Parliamentary strengthening is important for promoting governance

A growing focus on governance in developing countries has led to renewed interest in the role of parliaments. How might the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and other agencies contribute more effectively to parliamentary strengthening?

Research from the OverseasDevelopment Institute and One World Trust, in the UK, reviews evidence to dateon parliamentary strengthening by DFID and other donor agencies, and makes aseries of recommendations for future work.

Governance is central todevelopment. Parliaments are an important part of national governance systems,helping to ensure state capability, accountability and responsiveness. The mainfunctions of parliaments are legislating, overseeing the activities ofgovernment and representing citizens.

In the past, donors tended towork mostly with governments and civil society groups to improve governance.But this is beginning to change as the important role of parliaments is increasinglyrecognised.

In recent years, a wide rangeof organisations have been involved in parliamentary strengthening in poorcountries. These include: bilateral aid agencies such as DFID in the UK and theSwedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida),multilateral organisations such as the World Bank, parliamentary networks andvarious civil society and private sector organisations.

Relatively little work hasbeen done to assess the impact of these initiatives. The research highlightssome of the lessons learned from past projects. The research also draws on thefive principles set out in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness:ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and accountability.

The research shows that developingcountry parliaments often fail to work well. Parliamentarians sometimes lackthe skills and knowledge to do their jobs properly. Parliaments in poorcountries often lack the necessary finance and institutional capacity. And inmany countries, the political context (electoral systems, constitutions) andthe wider social and cultural environment limit the performance of parliaments.

The report shows thatsuccessful parliamentary strengthening projects need to:

• be demand-led,responding to local needs rather than donors’ agendas
• address thecauses of poor parliamentary performance rather than just the symptoms
• take full accountof the local context, particularly the political context within whichparliaments function
• involve a rangeof local organisations and interest groups, including opposition parties
• harmonise andco-ordinate the parliamentary strengthening efforts of different agencies
• provide long-term sustainable support.

Parliamentarystrengthening is an important way for donors to help improve governance in poorcountries, which in turn contributes to poverty reduction and democracybuilding.

The research concludes thatDFID should:

• do more work onparliamentary strengthening
build on itsstrengths in parliamentary development, and identify gaps in work done by otheragencies
work more closely with other UK and non-UK basedorganisations.

And donors generally need to:

• support civilsociety organisations, the media and others to engage more effectively withparliaments
focus on issues (suchas anti-corruption and poverty reduction) as vehicles to improve parliamentaryperformance, rather than focusing only on parliamentary procedures
do more to evaluate and learn from their parliamentarystrengthening programmes.