislature in a democratic system.
One recent trend in this area of developing "good governance" laws is
the efforts of new legislatures to confront the problem of corruption and
the related issue of public confidence in government institutions. Many
legislatures have requested NDI's assistance in developing ethics rules
for legislators and executive branch officials. NDI has assisted
legislatures in drafting codes of conduct and conflict of interest rules in
places such as Georgia, South Africa and Turkey, and the issue is of growing concern
in the Southern Africa and South Asia regions more generally.
2. The Methodology of NDI's Legislative Development Programs
In general, NDI's legislative programs rely on in-country field staff with
extensive legislative experience, several of whom are not U.S. nationals
but instead have a relevant legislative portfolio from another country,
such as Canada, Belgium, Latvia, El Salvador and the U.K. The field
staff is assisted by the Washington, D.C.-based governance team
which works to support NDI's legislative projects worldwide. Thus, all of
NDI's legislative programs benefit from the experience of the others and
the transferable lessons learned -- both substantive and organizational
-- that are part of the building blocks of NDI's programming.
NDI's approach to legislative development is multinational, which
reflects the Institute's conviction that while certain core principles are
shared by all democracies, there is no (one) "correct" legislative model.
This approach is most obviously evidenced--and fulfilled--by the
comparative approach NDI utilizes in bringing not only Americans but
calling on a worldwide network of legislators who participate in NDI
workshops with new legislatures around the world.
The heart of NDI's programs -- and its unique contribution to the field of
legislative strengthening -- is its reliance on pro bono practitioners who
participate as experts in our workshops with new legislatures. The
incorporation of current and former legislators and legislative staff from
around the world in NDI programs allows newly emerging democrats to
raise their concerns and inquiries with peers from a multitude of
contexts who understand the privilege and burden of being an elected
official. The experienced legislators enjoy a bond of professional
camaraderie with the new legislators, who appreciate the expertise and
interest of their counterparts from abroad.
NDI selects pro bono "trainers" with an eye to the relevant legislative
model (as well as to regional relationships) and thus may, for example,
bring legislators from Westminster parliaments to a program in South
Asia, where that model predominates. In other new democracies, the
inherited legislative structure or the newly designed legislature will be
informed by a plurality of systems. Thus, for example, in a 15-month
program with the Palestinian Legislative Council, a new institution that
is a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential systems, NDI
brought legislators from a very broad range of legislative models:
Australia, Canada, France, Georgia, Hungary, Ireland, Nepal, South
Africa, Sweden and the United States. NDI continues to build on its
database of former and current legislators around the world and to
identify the "key" trainers who participate frequently and effectively in
legislative development programs.
NDI's multinational approach -- and worldwide network of offices and
contacts -- also profoundly shapes the design and implementation of its
"study missions." In addition to bringing foreign experts to a new
legislature, NDI has found that taking new and aspiring democrats
abroad adds measurably to their understanding of certain issues and
practices. NDI organizes study missions to a wide range of countries.
Thus, for example, when the South African legislature was studying
ethics reforms in 1995, NDI took a working group of members to the
British and Irish parliaments, both of which had just instituted or revised
their ethics rules.
NDI's written materials for its legislative development programs are
similarly multinational and comparative by nature. For example, in order
to assist a new legislature in developing an orientation program for new
members, NDI would be able to provide information about such
orientation programs from the legislatures of Australia, Canada, the
United Kingdom and the United States (state and federal). Similarly, to
respond to an inquiry, or distribute at a workshop on committee issues,
NDI has information on how committees function in a myriad of different
legislatures.
NDI's Legislative Research Series
Since 1996, NDI has been publishing a Legislative Research Series - a
series of papers designed to provide legislators in developing
democracies with comparative information about legislative practices
and democratic norms. These papers provide urgently needed and
up-to-date information from legislatures around the world about practical
questions of importance to legislators in new or newly democratic
legislative bodies.
To date, the Institute has published these papers:
"Committees in Legislatures: A Division of Labor"
explores the structure and function of legislative committees. It
includes charts with detailed information on specific
committee-related issues collected from 20 legislatures around
the world. (also available in French and Spanish)
"Legislative Ethics: A Comparative Analysis",
outlines the key issues of legislative ethics, including codes of
conduct, ethics rules and financial disclosure mechanisms, and
institutional designs of education and enforcement systems. It
compares ethics rules for legislators in 20 countries, with
detailed description of rules and laws in 20 pages of
comprehensive tables. (also available in French, Spanish and Arabic)
"Strengthening Legislative Capacity in Legislative-Executive
Relations" examines the complex nature of the
relationship between the executive and legislative branches, and
offers strategies to assist legislators in asserting their legislative
authority. The paper includes a discussion of
legislative-executive relations in the context of various
governmental models (presidential, parliamentary and hybrid) ,
and looks at the role of parties in legislative-executive relations.
It also examines how the legislative and executive branches
interact in the lawmaking process and provides an overview of
techniques for legislative oversight of the executive, i.e.,
oversight and public accounts committees, parliamentary
questions and interpellations, confidence votes, etc.
Unlike academic papers on legislative topics, NDI's Series provides
urgently needed and up-to-date information from relevant countries on
practical questions of importance to legislators in new or newly
democratic legislative bodies. NDI has distributed more than 1200
Committees documents in Arabic, English, French, Georgian and
Spanish and 1000 Speakers documents in English, French and
Spanish. Each these papers, and others, by searching Access Democracy
in the navigation bar at the top of this page, or by direct link to all of our
governance documents in the navigation on the upper left of this page.
Contact Information
For more information on NDI's governance programs, please
contact:
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